I read a handful of books this year, primarily on my Kindle (my current preferred medium since I can read it at night in bed with all the lights off and won’t wake any sleeping toddlers up). My tastes are generally pretty varied, and I usually try to alternate non-fiction and fiction to keep things from getting stale, but even that isn’t really a rule.
The books below are written down in the order that I read them in 2025. I did not include any books I did not finish, nor any book that I read this year that was not new to me (ie, a re-read). I’ve included a brief write-up and a score ranking. I did not include any discussion around plot on the off chance that you want to read the book. (I have, however, included Amazon links in case you want to buy one. You can see a bit more about the book there. They aren’t affiliate links, so I will not get paid either way).
The score is not based on anything scientific, but is simply an attempt to put a number around how much I enjoyed a specific book, or the impact that it had on me.
The rankings:
5 – Excellent, phenomenal, highly recommend
4 – Quite enjoyable and a lovely way to spend an afternoon or evening
3 – Worth the time, but probably wouldn’t need to read again
2 – Probably not worth the time to read the whole thing, but may have some redeeming qualities that you could enjoy if you are really intent on reading this book and finding them
1 – Did not enjoy, not worth the time, barely scraped through out of a strange misplaced sense of duty to not letting the book win
Hopefully this helps you find something new to read (or, selfishly, inspires you to send me something new that you think I would like to read).
Thoughts: This is the best business book I’ve ever read. I’ve given multiple copies of it away to people and am planning on buying more copies to continue that practice. Slootman was the CEO who took both ServiceNow and Snowflake public (and took Data Domain to a billion dollar exit too). A phenomenal playbook on how to get things done as an organization, and the importance of moving quickly with focus and intensity in the workplace. I’ve literally used multiple things from this book at my own job and it is shocking how much you can accomplish. Everyone who works for a living should read this book, especially if you want to be a leader in the workplace and to be on a winning team. The only downside is after reading it I watched every Frank Slootman interview on youtube and now my wife makes fun of me.
Thoughts: A classic for a reason. What a rollicking good time. The original swashbuckling adventure. The black spot. Long John Silver. Rum all over the place. Dudes shooting each other with muskets. Cutlasses flying. Poor Jim Hawkins holding his own among a rash of dastardly mutineering pirates. Buried treasure. It’s Treasure Island baby. What more do you want?
Thoughts: This was Frank Slootman’s thoughts after heading his first major company, Data Domain. A good read if you like Slootman, but just stick with Amp it Up – it’s way more fleshed out. You can probably bang this one out in an hour or two. Glad I read it and have it, but his later book is better.
Thoughts: Loved this book. This is the first book in a series of three by Scott Lynch. It’s essentially Oceans 11 set in a historic, stylized, fantastic Venice. I’ve always been a sucker for characters that are thinking like ten steps ahead in their little schemes and plans, and this book has that in spades (but also every once in a while the main character here gets caught and punished, and realizes that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, either). What fun. Great world building, fun characters, lovely capers. Prose can be a little clumsy but who cares. Great book if you’re into this sort of thing.
Thoughts: This is the second book in Scott Lynch’s series. This one is is like if Oceans 11 and Jack Sparrow had a baby. There are even some scenes in the book that the discerning reader will note seem to be directly from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Whatever. I loved those films and I enjoyed this book. Ending felt a little rug-pully and flat, but who cares. Would read this again. Fun read that just takes itself seriously enough to not feel like junk food. Hooray!
Thoughts: This book is a classic management book. Ultimately I liked it. It will be good to have on my shelf to refer to now and then. Some good thoughts on performing high leverage tasks, time management, etc. I liked this book but didn’t love it. Worth a read if you’re interested in this type of thing though.
Thoughts: A great, anecdote-driven meditation on the virtue of courage. I enjoyed it. Seems like something I would find in the airport or in a monthly subscription box for men. However, there really were some great thoughts in there and it did get me thinking about the idea of courage for a while, so I guess it did its job. I read this book because Frank Slootman mentioned it in an interview.
Thoughts: This is the third and final book in Scott Lynch’s series. There were some really neat elements to this book; the setting was fun and the main characters are now trying to rig a high stakes election. Great stuff. Who doesn’t love a good caper with both sides trying to stay two steps ahead of the other? Ultimately though, one of the central narratives of the main character’s romantic history with the antagonist dragged this whole thing down. You could tell the author was either going through, or just went through, a divorce. Glad I wrapped up the series, just wish it went out on a higher note.
Thoughts: This series is about a lady who owns a tea shop and solves murder mysteries. Formulaic but who cares. Banged this out in an afternoon. Lots of descriptions about scones and teas and interior decorating and lilac in the countryside and whatnot. Not gonna blow your socks off but again, I wanted to read a mystery solved by a lady who owned a tea shop and that is what I got. Tremendous. Can’t wait to read another one.
Thoughts: A guy named Tom Quigley who runs a biodiversity based venture fund called Superorganism gave me this recommendation in the comment section of a LinkedIn post. This book is wild. Extremely inventive and exceptionally sobering, it’s part madcap adventure, part ecological horror, part science fiction apocalypse, part financial market fiction(?) It’s essentially biodiversity banking and environmental destruction taken to a dystopic scifi extreme and is worth a read for anyone in the green adjacent space.
Thoughts: If you are going to raise a venture capital fund, read this book. A phenomenal resource that covers everything from legal and compliance to LP updates to fundraising and more. Easy to read too, which is always a plus when you’re reading what is essentially a cleverly done textbook. I immediately went out and bought a hard copy to have on my shelf as a reference guide for a project that shall be named later.
Thoughts: The first part of this book rocked. Ned Land is an all time character. Finding the mysterious submarine and attempting to harpoon it is fantastic. Really fun to read how an author in the 1870s explains how a submarine can breathe under water. You can really see Jules Verne’s mind at work here and why he is one of the fathers of science fiction. Unfortunately, and this is probably something that everyone went nuts for and loved in the 1870s, I don’t need to read just pages and pages of Professor Pierre Aronnax cataloguing random fish and seaweed and rocks that he sees outside the window of the Nautilus. This book is tremendous for what it is, and you can see why Jules Verne is so revered; it just has a few passages in there that might be a slog for a modern audience who already knows that different fish exist and that they live in the ocean.
