Energytech Startups

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Unknown
Energy tech doesn't move forward alone, and neither should you. Energy tech cipher brings together the founders, investors, operators and corporates shaping what's next. From innovation trends to data driven insights. This is where the ecosystem connects, collaborates and moves. Find your place in the ecosystem at energy Tech cipher.com. That's cipher as in Sci, pH. E.R. where we bring the community together online and in-person.

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Unknown
Everything is bigger in Texas, including climate change. But luckily, Houston is leading the energy transition here in H-Town, the fourth largest city in the United States. Entrepreneurs from across Texas and around the world gathered to work with titans of industry to build a technology that will reduce emissions and power a low carbon future. We sit down with those changemakers and wildcatters who are solving the toughest energy challenges, with trillions of dollars on the line.

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Unknown
We dig into how Houston will bring technology to market on a massive scale. Join us as we talk with leaders from the energy capital world, as they show us how the energy transition gets done. I am Nada Ahmed and this is the Energy Technology podcast and I'm Jason Ethier. Let's jump in. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show.

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Unknown
And today I'm really excited to have with me Dana Vazquez Dana Vazquez. And she is the Chief commercial officer at Co Flux Purification. And Dana, I've actually seen for for the first time I saw her at RBC with a different water purification company. And but over time now she is part of Co flux and addressing one of big challenge in our water industry today is face, which is everywhere.

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Unknown
And we were just talking about how almost 90% of us have feet fast in our blood. So addressing a very important problem. So really excited to have you here and learn more about complex purification. Yeah. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and always excited to talk about what Co flux is doing and the massive problem we're trying to solve.

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Unknown
Yeah. So let's start by talking a little bit more about painting the picture about the problem. Yeah. So for those of you that are not familiar with P-Bass PE, fast is a chemical that was created in the 70s, and it's incredibly useful. We use it in a lot of things to provide coating to provide protection. And it's used in products everything from, plastics and coffee cups to medical devices to clothing.

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Unknown
So think about, like a stain resistant piece of clothing or fabric. The reason that the stain doesn't penetrate is because PFAs is coating that product and providing a barrier so incredibly useful, but over time, those chemicals are wearing off of the materials that we're using and getting into the water. And right now, there's not a way to permanently destroy PE fast.

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Unknown
Right now, what industry is doing is simply removing it from the water and putting it somewhere else for someone to take care of. Typically, that's looking like a really large Brita filter that an industrial is putting into their wastewater treatment systems. And think about when you use a Berta filter at home, right? You after three months, take said Brita filter out of your pitcher and you put it in the trash.

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Unknown
So it's just getting it moved to a landfill. And it's the same thing with industrials right now. So over the last number of years, our team has really explored this problem and tried to deeply understand, like, what are the costs and regulations driving past, but also like what is the right solution to really solve this problem? And our team firmly believes that you can't just capture pee fast in a material you have to capture and permanently destroy it so that it's no longer getting into our wastewater streams.

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Unknown
So that's a 3000ft level view of kind of like what's going on in the problem space right now in our philosophy of how we're trying to solve this problem. But we firmly believe that there's going to be a lot of solutions for PFAs, depending on the wastewater stream types and the matrix and the make up. So we're just going to be one of many hopeful solutions that will solve this really massive problem.

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Unknown
Yeah. And and remind me is, is Teflon PFAs. Yeah. Teflon is kind of like a brand of PFAs you can think of. So yeah, that's a great example. When you're using Teflon pans and the flakes start coming up in your food because you've worn off the you've been at my house, at my mom's house for sure. It's.

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Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. So it's like when that coating starts to come up, that is what you're putting inside of your body in a way. And that's just the visible coating. Like think about the chemicals that are cooking off when the heat gets too high on that pan. So I have a burn at home. So, they say you actually, if you have a bird, you're not supposed to have tough one because they will die and all that comes off.

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Unknown
And so we keep it on. Yeah. We just don't have it in the house. Yeah. And I think a lot of times people and I love this analogy. And my co-founder Jeremy loves to use this analogy. And I thought this was really powerful. But like think of an Olympic sized swimming pool. So like for scale, we're sitting at this really large table, think that this thing is full of water, a single drop of PFAs contaminates the entire thing to like a catastrophic levels.

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Unknown
So it takes a very small amount of PFAs to contaminate a very large source. So it totally makes sense to me why, you know, your bird would be very sensitive. So, yeah, I think the first time I learned about PFAs was in college. And I, I remember one of the kids on our motorsports team, which just he had just watched a documentary or something.

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Unknown
Oh, yeah. He had, like, thrown out all his. And he lived off campus. He threw out all his pots and pans. He was like, we don't do any of this in this house. But I hate having to scrub my stainless steel pots. Now, I know, and it's hard to like. You have to figure out how to cook on stainless steel.

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Unknown
You have to put the oil like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, what is this thing? Why is he so he was obsessed and but but I think, you know, he was on the front end of understanding kind of that, like, it's permanent, right, in terms of a plastic. And I think there's a certain magic to PFAs where it's just like this really strong plastic bond, and it makes it really good for a lot of things.

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Unknown
But there are unintended consequences, which you know, it's like a lot of things we learn about, we only want to later that they're like, they're good for one thing, but bad for something else. Definitely. And I think people continue to be surprised on like where it shows up. Yeah. Like my co-founder Alec, he, was getting a new raincoat and he went out of his way to go find a plastic free raincoat option because he knows that the reason that things like umbrellas and raincoats work so well, it's because the face is sloughing off the water as it hits your coat.

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Unknown
Right. So it truly isn't everything. Yeah. So tell us about, you know, your background of being an environmental consultant before this and how you stumbled on this problem and this team and why you decided that this was a team that you were going to join. Yeah. So I've always been really deeply motivated by environmental issues.

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Unknown
So when I joined I was at IRM, which is a large global environmental consulting firm. And I was more on the strategy side, but I kind of specialized in both medical devices and chemicals were like my main clients. So I got to know the people's space very well, because medical devices use a lot of PFAs as a protective coating, you know, in their devices and then chemicals are producing the parts.

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Unknown
So I was constantly working with them on their environmental strategies, their stakeholder communication strategies of how do you tell your customers that you're using or trying not to use anymore this chemical? So I was pretty intimately familiar with the problem from a customer perspective. But I never really explored what solving that problem would look like.

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Unknown
So when I decided to go back to my MBA, I was pretty open to entrepreneurship. I would say I'm, like blank slate. But Rice University and, the Rice Business School is really well known for entrepreneurship. We've been ranked number one for a number of years at this point. The team is doing great stuff. So I definitely came in with an open mind and, through building relationships with people at the Lily lab and the Rice Alliance, I got brought in to the entrepreneurship circle here in Houston, and, ultimately got introduced to both Jeremy and Alec through Kyle Duda, who runs the Lily lab at Rice University.

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Unknown
And when I had met Jeremy, I think we really grounded our, like, initial working relationship and bond and our shared passion for solving a really big environmental problem. That's always been something that's driven me and motivated me. And when I heard him talk about, you know, his personal passion of not just wanting to build something in the lab that solve this problem, but get it to scale so that we could help millions of people around the world.

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Unknown
I was like, that's the kind of person I want to work with to solve this problem. And, when he brought Alec into the fold to meet me for the first time, I was like, oh, this is really fun. We all are quite different. If you ever meet any of us individually, you'll be like, oh, that's really interesting.

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Unknown
Like, they have this one unique quality. And then you see us all come together and you're like, whoa, you have like me, who's like, very business minded, very Type-A. I would say Alec is like pie in the sky, very innovative, very, like big picture. And you have Jeremy, who I would say is, like, very scientific methods and methodology driven, which is really interesting.

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Unknown
So when you bring the three of us together, it's kind of this trifecta. And I think I identified that from the beginning as an opportunity. Because building a team is one of the most important aspects of being able to get something like this into the world. Yeah. So talk to us about that journey of like building that team.

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Unknown
Talk to us a little bit about the technology that you have at Conflux and how it's actually solving the problem. Yeah. So Jeremy and Alec both were at rice for their PhDs in material sciences. So I came into the picture probably about like 2 to 3 years into the development of the technology that is now co Flux technology.

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Unknown
So Alec and Jeremy were working on this problem way before I had even entered the picture. And when I had joined, they had this big idea to scale up and do all these big things. And, like many entrepreneurs, the initial deck, we were looking at it the other week, someone was asking like, how did this thing evolve?

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Unknown
And I was looking at our initial like prototyping and what we thought the product would look like, and I'm like, whoa, it has changed so much. But there was an idea. There was an idea of there of like, what this could look like. So what Jeremy and Alec have actually done is create, material. It's called a covalent organic framework.

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Unknown
And you can think of it as an absorbent material. I like to think of. It is like a spongy material. It's very absorbent, and it sucks in the fast. And you can actually tune this material to be, you know, more friendly to certain types of chemicals. So we're starting with fast because it's the most pervasive. But over time, we're hoping to continue to build in, you know, different ways to solve other chemicals or other pharmaceuticals and things like that.

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Unknown
But when it is a catalyst. So when you're putting it in our system and it's interacting with the fast, it's absorbing it. So it's doing that first step of capture. And then there's a UV light down the middle of this tube. And the UV light actually starts a reaction that is breaking down that CF bond of the US.

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Unknown
So that incredibly strong bond that makes it really useful. We're actually breaking that down so that it is no longer fast in its current form. And that means that the water that's coming out of the system no longer is fast. It just has carbon dioxide and fluoride, which if you go and test any normal water source, you're going to find that.

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Unknown
So that's good. And yeah, the real innovation here is that material that cough that, Jeremy now developed. And so, so you do you separate the PE fast, then break it down, but then put it back in the water. Is that so? The phase is fully mineralized with that reaction. Okay. So it is the carbon dioxide.

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Unknown
And so what does that mean when you're mineralized something like like it's making it into a salt that. No. Like it's fully breaking down that bond. So the carbon is just carbon dioxide and fluoride. And it's very strong when you break it apart. It's just those molecules individually so that there's no longer the harmful effects that comes out of the original.

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Unknown
Okay. Yeah. So it's just a carbon carbon. And the fluoride. Yeah. On its own. But how does a carbon exist in a free form in water? It just exists in this free form, like. Yeah. Because it, like, fluoride would be like, what is it. Have two or. No. No. So like any. Yeah, any form of water has minerals and salts and different things in it.

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Unknown
So it's just breaking it down into things that we would normally find in water. Okay. Yeah. So like they're just dissolves, dissolved like element elements. Is that what people think? Yeah. Yeah, I just think it's just the elements that are in the water. I wouldn't say it's like dissolved. Yeah. We're just breaking down the bond and then it's existing as an element.

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Unknown
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm trying to go back to my chemistry. And I was like, would it be like C plus C minus like that is a great question for German Ally. Yeah. The real question is do you take it and then put it into like Topo Chico and then it's yeah it's fine. Yeah. For that normalized water.