Thoughts: Prose was miserable. Hyper violent. No idea how anyone grows old in this world if everyone in every village is getting brutally slaughtered all the time. Overly relied on some (terrible) faux-Norse stylistic language. Got great reviews, but I can only assume the reviewers were just the author and his friends.
I read this in one sitting at the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight which had been significantly delayed. A beautifully written book. A phenomenal meditation on life and what it means to live it, as well as memory, duty, etc. A lovely narrator who is ultimately unreliable. I guess it won a Nobel prize. I can see why. Parts of this book stuck with me for a long time.
Thoughts: I really wanted to like this book more. The first half was wonderfully atmospheric, with some really interesting meditations on memory, exploration, etc. It really had lots of potential. The second half was essentially just an exposition dump that you could see coming from miles away. I feel like the author wasn’t sure if she wanted to explore a philosophical concept or write something plot driven, and ultimately chose to do both – and failed to do either satisfactorily. If she leaned hard towards one way she probably would have saved it. Tremendous idea and some really strong writing ultimately marred by just poor execution. If you want to read someone who’s written what this book should have been, just pick up some Italo Calvino.
I’ve always been interested in those taking the bold step – people with big ideas who are trying to solve big problems. And there’s nobody bolder than Andrew Song, co-founder of Make Sunsets, a controversial climatetech startup that is launching balloons filled with sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to cool the earth.
Yes, that’s right.
It’s a fascinating idea, a true moonshot, and an idea that Andrew Song believes provides the stopgap between rising temperatures and a more resilient future.
Andrew and I go in depth on what his company does, the science behind it, the idea of “moonshot thinking,” and the power of just getting started.
I’m primarily interested in the concept of resilience, whether personal, communal, or societal. What does resilience mean to you?
I think it’s just getting back up after you fall down. That’s pretty much it. Don’t be afraid of failure, because I think that fear actually stops people from being resilient.
Resilience, to me, is really just the ability to bounce back. I learned that at a very early age; my parents instilled it in me. I was a swimmer and started competing when I was eight. I’ve never been the biggest guy in the room, so I had to learn how to lose, a lot, before I figured out how to win.
I was racing guys who were four to six inches taller than me, and in swimming, that matters. But I learned that if you can develop your technique and use your body efficiently, you can still be fast. That’s what really taught me: I don’t have to be the biggest. I don’t have to be the smartest. I just have to work hard and iterate faster.
Two balloons were launched today in California. Both balloons reached the stratosphere and offset the warming of 2,820 tons of CO2 for a year.
This is the equivalent of 134,285 mature trees that last for a year.
That’s interesting. In a lot of these conversations, resilience comes up almost like a muscle – you have to work hard at it in order to actually grow in resilience. It sounds like your background in swimming gave you that repetition, that practice in losing before winning.
Do you think those early experiences shaped how you move through life now?
Oh, absolutely. I don’t know how you gain that kind of resiliency or agency without actually doing it. You can read all the books you want about resilience, but until you put it into practice, it’s really hard to overcome that psychological fear of failure.
You and your co-founder have a lot of experience in Silicon Valley and tech. Can you talk about the switch from tech to green technology and whether it feels like a natural fit?
Sure. I think for me, it was always a kind of parallel process. Actually, the first company I ever wanted to start, back in 2010, was sustainability-related.
I grew up in a family with four kids, all athletes, and we ate a lot of food – but we also wasted a lot of it. My poor mom had to cook for four hungry kids all the time. Sometimes we’d eat everything, sometimes we wouldn’t, so she always overcooked just in case.
That experience inspired an idea I had. You’d take a picture of your grocery receipt, use OCR (optical character recognition) to identify what you bought, and then get recipe recommendations to help use up any leftovers. That was my first real concept, during the early App Store days. I just wanted to reduce food waste because about 30% of all food ends up in landfills.
But I quickly learned that most people don’t actually care about saving food! Still, I learned a lot from that experience, and I discovered I had a knack for selling. That eventually led me into Silicon Valley. I grew up here, so I was very familiar with the tech scene and its cycles. It was a natural fit, and I just thought, “I want to try this.”
So when the opportunity to start Make Sunsets came along, it really felt like a coming home moment. I’d spent ten years learning, and this was my chance to put it to use. I wasn’t just going to sell SaaS or hardware, but to take the skills I’d built up and return to the problem I actually cared about from the beginning.
Andrew Song (left) and Luke Iseman (right) readying a weather balloon.
She sounds like a good mom!
Make Sunsets uses balloons to launch reflective clouds into the stratosphere to combat the greenhouse effect. Can you talk a bit more about what exactly it is that you’re doing?
Make Sunsets is using stratospheric aerosol injection. That’s the technique we’re using to reflect some of the sun’s energy away from Earth. As you probably know, greenhouse gases trap heat. A lot of really smart people are working on removing greenhouse gases so they don’t keep building up and heating the planet. But right now, we’re putting more in than we’re removing.
As you trap more energy, more bad things happen, like higher variance in global weather events, things like that. But what we discovered was that there was this volcanic eruption in 1991 called Mount Pinatubo that injected about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, and it cooled the Earth by 0.5 degrees Celsius.
And more recently, there was the Hunga Tonga eruption in the Pacific (look it up, I’m not making up that name!) that happened in 2022. It injected about 400,000 to 700,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, and that actually cooled the Earth by 0.1 degrees Celsius.
So yeah, at first glance, that sounds like a lot of sulfur dioxide going up into the atmosphere. But actually, we all live in the troposphere. That’s where all living species are and where 99% of weather happens. And Make Sunsets is going one level up, into the stratosphere. That’s where these volcanic eruptions are really effective at reflecting the sun’s energy.
So, to put it in context, a volcano’s 20 million tons sounds like a huge amount, but humans currently emit about 70 million tons of sulfur dioxide every year into the air we breathe. That comes from coal plants, diesel emissions, industrial processes, ships. Basically anything that burns fuel with sulfur in it.
Sulfur dioxide is actually pretty effective. Even in the troposphere, it reflects some sunlight. But if you put it higher, into the stratosphere, it’s like 20 times more effective. That’s because of two things: one, the winds up there are really fast, so it disperses quickly. And two, since there’s not a lot of weather up there, so it doesn’t rain out.
Interesting.
This is a great example of moonshot thinking – an out-of-the-box solution that aims to boldly solve a major challenge.
We’ve talked about the volcanic aspect and the science behind it, but can you talk about how you personally developed this concept? What helped you build the momentum to take action and actually start this project?
The concept of stratospheric aerosol injection has actually been around since the 1970s. There have been over 2,000 academic papers written about it! It’s very well modeled.
You’ll see a lot of papers that focus on the potential downsides, and there have been academic institutions that have tried to move toward actual deployment, but they’ve usually been blocked. Often, it’s by well-intentioned people saying, “Hey, we shouldn’t be doing this.” And to be honest, academics aren’t necessarily the right people to push this forward anyways.
So a lot of the inspiration came from that logjam of really great ideas that just hadn’t been implemented.
The reason we’re pursuing this is because stratospheric aerosol injection hasn’t been well explored at the deployment level. We’re just getting started. We’re still a two-man company, but we’ve already gotten a lot of attention.
I think the reason we’ve gotten so much attention is because it’s such a novel idea. Like you said, it’s a moonshot, and I agree, it’s kind of crazy. Instead of removing something from the atmosphere, like greenhouse gases, we’re actually adding something to it. That’s a foreign concept to most people.
The simplest way to describe what we’re doing is sunscreen for Earth. So all we’re saying is, instead of applying it to the troposphere, apply it to the stratosphere, where it’s more effective.
Big thanks to all the people who came out today to help us cool Earth. This was the third balloon with a payload 1,030 grams of SO2. It's still traveling to the stratosphere and if reached will be the equivalent of planting 49,047 trees that last for a year. pic.twitter.com/XRhyfAspNl
And the fact that there’s such a long academic tradition behind this is surprising.
I recently read a study on AI in the environmental space, and while there’s a lot of bold innovation happening there, the market doesn’t always value it like other types of AI. A lot of it ends up in academia or NGOs because of the tragedy of the commons, you know, things everyone agrees we should do, like protecting biodiversity or cleaning plastic out of the ocean, but no one wants to pay for.
Can you talk about how you’ve approached this differently as a for-profit company tackling a global environmental issue?
Yeah, people ask us all the time, “Why aren’t you a nonprofit or an NGO?” But we believe the only way this will ever be widely accepted is if it works within a capitalist system and if people vote with their wallets.
The beauty of what we’re doing, compared to other sustainability efforts, is that it’s extremely cheap. We did the math recently, and to offset all manmade global warming since the 1850s, it would cost about $3 per American per year. That’s one cup of coffee.
To give some context, the Smithsonian costs about $3 per American per year. And the Smithsonian is awesome. It educates people and preserves our history. But for the same price, you could have a more livable planet.
Other climate solutions often come with political baggage. You’ve got people saying we need to degrow the economy, stop eating meat, give up trucks. But a lot of Americans don’t want to change their lifestyle. What’s different here is that you don’t have to!
I want capitalism to win. I want people to have access to meat that doesn’t emit so much CO₂ and maybe lab-grown meat will get us there. But right now it’s too expensive. Same with EVs. Telling someone to give up their Ford F-150 for an electric vehicle? It’s a non-starter for a lot of folks. And it doesn’t help when the people pushing these ideas are still living lives full of fossil fuel consumption themselves.
Our solution doesn’t require lifestyle changes. One, because it’s cheap. Two, because it’s deployable pretty much anywhere. We can do this in the ocean or in remote areas. California lets us do it now, which is where we’re from, so that’s where we’re deploying.
I totally agree. Capitalism has to be part of the solution if we want lasting change. But environmental work is a long game, often measured in decades, while startups are typically built around short timelines. How do you reconcile that?
Honestly, I don’t want Make Sunsets to be a 100-year company. I want us to shut down as soon as possible. This is a stopgap solution.
The best analogy I can give you is that we’re Ozempic for the climate. Ozempic doesn’t cure obesity, but it buys time and reduces the worst effects while people try to get healthier. Climate change is the same. The real danger is the heat. CO₂ itself isn’t going to kill us, at least not directly, but the rising temperatures it causes will. Until we scale carbon removal, plant more trees, and shift to sustainable fuels, we need something like this to buy time.
You’ve been getting a lot of media attention. What would you say is your biggest success so far? And on the flip side, your biggest failure or challenge?
That’s a good question. In terms of success, I mean, we’re literally the first company in the world trying to commercialize stratospheric aerosol injection as a service. There’s a startup analogy where you’re building the car while you’re driving it. For us, we’re building the car and the road at the same time.
It’s hard to say we’ve failed yet. I mean, we’re not dead. When we started in October 2022, we thought we’d get shut down immediately. Like, “Wait, you’re copying volcanoes? You’re using sulfur dioxide? Isn’t that acid rain?” But we’re still here.
Now, are we profitable? No. So technically we’re what startups call “default dead” since we’re burning more money than we’re making. But we’re about halfway to default alive. That’s when your revenue outpaces your burn. So we’re making progress.
We’re transparent about this. Every month we post how much money we have in the bank, what we spent, our sales, what we failed at, and what we’re working on. This is all about trying to figure out how to become a profitable company. We’re not there yet, but we’re closer than I expected.
Going back to bold thinking – has anything influenced your appetite for that? Or have you always been that way?