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Unknown
Yeah. Well then it's something that people are asking like, can you just drink the water that comes out of the machine and we would say, no, that's probably not safe, but it would be safe for discharge. And like it becomes gray water stream. Exactly. It's much easier to clean up and solve. And that's. Yeah, I forget who told me that there's, no solution like dilution to water issues.

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Unknown
Exactly. You know, that's exactly it. And, right now, I think a lot of customers are worried about the liability that comes with having high concentrations of harmful chemicals in the water. So what we're doing is we're bringing the PFAs down to non detect, which means that it is no longer able to be found in the water at the level that it's at.

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Unknown
So then it becomes you know not only mineralized, but we're measuring the fluoride that's coming out. So as long as the fluoride is increasing, that means the p value is getting removed. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. And so, at what scale are you doing that, process today? Yeah. So over the last number of years, the team has continued to scale up an experiment.

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Unknown
Actually, the last two weeks we have been. And I say we Jeremy, Alec and our employee number one, his name is Andrew, have been, building the actual first scared that will go into the field on August 17th. So, like, we are actively building the first full size prototype and getting ready to deploy that with a partner.

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Unknown
And what's what what how much water? How much do you measure by pass or water? I guess gallons of water or. Yeah. So we do gallons of water. The system is a five gallon system. And ultimately it'll be appropriate for, like, the size of a small wastewater stream. So we're implementing at, wastewater. Well, so it's pretty small, but we believe.

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Unknown
Yeah. And it'll give us a lot of the foundational data right now, a lot of the questions that we're getting from community customers, people who are interested in working with us is like, okay, great, you built this thing. How does it actually work against real world conditions? So when you're trying to add it to a treatment stream, when you're doing it on real world water in the field, so we're really using this as an opportunity to gather as much data as possible so that we can start answering some of those questions in a real world application.

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Unknown
And just for perspective, you said it was it five gallons an hour, five gallons a day? So it's five gallons a minute. But, so that's pretty little. Yeah, that's pretty substantial. Yeah. And if I were to think about a small factory that maybe has a wastewater stream, I mean, how many gallons per minute are we usually talking about?

00;15;09;26 - 00;15;29;02
Unknown
If you had to, like, pick one? Is that 10,000 gallons? Is it ten gallons? Yeah. I think, so you get the it's a pretty wide scale. So you get like municipalities. They're going to be doing like millions of gallons a day. Yeah. And then you're going to get the, like midsize industrials are probably more on thousands of gallons a day.

00;15;29;02 - 00;15;46;06
Unknown
And then it gets smaller and smaller. So the scale up from where you are today is you probably gonna have to go up. Is it like, ten times. 50 times. Yeah. We'll probably have to go up about like 5 to 10 times. But the cool thing with our technology is that you can stack our units in concert to process as much water as you need.

00;15;46;09 - 00;16;08;03
Unknown
Yeah. And that's really important because we've heard from a lot of customers like, for the filters that I was describing at the beginning, you can't you have to build out a whole new warehouse space to house. Those things are huge. They're the size of, of like semi trucks. And our skid as it stands right now can fit on a trailer that hooks up to a pickup truck.

00;16;08;03 - 00;16;26;09
Unknown
So it's quite small. So our goal is to stay modular so that people can really customize how many units they need based on the amount of water they're treating. And then on top of that, you said earlier dilution is our friend. And, and water treatment. And we also don't want to treat every single thing that's coming out of the plant.

00;16;26;11 - 00;16;47;10
Unknown
We want to treat the concentrated waste streams that are being contaminated, because it's going to be really expensive to treat, you know, every single thing that's coming out of an industrial site, right? So if we know that there's a process that's resulting in previous contaminated water, we want to focus on treating that waste stream or things that are coming off that waste stream compared to like all of the water for that facility.

00;16;47;12 - 00;17;06;25
Unknown
So staying modular and staying in that smaller scale is going to help us solve that problem for that customer, because right now they don't feel like they're being catered to with, warehouse sized solutions that are currently on the market. Okay. So what is the current policy today in the US and in other parts of the world when it come to pay for us?

00;17;06;29 - 00;17;27;25
Unknown
Yeah. So I would say the US is probably the furthest along. And as far as policy when it comes to pivots, people are usually quite surprised to find that out. But I've been to Texas. I mean, I thought we dismantled. I thought we'd dismantle the EPA. Yeah. Yeah. So I think on the global scale, effect is being recognized and being explored.

00;17;27;25 - 00;17;53;07
Unknown
So in places like France, it's being banned and things like make up, but they're not putting in regulation on how to treat plastics in water. It's just that it's been said it's banned. Okay. So they're interested in pivots, but they're more worried about like aging infrastructure, phosphorus and water. And Jeremy, Alec and I have spent a lot of time going to conferences and places like Germany and, and the UK to learn more about their water systems, because it's very different than here.

00;17;53;10 - 00;18;17;07
Unknown
But ultimately, we were very surprised to find out that the US is much further had when it comes to our PFAs regulation. And in the US it's quite complex. You have federal regulation, which is trying to get municipalities to both measure and treat for PFAs. That has a lot of push and pull, especially with, people not wanting to pay and then polluters not wanting to pay.

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Unknown
So it's a lot of questions like, who's going to solve this problem on the federal level? The really cool thing about PFAs and what we see is a really big opportunity is actually the state level regulations. So in states like Minnesota, they have really strict fast regulations in place or North Carolina, and they have to, you know, treat and measure PFAs based on the state specific levels and guidelines that they have.

00;18;40;29 - 00;19;12;15
Unknown
So there's also state level opportunity. So that's kind of like a large level. But what we really see is the like pinpoint to where we can solve the problem is the liability issue. So there are companies like Moores and three, that have faced some of the largest lawsuits in US history because of PFAs. If anyone is really interested about like this history of business and PFAs, I highly recommend the movie Dark Waters explores, the case that was in West Virginia and southern Ohio.

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Unknown
And I'm from Ohio, so I feel very, attached to the story that they portrayed. But, it really dives into this issue of liability. So what we actually are trying to do is, of course, align to the regulations, which are pushing force, and we want to align there, but we're actually trying to solve the liability issue, which is like when you discharge PFAs into communities and people are getting sick.

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Unknown
And ten, 15 years down the line, they hold you liable to that and you have to pay billions and billions of dollars and spin off parts of your company to avoid bankruptcy or other types of, consequences. Like, that's what we're actually trying to solve for is taking away that liability and risks so that you don't have to deal with that in 10 to 15 years.

00;19;56;21 - 00;20;21;27
Unknown
Which ultimately gives us a better financial argument of like, sure, you're doing this investment today, but you're saving the billions of dollars that we've seen time and time again, these companies be prosecuted for at the federal level. So that's kind of your business case is how you're selling it to them when you're going to these companies that the reason for you to do this is that there's going to be liability in the future, even if there is no liability today.

00;20;21;29 - 00;20;37;08
Unknown
Depending on the regulation where you are at. What. Yeah, I would say highly dependent on regulations. Again, if you're in Minnesota, I'm going to rely on the the regulations. Yeah. And say you need to do this because of federal regulations. And of course the liability is a part of that. But every company is trying to reduce risk.

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Unknown
And we're seeing an increased focus on privacy as a risk driver and a cost driver, because in the long term it's going to cost them a lot of money to solve this. And maybe another way to think about it is like regulation gives us, like a standard. Right? But the reality and I think what kind of comes out of, the Dark Waters movie is you're still causing direct harm to people.

00;20;54;19 - 00;21;10;19
Unknown
Doesn't matter what the regulations are, people are still hurt. And and, you know, you don't want to be that kind of want to be the one who, and I think in some ways people didn't know maybe I think part of it is that they did know at some point, and you don't want to be in a position where we do know now that this is a risk.

00;21;10;20 - 00;21;27;15
Unknown
And just because you're not regulated, it doesn't mean you're not liable. And I think that's that's the point you're getting to. Right. Yeah. So and again I the regulations are important. And co flux. Our team does a lot of research and digging and conversation with like people who are in the policy to really understand where we need to be playing.

00;21;27;17 - 00;21;48;01
Unknown
But I think the liability is almost more scary in the long term for these companies because, so for the regulation, for example, there are certain industries that'll be exempt from some of the regulations because they're a critical industry. Yeah, that doesn't remove them from the liability, even though they're not going to be regulated as heavy because they're in a critical industry.

00;21;48;04 - 00;22;08;26
Unknown
So for them we're going to be like, look, you know that this is a federal regulation. It's coming out of all of these states. That doesn't remove you from the long term liability, even if you're not going to be regulated by a body today. So, yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. And so much of it depends on like where the customer is located, how big they are, how spread out is their risk.

00;22;08;26 - 00;22;26;23
Unknown
Do they have certain sites that are in some of these states that are more highly regulated? So in states like Minnesota, in North Carolina, where they have these regulations, I guess the industry is using the current solution, which is like something like the put it a filter, right. But they're not doing anything about the fast. They're just removing it.

00;22;26;24 - 00;22;59;05
Unknown
Correct. Yeah. So right now the only way that and there are some novel solutions. So Co flux has one solution. But there are other startups or small companies that are exploring ways to destroy pivots. From what we're seeing, we're the only one that can do both in one step. So all the other destruction solutions require a concentration or a capture step, and then they will destroy, so I think that's important to say too, is like some of these companies could be using a destruction technology or something novel, but most of them are putting it in the landfill or incinerating it.

00;22;59;05 - 00;23;30;12
Unknown
And the incineration piece, it's really dangerous because that is being outlawed at a national level as well. So because you're vaporizing it and then it's just it's in the air. Yeah. So it's again a short term solution to a problem that's going to continue to come up. So I think that's really where we're seeing our value is simplifying the treatment train and then providing that some more simple solution to actually destroy fast so that you don't have to worry about the long term destruction in a way that's harmful to the environment.

00;23;30;15 - 00;23;45;19
Unknown
So the home filters that we have on our waters, do they take away PFAs and some of them? I need to get that check. We got to we got to reverse osmosis system. Yeah. Which is a whole different story about how we got sold that. But it's like some of it was because of like it really pulled out everything.

00;23;45;20 - 00;24;05;06
Unknown
Okay, so reverse osmosis is great. I use a lifestraw filter at home, and, I had German Alec, like, look up all of their research to make sure that that was an actual claim that it could remove fast. But, we feel confident on that one from, you know, recommending to family and friends. So I use lifestraw at home, but reverse osmosis is great.

00;24;05;09 - 00;24;27;04
Unknown
There are some other solutions that are good for at home use too, but I think for the destruction piece it's really expensive. So I often get friends who will be like, oh, tell me about your business. Wait, I want that in my house. And I'm like, so this is for like industrial scale because it's really expensive, solvent, you know, it's not going to be commercially viable to sell, to direct, to consumer.