I think it comes down to how I was raised. I’m the middle child. The youngest is the baby, the oldest is the golden child, my sister’s the only girl, and then there’s me. So growing up, I was kind of the wild card.
But really, I’ve always had a safety net. I’m fortunate. My parents came to Silicon Valley in the late ’70s. If they had stayed in South Korea, I probably wouldn’t be doing any of this. A lot of it comes down to luck, and I try not to forget that.
You mentioned that safety net – and in a previous interview, someone told me they think resilience comes from that. Like, having a partner or family who loves you even if you fail. That safety makes risk-taking possible. Sounds like that applies to you.
You’ve talked about a long academic tradition behind this idea. Are there any other climate tech concepts you came across that you think deserve more attention?
Yeah, actually. Space mirrors are pretty cool. It’s another form of solar geoengineering. The problem right now is the launch cost. But as the space market grows and prices drop, I think that’s something we’ll pursue ourselves.
The idea is to put a constellation of mirrors at the Lagrange point, halfway between the Earth and the sun, so you can basically dial down the sunlight. I want to live in a world where we can control the weather the way we control the A/C in our cars. But right now the material science and economics aren’t there yet.
Eventually, though? I think it’ll happen.
10 years ago, 99% of the space industry was government funded. But today, it’s something like only 20%. Private industry makes up the vast majority now. Feels like we’re on the edge of something big.
So what’s next for you and Make Sunsets?
Right now, the next big milestone is doing a large enough deployment that it’s detectable by satellite. We already have people buying what we call “cooling credits.” One credit offsets the warming of one ton of CO₂ for a year. It’s like a carbon credit, but instead of removing CO₂, we apply aerosol.
Eventually, we want to scale enough to trigger satellite detection. These are the same satellites that detect volcanic eruptions. It’s third-party verification, and the data is public. Anyone can ping the satellite and pull the data themselves.
We’re not talking about 20 million tons like Pinatubo. Scientists say 100 to 1,000 tons might be enough for detection. That’s our next big step, and we’ve got about two years of runway to get there.
If you’re curious, read more about the science. And when people bring up concerns, always ask: “How much would it take for that bad thing to happen?” Because people will say, “This could cause acid rain.” But how much sulfur would it take? It’s not 1 ton. It’s not 69 million tons, and we tolerate that amount right now from other sources. That context matters.
Just something for your readers. If you have an idea, just do it. People get so hung up on what might go wrong. Start small. We did. Our first balloon had just one gram of sulfur dioxide in it. That’s the weight of a dollar bill. And Time Magazine covered it.
That one gram? It didn’t do anything. It wasn’t dangerous. But we started. And once you start, maybe someone notices. Maybe someone cares. And you go from there.
A lot of people think 100 steps ahead, start thinking early about how could this fail? But you really don’t know until you try. Until you start talking to people. That’s what agency looks like. And look, we thought we’d be shut down in the first six months. We’re still here. I’m talking to you two years later.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of human-centric infrastructure. After going deep into Charles Marohn’s Strong Towns a few years ago, I’ve been really contemplating what a “better” city looks like – not just in terms of clean sidewalks and new buildings, but how cities can, through their design and infrastructure, intelligently improve how we live, work, and play with each other.
That’s why I was excited when I was able to sit down with Ari Isaak, the founder of Photometrics AI and Evari GIS Consulting. After talking to Ari, it’s clear that he isn’t just optimizing lights—he’s answering the question I’ve been wrestling with, how does a city optimally function, at the most granular level. From safety and sustainability to neighborhood identity and community resilience, Ari is exploring what it would mean for public infrastructure to meet us where we are, both in physical space and in real human need.
We talked about where he thinks resilience really comes from, what government gets wrong (and right), and how one light at a time, we can make our cities more human.
I’m primarily interested in the concept of resilience – whether personal, communal, or societal. What does the concept of resilience mean to you?
I had to think a lot about this one – this is good!
I’ll tell you what, I’m not a fan of the idea of the self-made man. There’s a famous sculpture of “the self-made man” where he’s chiseling himself out of marble, and I don’t really think it’s that accurate.
I think our strength and resilience comes from the people around us, and that security net is what enables us to take risks and make decisions. If you’re worried about where your next meal is going to come from, if you’re worried about the basics, it will be hard to take any sort of risk since that’s the top thing on your mind.
I think resilience comes from family, friends, and the world that you have around yourself that enables you to make it through any challenge that comes your way.
Pictured: The source of Ari’s resilience!
Resilience is born as a result of having the safety of a social sphere around you that lets you bounce back from challenges and risks more easily?
Yeah, whether it’s just taking risks in the first place, or overcoming challenges, or just having the ability to fail. You must have people that love you even after you fail! So I really think resilience comes from all of the people around you, who may not say it explicitly, but believe in you.
And would you say that you have that resilience safety net around you?
Oh, absolutely. When I started both companies, I couldn’t have done it without the support of my wife. She was going to experience either the benefits or the challenges right alongside me.
When we launched Evari GIS Consulting, she was a college professor in Irvine. She was commuting from San Diego to Irvine twice a week, and at the same time, I landed a small contract. That left us with a big question: Should I stay at my government job at the Port of San Diego, or should I go all in on the business?
We talked it over, and she said, “Go for it.” At the time, we didn’t have kids yet, and we were living in a one-bedroom place. In the end, it turned out to be a good bet—but none of it would have been possible without her support.
In a previous interview, Bill Simon said that it always seemed to be less risky to start his own company and bet on himself than to work for someone else – since he would have more control over his own career. Would you agree with that?
I generally agree with that. But I think the idea of becoming an entrepreneur is seen as more risky than it actually is. There’s this concept that losing a dollar hurts ten times more than the joy of making one. I think that holds a lot of people back.
We have safety nets—unemployment, family, personal savings, whatever—and while you don’t want to tap into the safety net, that security also enables me to invest in an idea that might not pay off for four or five years.
I also agree that there’s a false sense of security in having a job where someone else pays you. Unless you work for the government—but even in the government these days, that’s not necessarily secure.
You’re currently the founder of an AI startup, Photometrics AI – but you’ve previously founded another company, Evari GIS Consulting, Inc. Can you talk a little bit about your experience running your own company?
Evari GIS Consulting is a GIS consulting firm that found a niche in supporting street lighting conversions. When a major city wants to convert its streetlights to LED, they need to know where every light is and what type it is.
A lot of the time, these projects are funded through ESPC (Energy Savings Performance Contract) agreements. Essentially, the contractor guarantees the savings upfront—before the job is even done. It’s like getting a home remodel where the contractor guarantees your house will increase in value by $100,000. And then, the project is financed through that model.
To make it work, cities need detailed data: what streetlights are out there, their wattages, energy usage, things like that. That information allows them to calculate the new lighting plan and determine the energy savings. Our job is to collect that data. We’ve done this in cities across the U.S., including Honolulu, Chicago, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Boston.
Beyond just meeting the financial requirements of these contracts, GIS data is critical for managing the construction process. Crews need to know exactly where each light is, which lights to load onto trucks, where to replace them, and a ton of other things. We’ve built entire systems to support this process, including capturing before-and-after photos as part of the audit and linking everything back into GIS data.
Evari GIS Consulting also uses AI to analyze these photos, helping cities better understand and manage their street lighting infrastructure.
There’s a better way to light our streets.
What drove you to start Photometrics AI?
When I was doing this work across the United States, I realized something and I’m just going to say it: they’re doing it wrong. There’s a part of this process that isn’t working, and I was in a unique position to fix it.
So right now, cities design what are called typical layouts—cookie-cutter lighting plans based on standardized guidelines for road design. These manuals dictate things like road width, bike lane dimensions, sidewalk placement, and the type and spacing of streetlights. The idea is that engineers can use these templates when designing new roads or developments.
But in reality, cities weren’t built this way. Many older streets don’t follow a standard pattern. In some areas, like North Park, we have a grid layout. In others, we see sort of dendritic street patterns with cul-de-sacs, and then there are major arterial roads and stroads.
The way lighting is currently designed follows these cookie-cutter templates rather than adapting to the actual street layout. Cities like San Diego, Phoenix, or Oakland are broken down into a handful of typical layouts—maybe 20 for a city with 100,000 streetlights. Then, using Excel, they extrapolate the lighting design for the entire city based on those few templates.
The problem is it misses critical details. It doesn’t account for whether a road curves left or right, whether a light is mounted on a mast arm, whether intersections don’t meet at right angles, or whether there’s only a sidewalk on one side of the street.
So my idea was to bring the lighting design process into GIS—so we can actually see where the light falls on the street. We built this tool within Evari GIS Consulting, called EvariLUX, and it’s now being used across the country. It was a huge investment five years ago, and it’s just now paying off.
Now, Photometrics AI takes this concept one step further. Today, many streetlights are connected to control systems. So the question becomes: How can we tap into those systems and get the lights to perform exactly the way we want?
I developed a patented concept called the Target Lighting Layer. It allows cities to specify exactly where they want light to go—down to precise illumination levels. For example, 7 lux on the street, 4 lux on the sidewalk, 1 lux on front yards, and 0 lux on the windows of your house.
Instead of running every light at 100% brightness, our system calculates the optimum dimming level for each one—maybe 85%, 72%, or whatever is needed to meet the lighting goal. Using GIS and AI, we calculate the exact dimming level for every light in the system, which results in about 25% energy savings.
But the benefits go beyond just energy savings. A city like San Diego spends $4 million a year on electricity just for streetlights. With our system, that could drop to $3 million. Even bigger savings come from maintenance—running lights at an optimal, lower level extends their lifespan, reducing failure rates and replacement costs. Most streetlights are designed to last 50,000 to 100,000 hours at full power. By running them at a lower wattage, we can significantly extend their lifespan.
Ultimately, our goal is to bring precision to an industry that has relied on rough approximations for too long. The standard approach of dimming all city lights by 30% after midnight is a step in the right direction, but it’s not truly data-driven. We use math and AI to calculate the optimal dimming level for every light, making street lighting smarter, more efficient, and more cost-effective.
And that’s what we’re doing.
And how has the industry received this so far?
It’s definitely an uphill push. There are a few key challenges. When you’re optimizing light levels, the question comes up—is there really a business here? Is lowering lighting levels really a venture-scale opportunity?
There are also obstacles when it comes to getting new rates from utilities, and then you have multiple players involved in the government space. It’s not just one department making the decisions. The people managing energy and utility bills aren’t the same as the ones maintaining the streets. The police, who are concerned with lighting’s role in crime prevention, are separate from transportation safety teams, who care about encouraging people to use crosswalks. It’s a mix of different priorities across multiple departments, which makes progress more challenging.
What we’re hoping to do is keep our costs low enough that the decision becomes obvious for any one of those stakeholders. We’ve worked to calculate the average direct financial benefit of implementing Photometrics AI for each of them, and our pricing will come in well below that threshold.
For example, if adjusting lighting levels could reduce crime by even 1%, that translates to about ten dollars per light per year in savings for the average local or state government. Our goal is to come in well below that—say, at two dollars per light per year. That way, the police department decision-maker we’re talking to sees an immediate benefit.
But then, they might need to check with the energy department, and then they might need to check with transportation safety, and so on. So yeah, it’s challenging, but we’re making the case as clear and compelling as possible.
It’s interesting you say that, though. It echoes your opening point about how resilience is community-oriented and not just one person in a vacuum. The product you’re selling can be painted that way, too! The benefits of street lighting are community oriented, and it sounds tough to sell and impress the benefits of improving street lighting to just one person in a silo.
I want to preface this by saying that I’m a capitalist. I believe in capitalism, I believe in making money, I believe in all of that. But I also believe it’s okay for us to work together on things that benefit everyone, and that doesn’t always have to be financially driven.