00;24;27;09 - 00;24;45;29
Unknown
Yeah. So we get that question a lot, especially when we're talking to our like friends and family that be like, but I wanted at home. Thanks for listening. If you're fundraising now or know someone who is, I want to tell you about Safran, our investor relationship management product for energy tech founders. Think of it as a CRM built for energy fundraising.

00;24;46;01 - 00;25;09;08
Unknown
Use our recommendation engine to find the right investors faster, and then track every conversation and stay connected through your raise. There's a free tier so you can start today at no cost. That's c e y r o n.com. Now, thanks. And back to the show. I've seen a couple of, solutions for a p fast being position as atmospheric water generation companies.

00;25;09;10 - 00;25;22;03
Unknown
As like a way to get around it because then you're just, you're just pulling out of the air and the time is less fast. And I look at it like sometimes and advice is like 3 to $5000. And I'm like, yeah, it's so much to pay for water because in some ways we underprice water, right? For sure.

00;25;22;03 - 00;25;42;09
Unknown
And, and I understood I think it was I remember it was a rice company, but they were looking at like going to rural Maine or something like that where there is no water infrastructure. So that's how you enter the market. But no, like the solutions are expensive. Yes. And and it's it's hard to manage if you have to do it in part because the water infrastructure is done at such a scale.

00;25;42;13 - 00;26;07;21
Unknown
Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of people look at the water industry and they we see a lot of opportunity for innovation because it is so ingrained. And the practices have been what the practices have been for a really long time. So it's not an industry that's used to a lot of innovation. I would say much less so than some of the other industries where we see more technical solutions come to fruition.

00;26;07;24 - 00;26;27;18
Unknown
So oftentimes a big challenge to you is like getting people on board with something different and like the change management side and the behavior change has been really interesting to see from an industry perspective. But, I think we're bringing them slowly along and we have continued to, like build community and have great conversations with people who are in industry.

00;26;27;18 - 00;26;45;05
Unknown
But I think it's generally an industry that's not very, great with change. Like they want to keep things the way that it is. So, I mean, it's one thing to, like, solve a problem and have a technology, but there's another thing to, like build a business around it. Right. And you've been you guys have been doing this now for the past two years.

00;26;45;05 - 00;27;05;29
Unknown
You've been part of many competitions. Tell us about that journey. How do you fund the development so far and what are your plans for the future? Yeah, so it's it's mostly coming out of the university. And, you know, Alec and Jeremy were PhDs. I was an MBA. So we're like a little bit later. I had already had, you know, the start of my career in German.

00;27;05;29 - 00;27;26;01
Unknown
Alec had been in academics for quite a long time at that point. So the funding piece was a really big part for us because they were developing this technology in-house. But if we wanted to spin out of the university and really get this going, we needed to, you know, provide that path forward. So while we were at rice, we focused on doing as many Nando live opportunities as possible.

00;27;26;01 - 00;27;50;15
Unknown
And thanks to the team at Lilly and thanks to support from like, the Jones Graduate School of Business and our advisors, we found so many opportunities. I think by the time that we left rice, we had over like $700,000 and nine dilutive funding, from all of those opportunities. And that really gave us the beginning runway. So after I had graduated and after Alec had graduated, Jeremy.

00;27;50;15 - 00;28;09;28
Unknown
So I had another year or so, we actually were working out of the rice nexus. And through our relationship with the innovation team at rice, we were able to utilize that space to build the business foundation, while Jeremy continued to build the technology, which I think was really important. I think a lot of, founders come out of school and they have a lot of momentum.

00;28;09;28 - 00;28;36;14
Unknown
But bridging that into something that's really foundational is hard. So having a space like the Nexus and having support from organizations like Lily and Alec was an activate fellow. So having support from additional, you know, resources that give us expertise and give us dollars at the end of the day was critical to that bridge. And then once Jeremy graduated, to be honest, we needed something to get us to this field test.

00;28;36;14 - 00;28;59;09
Unknown
So we internally did a small friends and family raise and did just about $1 million, to get us to where we are today. So we relied on connections from rice and rice Jones. So the business school and then multiple from activate and then just people in our network who saw our solution and were excited or wanted to work with us in some way or help us out.

00;28;59;09 - 00;29;17;01
Unknown
And, that has been kind of our foundation to today, and we're getting ready for our next fundraise that hopefully will start, right after the field test. So our plan is to go out, get that data, and then, go out and do that next race to get us to a full scale pilot that we would implement with the customer on site.

00;29;17;04 - 00;29;38;16
Unknown
So I heard you say a couple of non dilutive sources. Did you, go after SBIR and programs like that as well? Yeah. So we have been applying to grants. I think the grant environment right now is really sticky. And we saw with the sticky as in not good he has in it's molasses and we're like okay, all in the trenches to figure it out.

00;29;38;16 - 00;30;02;03
Unknown
There was a period last year. What it was like is is do we even answering requests? Right. So yeah. Yeah. So we have we've continued to apply for a number of grants. So SBIR we just submitted a number of proposals with some other agencies. We actually were successful in getting a small grant from the USDA to test on farm water and raw wastewater for PBS.

00;30;02;05 - 00;30;22;24
Unknown
And we've finished that engagement and it went really successfully. We got a number of raw wastewater samples, and the technology proved to be very resilient, even with all of the fun stuff that comes in, raw wastewater. And we are looking forward to a phase two. We've submitted that. And yeah, we are going to continue to have grants as a part of our strategy.