The classic example is the fire department. People used to have to buy fire insurance, and if you didn’t have it, the fire department wouldn’t come. So if Joe had fire insurance but Steve next door didn’t, and Steve’s house caught fire, the fire department would let it burn. But eventually, that fire would spread and take out Joe’s house too. At some point, people realized it just made more sense for everyone to pitch in and create a public fire department.
I have no problem with that. We can work together on things, and that’s okay.
There’s this attitude that working for the common good is somehow a bad thing, and I don’t understand it. We can improve street lighting across the entire U.S., and that’s not a bad thing.
Photometrics AI optimizes each streetlight for where it is, lighting the area correctly.
In a previous interview, I talked to Sam Dettman, who was running for a Trustee position in his city in Wisconsin. We talked about how resilience can be built into the way a city is designed – the character of the architecture, how roads and neighborhoods are designed, and even the interplay of the natural and urban environments can influence how we interact with our cities and communities, and can create a resilient environment. Would you agree with that? How does street lighting play into that?
So both answers are yes, in my opinion. We absolutely design and choose the neighborhoods we live in, the places we work, and the places we go out to dinner because those spaces make us feel a certain way and support the kind of activity we want to do there.
If you want to live on a street where your kids can play catch in the middle of the road, you move to that kind of neighborhood. Downtown Manhattan probably isn’t the right spot for that.
The infrastructure we build is purposefully designed to support our lives and to discourage behaviors we don’t want. Now, that doesn’t always work. Sometimes people want to do something badly enough that they’ll ignore what the infrastructure is telling them. So it’s not a perfect system, but it is one of our most powerful tools—and we should design our cities and our spaces to support the way we want to live.
Streetlights are a part of that. We should be using lighting to encourage the behaviors and activities we want to see—not with a one-size-fits-all solution, but in a way that’s dynamic and responsive.
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet about Photometrics AI is that, because it uses AI, it can figure these things out in seconds. Photometrics AI can quickly calculate the optimum lighting performance for a specific setting. That means we can do things like adjust lighting for Halloween. That doesn’t need to apply everywhere—maybe it only affects quiet, single-family neighborhoods where the parcel sizes make it good for trick-or-treating.
You’re probably not going to walk a mile between houses, so we know where those neighborhoods are—and we can use light to encourage that kind of activity. Our kids should be able to go out and trick-or-treat safely, and we should use lighting to support that. We should be treating the street like a place for walking kids, because for that night, it is.
That’s a good point.
I think a lot of people only notice when there’s an absence of street lights, or one is broken. If things are working, most people tend not to think about it. Can you talk about how you educate people on that streetlight improvements are actually necessary?
I’d say when I talk to people about Photometrics AI, a lot of them say, “Oh, I never even thought about that.” And I’m like, well, they’re everywhere. Streetlights are on every street. There’s about one streetlight for every two houses in the U.S.—so roughly one for every five people. They’re freaking everywhere, but people often confuse them with traffic signals.
I’ll hear things like, “Oh, I want the red light to go away. Isn’t there some sort of motion thing?” And I have to say, “That’s not what I do.”
Streetlights exist to bring a little bit of the day into the night, but people don’t really notice them unless they’re not doing what they’re supposed to. When a streetlight’s out—or on during the day, which happens constantly—that’s when people pay attention. And that’s part of the challenge I’m trying to solve.
Every single day, there are lights that are on when they should be off and off when they should be on. They’re too bright, shining into people’s windows while they’re trying to sleep, or they’re wasting energy lighting up front yards that don’t need it. What we need is much more precision in how street lighting is managed.
But to go back to your question—no, people really don’t think about this stuff much. When I go to investor events and explain what I’m working on, they’re like, “Wait, what? Streetlights? How’s that a business?” So I have to do a little bit of education. I explain there are different types of lights, we can dim them, we can place them more strategically. But yeah, it’s something most people just don’t pay attention to.
That sounds challenging, since you have to educate so many people on why this actually is a problem, and it’s a problem with infrastructure that people don’t often think about.
Yeah, and it takes a little while. I’m not selling a new energy drink.
It’s not hard to explain, but when I say I’m optimizing street lighting so it falls on the street and not in front yards, I don’t think it really clicks for most people. They don’t know what’s possible. They assume all lights are the same—like there are three kinds or something. But no, there are hundreds of different types. You can change their color, their distribution, you can dim them, and many are connected to control systems.
And when I talk to people who are already in the industry, they’re often pretty entrenched in the way things have always been done.
That’s why I think my best angle is to reach Public Works directors. They’re not as locked into traditional processes, and they actually have a broad understanding of how street lighting fits into the bigger picture. They know what maintenance costs look like, they know how much it costs to buy a new fixture, they understand the impact on crime, and how lighting affects transportation safety.
So that’s really who I want to work with. They have the right perspective and the authority to think holistically about lighting and how it can be done better.
What does the future of street lighting look like to you? The future of city design?
They should all work together! In our hyper-connected world, it’s completely unacceptable that government is still slow to adapt and build systems that function as seamlessly as, say, an iPhone.
An autonomous car should have everything it needs to get a person to their destination safely—whether that means streetlights illuminating properly or pedestrian systems ensuring people can cross the street safely. We must do a better job. In my mind, this really comes down to government. Government moves slowly, and utilities that manage streetlights also move slowly. But they have to work together much better. Private industry would never tolerate the kind of inefficiencies that are just accepted in government.
I’ll give you an example. At one point, I was talking to someone about street paving. He was in charge of digging up asbestos pipes, and I suggest coordination so that street paving happens after the asbestos pipe work is done—not two months before, only to dig it all up again.” And his response was, believe it or not, “You’re going to make my job harder.”
That’s exactly the problem. He was in a different department, working on his own timeline, with no regard for the bigger picture. And that kind of disjointed thinking is everywhere in government. We have to do better.