00;30;22;26 - 00;30;46;04
Unknown
But I think given the, general geopolitical and political nature of both water, energy and generally small business that is working at the intersection, we're trying to be as proactive as possible to get both non dilutive funding from things like grants and then also be proactive in our dilutive funding, which would be, you know, traditional fundraising.

00;30;46;07 - 00;31;03;14
Unknown
Could and you know I think you talked a little bit before the show, about how you decided to get involved and put your, you know, your effort in. And I don't want to say career on the line, but, like, you could have gone off and gotten a job in industry, but you decided to stay. So tell us a little bit about, you know what?

00;31;03;17 - 00;31;23;18
Unknown
What keeps you, energized. Yeah. So I think, I so I think it's two things. One is like my personal passion and drive on the, like, environmental side. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up on Lake Erie. And there's a lot of law around, you know, the intersection of environmental issues and my city where I grew up.

00;31;23;18 - 00;31;46;24
Unknown
And, I think I've always felt really tied to solving that problem because I think it's something that is, like, deeply ingrained in who I am as a person and how I grew up. And then separately, I think, like, I have two little sisters who are quite young, and I look at them and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that, you know, this problem isn't being solved so that you guys can live longer or not have health issues or not have to worry about this.

00;31;46;24 - 00;32;09;04
Unknown
And I think, you know, when we have tough days or if we're out in the sun building this kid all day and we're exhausted at the end of the day and we're like, oh my gosh, what are we doing? I think I look to my sisters, but I think that we all look to the communities that we're trying to help and think about the long term scale and impact that we can have when this technology comes to fruition and comes to scale.

00;32;09;07 - 00;32;25;22
Unknown
So I think we're really just driven by solving the problem so that we can help communities so that we don't have another dark waters or anything like that in the future. So tell us about your first client, who you're going to be deploying this kit on, what kind of company it is and what kind of got them interested.

00;32;25;22 - 00;32;49;27
Unknown
Yeah. So we're working with the Bureau of Reclamation, so it'll be on a site that is close to military bases and, a whole other area of fast that we haven't gotten into is, firefighting foams, which has an incredible amount of PFAs in it. So typically, the Department of Defense and military bases are great partners because they have a lot of PFAs that has accumulated on their sites.

00;32;50;00 - 00;33;14;27
Unknown
So with working with the Bureau of Reclamation, we're going to be, you know, close to and working off of water that is coming off of those sites. And it'll provide a really good foundation because the water is not a simple matrix. It is something that we've been testing over the last few weeks. And, we feel confident that our technology work on it, but, really briny and high contaminant levels and just very complex.

00;33;14;27 - 00;33;35;19
Unknown
And we'll provide a really good foundation to show the differentiation of our technology that we don't need, the most glamorous water matrix or something that's super clean to work off of. We can work in challenging environments, which I think will further highlight the advantage of our technology, maybe over other novel technologies in particular, that are trying to destroy.

00;33;35;26 - 00;33;56;25
Unknown
I have so many questions about why they have so much foam. Is it because they're practicing? Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So say that it's like, Air Force Base and a fire breaks out because a plane is leaking fluids and X, Y and Z, there's a huge chemical fire, and they're actually required to by law to use these firefighting foam set.

00;33;57;01 - 00;34;14;28
Unknown
Yeah. Previously had p fasten it because it smothers the flames. Really. Well. It deals with the most urgent problem which is fire. Exactly. Yeah. So when they had implemented they were like, this is great. It's a safety innovation. And then down the line, of course, they have to do that at the opportunity cost of it, having pivots on it.

00;34;15;00 - 00;34;33;16
Unknown
So no, it doesn't have PFAs. Is that which I think they're phasing it out. So there are alternatives that are continuing to come to market. And I my understanding is that they have like done some transition. But the thing about PFAs is it doesn't go away. So even if you used it, it's in it's in the ground.

00;34;33;16 - 00;34;55;07
Unknown
It's in the ground. It's it's going to be in the natural environment. So, and that's why it's a remediation that you're working exactly like the repair. Yeah. So, yeah, even if they stopped using a triple FA3 or four years ago, all of the site is going to continue to have contamination because it does not go away naturally.

00;34;55;09 - 00;35;18;14
Unknown
So so you said, you know, you're waiting to get your this full scale skid out and and we'll start fundraising soon. So how are you talking to investors currently. How are you managing that relationship. Yeah. So Alec and I have started a number of conversations. I think like many, we try to go with the relationship forward and bring them along for the journey.

00;35;18;14 - 00;35;46;10
Unknown
And then when the time comes, there's already something there. I think this is where activate has also come in and been a really fantastic partner to help prepare us and give us the foundation to some of those relationships and introductions. But yeah, we've had a number of conversations over the last few months and really trying to show our progress and how quickly we're moving from you know, working with the consultant to design the actual skid and blueprint.

00;35;46;10 - 00;36;08;26
Unknown
And then to last week, like having Jeremy and Alec and our, team on the trailer, like bolting it into the physical trailer and putting up the walls and putting in all the electronics and tubing. So it's been fun to give them that update over the last number of weeks, especially so that they could see the physical progress happening.

00;36;08;29 - 00;36;36;03
Unknown
Who do you see as, or from your conversations today? Your, your, customer base, what type of customer are most interested in deploying such technology today? Yeah, so we are really seeing industrials as kind of the initial beachhead market. But within that we're specifically interested in focusing on like a smaller waste stream. So this would be like smaller offshoot factories or things like that that are handling fast.