The future will belong to cities that make innovation a priority—those that move away from entrenched interests and start working with smaller, more agile innovators. Cities need partners who can orchestrate and facilitate activities in public spaces more effectively.
In terms of lighting, it should change based on when and where it’s needed. We need the right light in the right place at the right time. Halloween is one example, but what about during a major car crash? Could a 911 call trigger a change in street lighting? If emergency responders receive a dispatch code with a crash location, could the lighting automatically adjust to help them? Light could be critical when performing CPR or assisting an injured person, and while emergency vehicles have their own lighting, there’s no reason streetlights couldn’t dynamically adapt to provide additional support.
We’ve already transitioned from legacy technology to LEDs, and many of those LEDs are now on control systems. The next step is to evolve. We need to innovate and align street lighting with how we actually use it in the modern world.
What’s next for you? How could someone reading this blog potentially help you?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this. You can reach out to me directly, but you can also contact your Public Works director or send a comment to your city or utility—whoever manages your streetlights—and say, “I think this guy is onto something.”
Maybe you’d really like it if the light didn’t shine in your window, and you think this approach could make sure that doesn’t happen across the entire city. Plus, you’ll save energy because right now, you’re spending money and energy to put light in someone’s window. So, can we not do that? Can we just not? He doesn’t want it.
So yeah, recommend that they reach out. I’d love to talk with anyone across the U.S. or even globally. We’re already having conversations with folks in Europe about this idea.
As for what I do every day…I read a blog post the other day that said, “If you’re a founder, you’re either building or selling. There’s nothing else.” And that really resonated with me.
I switch between those two things. I make sure our MVP is up and running, I create videos for LinkedIn to share what we’re doing, I reach out to Public Works directors I’ve worked with before, and I build partnerships with private companies that can help us get into multiple cities. That’s what I do all day, and I like it. It’s great.
I’m on my own right now. I don’t have a whole team, but it’s exciting. And hopefully, it works. I’m going to do my best.
What’s the best way for someone to contact you to learn more or follow up?
You can email me at ari@evarilabs.com, or reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active there.
Is there anything else you’d like to talk about before we go?
I just think that, in many ways, the government gets a bad rap. There are good people who show up every day, working in government, doing their best for the citizens. But they should embrace technology.
The GovTech space is notoriously difficult. There are VCs who won’t even talk to people trying to do business with the government. And the reality is, the government is never going to release an RFP for the product I’m selling, because I’m the only one selling it—it’s not a known entity. I understand the point of an RFP. At Evari GIS Consulting, I spend my life chasing those kinds of opportunities. But in many ways, the government needs to figure out how to cut through bureaucracy and try new things.
It should be completely acceptable for a city to say, “Hey, Ari, why don’t you test this out on a neighborhood or 20 lights in a quiet residential area? Let’s see if it works.” And if it doesn’t work, so what? What’s the worst-case scenario? The streetlights turn on 10 minutes early or turn off too soon? We already deal with streetlights that don’t work all the time! Government should be way more open to experimentation and failure—the same way private industry is.
With that said, this fear of failure is also one of the government’s biggest weaknesses. There’s this mentality of “nobody gets fired for buying Apple products.” So in many cases, governments default to hiring the biggest, most well-known firms for consulting contracts. But in reality, it’s often their subcontractors doing the actual work. The assumption is that hiring a familiar name ensures a better product, but I don’t think that’s really the case. And I actually think it’s time that the government moves away from that mindset.
It’s time to look for innovative, younger, smaller teams that are building new things.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Sam Dettmann, a friend of mine since college. Sam is currently running for a Village Trustee position in his town of Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin. While many of my previous blog posts had a tangential relationship to the greater San Diego area, this one takes a peek behind the curtain of a close-knit southeastern Wisconsin community, and the high-level resilience insights we can glean from someone involved in the local political sphere there. It’s a slightly different angle than normal, but one that I found interesting – and still highly relevant.
We covered a number of topics, ranging from what makes a resilient community, how a town’s design can contribute to its character, how to network, meet people, and the importance of listening, and the lost art of civility. It was a nice surprise – this catch-up with my friend turned into a really revealing discussion on the communities and institutions that we all make up, and the role that we play in strengthening them.
If you’re in the community of Whitefish Bay, I hope you choose Sam on April 2nd! And if you’re not, I hope that you enjoy this discussion on what makes a local community strong.
I’m primarily interested in the concept of resilience – whether personal, communal, or societal. What does the concept of resilience mean to you?
That’s a good, tough question.
I think for me it’s the idea of being comfortable with who you are, even if that sometimes means being okay with not being liked or not being able to please everyone. As a candidate and a person, I am learning this as I go, and it’s a work in progress every day. In the campaign, I try to keep things even and I am always open to collaboration with anyone who reaches out to me, but it’s still important to realize that you’re never going to be able to please everyone. The way that I work on that and on being comfortable with it really starts with making sure that I have strong connections, with my family and my personal network, who I can rely on to help provide guidance and grounding.
Being comfortable with who you are, while not necessarily being liked. Is that something that you started working on as a result of this campaign? Or is it something you’ve been working on longer?
Something I’m always working on is my sense of self. What do I bring to the table, and how can I do it in a way that makes an impact?
The campaign has been a great learning experience for this. It’s a lot of work even just running in a local race for a smaller town, but you learn a lot about yourself, what you do well, what you can work on, what your strengths and weaknesses are. And then you also get much more connected to your community and the people in it. If you’re reading this and interested in running for something, I think you should do it but be prepared to be challenged. At times, a campaign can also be a bit lonely, which is a strange paradox as running for office in an inherently connective experience but there’s an element of self-reliance that can be humbling at times.
Sam Dettmann is running for Village Trustee.
What originally attracted you to the Whitefish Bay community? Would you classify it as a resilient community?
My wife actually grew up here, so we were familiar with it. I grew up nearby in the Milwaukee area, so I also knew the area but when we were looking for somewhere to set down roots we both knew Whitefish Bay was the right place.