00;36;36;05 - 00;37;02;25
Unknown
And they're also going to be industries that are either using it very heavily in their production in manufacturing or the chemical companies themselves. So we've explored some other niches within industrials. So I think there's room in the future to expand. But initially we're seeing, the large consultancies as a window in to build that relationship and do those deployments and then do those deployments on industrials.

00;37;03;02 - 00;37;23;12
Unknown
So okay. And what do you want to talk about some of the challenges you faced as you guys have been building this, you know, going from like a consulting job at IRM to actually working on a startup, I'm sure it's a very different environment. Yeah. I think, the biggest thing is scientists and business people have a totally different language.

00;37;23;14 - 00;37;40;04
Unknown
So it was a really big learning curve for me. Jeremy would put in our group chat and be like, oh gosh, everything is breaking, nothing is working. And I'm like, oh no, like we're cooked. And then I would see him the next day and he's like, no, everything's fine. You fixed it. And I was like, what are you talking about?

00;37;40;04 - 00;38;02;26
Unknown
Like, he just needs to vent the way that you said that really set a tone. And he's like, no, that's just like how scientists are. And I was like, okay. So I had to, like, have some conversations and get some coaching and feedback on like, okay, so let's settle on some language that we all can use of, like, when are you just like, oh my gosh, nothing's working.

00;38;02;26 - 00;38;23;18
Unknown
But I feel like I can fix it versus everything is on fire. Nothing is going to be fixable. And I think that was a really important step in our like, co-working relationship because, yeah, science people are constantly running into technology problems. And on the business side, I think it's much more we can problem solving, iterate really quickly.

00;38;23;21 - 00;38;40;06
Unknown
So when something is not working for me, it's like, okay, I'm just gonna try the next thing when you're in the lab. And I can just imagine if Jeremy is like running tests in these texts take 3 to 4 weeks to run and the thing is not working. He can't validate that another solution is going to work for another 3 to 4 weeks.

00;38;40;09 - 00;39;03;01
Unknown
We're on the business side of, you know, I'm experimenting with our go to market and how we sell, and it's not working out in the model the way I want. I can just go back and fix some numbers or fix some time and that takes maybe 30 minutes to, like, fully integrate it. Right. So I just think the speed at which we can really problem solve really quickly has been a big difference.

00;39;03;01 - 00;39;19;12
Unknown
And getting me aligned to that science way of thinking has been, very important and a really big challenge. One of the most frustrating things for me in my first company was I had a great technical co-founder, but he was very much like a PhD science engineer. We would get into an investor meeting and I'd be like, we're going to go do this.

00;39;19;14 - 00;39;33;08
Unknown
And then my co-founder be like, well, we don't know, we can do this. And I'm like, yeah, we have to have faith that we're going to go do this because we're the experts, right? And he's like, well, we haven't proven it yet. And we're having an argument right in front of the investor. And I'm like, you're just confusing the investor.

00;39;33;08 - 00;39;51;16
Unknown
Like you're giving us money to go figure this out. Yeah. And and it's it's frustrating. But like, that's just the way the science brain works. Like these are the facts, right. And I think one of the challenges of being not just a commercial entrepreneur is like, you do have to paint a future. You don't know you're going to get there.

00;39;51;20 - 00;40;16;18
Unknown
Right? And is that part of the is that a discussion you guys have had? Oh, for sure. I think, so as I described in the beginning, I would say Jeremy is very much like methods and facts in prove this and has that really like scientific brain? I say Alex is like the perfect Alec is the perfect mix where he's like pie in the sky, like innovative big ideas.

00;40;16;18 - 00;40;39;09
Unknown
And then I'm the business person who's trying to, like, sell the future, right. So I think, what we've learned is Alec and I will usually take the first few meetings to really build that vision and build it up. And then, when they are ready for the technical questions, Jeremy comes in and he's like, ready to go and can really frame how the technology fits into that bigger vision.

00;40;39;11 - 00;40;55;23
Unknown
And I think we found that that method works really well, but I think it's just playing to our strengths. Like we've identified that Alec has this, we call it like the woo woo, but like he has this like ability to share is a skill, you know, like to share the long term vision and to like, be really excited about it.

00;40;55;25 - 00;41;07;20
Unknown
And then I can be a little more tactical to be like, okay, and here are the steps that we're going to take to get there. And this is what it looks like. And then you have Jeremy who can can really come in and say, and this is how the technology is going to evolve to get us to that place.

00;41;07;23 - 00;41;24;28
Unknown
And I think that's definitely something that we've had to develop. It was not a overnight, but that's great that you found that mix, because a lot of times, you know, when investors are looking at a founding team, they're looking do they have all these, you know, three things. Do they have someone who can sell or do they have someone who understands the how the business is going to work.

00;41;24;29 - 00;41;49;09
Unknown
That one really understands the technology. So so that's great that you have that from the get go. As you're going to be building and developing that. Yeah. And I think it's been fun to see both German Alec just grow so much in their like business acumen. Every time we go back to race to like, talk at Lily or talk to our advisors who are still, like, academics at rice, they're always pulled me aside after me.

00;41;49;09 - 00;42;15;10
Unknown
Like, is that the same person who graduated from the PhD program? I'm like, yeah, they've come just so far. And they're like, understanding and framing and, ability to talk about the business side of things. And I think that's been just so exciting to watch them both grow in that way. And just shows the potential that, like, our deeply scientific people could have if given the opportunity to grow those skills.

00;42;15;10 - 00;42;43;15
Unknown
And I think what Lily is doing with the Innovation Fellows program is such a great example of like giving that opportunity to people who traditionally have been more on that science side to try and branch out and build that skill. And I think we really credit them with a lot of Jeremy's foundation to be able to make this transition, to not just think about it as a science project, but to think about it as a commercially viable business opportunity that we can then take to market.

00;42;43;17 - 00;43;05;10
Unknown
So how would you plan on spending the fall now? Would you be going to like New York Climate Week there a few conferences coming up? Yeah. So Jeremy, Alec and Andrew are all heading out to site and they'll be on site for three weeks starting August 17th. So their fall is going to be running the pilot and then operations analyzing the data.

00;43;05;12 - 00;43;26;05
Unknown
I think based on the fall, we're going to try and concentrate some events based on like we're investors will be we've talked about New York Climate Week, maybe Boston Climate Week. We did go to some water conferences this summer. So we went to our, which is the big National American Water Works conference. And we typically go to West Tech as well.

00;43;26;05 - 00;43;44;06
Unknown
So some of it will depend on timing, especially with grants and other opportunities that we're going to have to balance. But we see them as really pivotal opportunities to connect with customers in person. Even just going to Iowa, we got, some water samples, like from people who came up and were like, oh, what are you guys building?

00;43;44;07 - 00;43;59;22
Unknown
Do they just like, pull it out of their pocket? And they're like, here's this, I, I wish, I wish it was that simple. You know, they come up to our table and they're like, what are you doing? And let me explain. And they're like, oh, we could send you some water to you. Yeah. And then we have to, like, send them a huge jug and it's a whole thing back and forth.

00;43;59;22 - 00;44;25;03
Unknown
But, having those real world water samples is really important because we can't just use tap water and spike it for every single task. We want to have industrial wastewater so that we can there's all this other stuff in the real condition. Exactly. Yeah. So having partners who are willing to work with us on getting some of those samples is incredibly important, because otherwise we don't have any way to prove, even at the lab scale, that we can treat this water.

00;44;25;03 - 00;44;51;00
Unknown
So even those little engagements coming from in-person events and things like that is really important. But yeah, I think we're really hands down focused on the field test and getting all of our data in and then the fundraise and doing what we need to do to build those relationships. Okay, well that's great. Is anything you would, any call to action for our audience, any way they can help you or reach out to you?

00;44;51;00 - 00;45;11;22
Unknown
Yeah. So I think, at this point, we're definitely always looking for partners and people who are interested in testing their industrial wastewater. So if you are in industry and you have wastewater and you're like, we'd be interested in running some tests and seeing what's there, we would love to work with partners, especially in the Houston area, and treat ability studies or water studies.

00;45;11;24 - 00;45;36;13
Unknown
So please reach out. Our email is on our website but it's info at Ko flex purification.com. And I think besides that, just continuing to talk about the water issues that our communities are facing and continuing to get the word out is so important. It makes such a big difference when we can spark up a conversation and be like, so what do you know about previous, and having someone even understand, oh, Teflon.

00;45;36;16 - 00;45;54;11
Unknown
That makes a really big difference in how we can connect and, you know, get the word out about our solution. How do you detect fast today? Like, you have to, like, send it to a tri titration shop? Or do you have like a little widget? You can like spectrum actually matched, you know, so stuff. It's so interesting you asked that.

00;45;54;11 - 00;46;14;13
Unknown
I think it's a whole problem in itself and their startups that are trying to solve the problem, because today we don't really have the analytical equipment to test PFAs at the levels needed to even meet some of the regulations. So once it gets down to a certain level, we can't even measure at scale how many people there are per MPB.

00;46;14;15 - 00;46;41;25
Unknown
It's like parts per trillion. Parts per trillion. Yeah. So the analytics is like a whole separate challenge that we face multiple other companies face. It's why innovating in the water space is so expensive, especially for PBS, because there's only like a few ways to analyze this data. And they're very expensive. So luckily, through our partnership with Bryce and having advisors on our board and, continuing to work with the university, we use some of their technology.

00;46;41;25 - 00;46;58;22
Unknown
But even that only gets you to a certain level before you then have to send it out. And the university doesn't like super icky water. They don't want to, like, gunk up their machines. Yeah, so there are certain types of water that we could run it on the technology at rice, but we're not going to do that.

00;46;58;22 - 00;47;15;11
Unknown
So we're going to send it to someone who knows how to handle, you know, the icky water. Okay. But yeah, it is a huge challenge for people who are trying to innovate in the water space, specifically in PFAs. Okay. That's a good one. People reach out and they know where to find you. I see your salt.

00;47;15;11 - 00;47;32;11
Unknown
The nexus is the iron. So we are no longer at the Nexus. We actually spun out, and we have our own lab space, in Stafford, so I don't know where that is. In close to Sugarland, it's very close to Sugarland. So we are there now, but you can always see us at, like, race events and always out and about.

00;47;32;13 - 00;47;49;00
Unknown
We try to stay very connected in the community and try to spend as much time with, other entrepreneurs who are interested in you know, starting their own journey or collaborating with people who are in the middle of theirs. So, yeah, if you ever see me or Alec or Jeremy on an event, we would love to chat with you more about what Co flux is doing.

00;47;49;04 - 00;48;03;18
Unknown
It sounds awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's show. If you like the show, share it with a friend or give us a review on your podcast platform. Lastly, if you have an entrepreneur in Houston that you'd like to hear more about, let us know and we'll try to bring them in.

00;48;03;25 - 00;48;05;22
Unknown
See you next week on Energy Tech Startups.