One of the things I like about living here is the nice blend of urban and suburban feel. We live about ten minutes from downtown Milwaukee, and can get there from our house by bike on well-maintained trails, but Whitefish Bay maintains this great neighborhood feel. It’s the second most densely populated community in Wisconsin, so you know your neighbors and it’s walkable.
We also have phenomenal schools and phenomenal services. Those were big attractors for us, and that’s something I want to do my part to maintain over time. I have two kids, one who just started in the school system, and I want to make sure that I’m doing what I can to help build the community for them and the future.
The other piece that’s really cool about Whitefish Bay is the geography, which is really unique. You are never far from Lake Michigan in Whitefish Bay and it’s a great place for walking, biking, running…there are just some really nice opportunities to get outdoors here and our residents take advantage of it.
The shoreline in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin.
It seems like a lot of what you’re saying is that resilience can be built into a city’s very design – the urban (or suburban) character, but also the interplay between nature and the built environment.
I think the last piece is community as well. People contribute to the resiliency of an area, and we have very strong neighborhoods. Even individual blocks are really close knit with a mix of residents who have lived here for decades and new ones connecting and helping each other out. Throughout the summer, we have block parties, and the energy and attendance of that is really refreshing.
Of course there are the city design elements, the geography, the interplay between nature and that design, but also the people who inhabit the community and how they contribute to it.
We have some challenges though. One of the big issues we face here is maintaining and restoring our shorelines from erosion. They need a lot of maintenance, and our parks need maintenance as well – although both provide great opportunities to gather outside. So I’d consider this to be a resilient community, but we need to continue to improve it.
Shoreline erosion is something that we’re intimately familiar with in Southern California!
Where do you see the local government’s role in fostering community resilience? Is that even something that the local government should be involved in?
I think it is. Something I’ve learned through this whole process, and it can be challenging both in a campaign and personally, is that it’s really easy to have huge aspirations and we need to think strategically about the future, about how we develop as a community. But when you start to realize what the day-to-day roles or the week-to-week roles of the local government are, and what they’re actually focused on, it’s not always the things you think about. There is a wide variety of boards and municipal departments that handle different things. And I think people often think that when things get done, it’s the seven people on the board who are pulling those strings, and there’s generally a lot more to it than that. We are lucky to have a great municipal staff who make life here safe and enjoyable for residents.
A lot of what the local government gets down to doing is detail – it’s decision making, it’s pragmatism, it’s planning for the future in a strategic, concise way that is aligned to what our residents want. How do we take a year of our budget and make sure we’re investing for the future while controlling our tax burden? This type of balance is something I work on a lot in my day job and I hope to bring it here as well. I am a CPA and work with budgets and financial plans every day and I want to lend those skills to our local government
So it’s important to have both – the aspirations and the basics. Effective leaders take aspirations and make sure they are achievable and make a positive impact on those they serve.
So in summary, it often comes down to services. It’s the things you don’t notice – the sewers are working, the streets are shoveled, the parks are maintained. It’s all of those things. But of course, it’s critical to plan for the future too and I want to contribute to that discussion with an open-mind. What should we focus on knowing that we have limited resources, what will drive the most positive outcomes for our community? That’s part of where I think resilience fits in – we have various plans and initiatives that inform our vision and the goal is to implement them, but sometimes those plans are daunting, they’re long, they cover decades, and the world changes, so it’s also important to be nimble.
Let’s go back to some of your comments about community, which you mentioned was one of Whitefish Bay’s strengths.
In his book Bowling Alone, which you and I have talked about, Robert Putnam talks about community building almost as a paradox of being both in decline, but also more important than ever. Can you talk about the importance of community, not just at the local level, but the personal level? Then, do you have any tips for building community, not just within an urban environment, but also as part of a personal network?
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly with that. I know you and I have talked about it in the past – this is one of my favorite books!
When we think about what a society should look like, Putnam talks about a concept of social capital, which is basically the social and personal connections that make for a strong, productive and united community. It’s a really important idea, and for me it’s one of the biggest factors for increasing personal resilience – finding out how to increase and then effectively use your social capital. Because no matter what happens, if you have social capital, you have a community around you to help solve problems.
In terms of building community, this has always been important to me, but I think that really came into focus during the pandemic. We had so much technology at our fingertips, but what people seemed to want more than anything was to connect in a meaningful way. And honestly, I think that we lost something at that time, and maybe we had been losing it for a while and COVID accelerated it, but I am concerned about our capacity to connect with one another. I think technology may be a part of that, since it can allow people to retreat into their bubbles but it’s really nice to get out there and connect in person with the community. That is one of the things I love about working with our town Civic Foundation – it forces you to connect.
A little more about our Civic Foundation, it’s a private organization but it partners in many ways with our local government, and we put on a lot of the most loved community events around town. Many of these events have been going on in Whitefish Bay for decades and the Civic Foundation has been a great steward of them over time. They are attended by a huge portion of the community and residents of surrounding communities and they are always free to attend. I joined the Civic Foundation board coming out of COVID and it’s been a great way to build community and meet other residents. It’s really part of the fabric of our town. When I help with the Civic Foundation events, I feel like I am building social capital and contributing to a resilient community, and it is refreshing to be part of something positive and local.
Through this campaign, I have also enjoyed the nonpartisan approach of local politics, which is so different from partisan national politics. I think this really helps us focus on issues that matter to our residents.
Let’s talk about that difference. When people normally think about politics, they often think about things from a long, drawn out, partisan national level. What has been your experience thus far with politics on a local scale?
I think it’s quite different!
The office I’m running for is nonpartisan, so it really forces you to think about issues and not categorize yourself into a specific camp and that helps remove some of the clear delineations you’d have in a national race. I mean when you think about a national race, you have 90% of the voters accounted for regardless of who is running or what the issues are. That’s a big challenge because you end up fighting over a tiny sliver of voters on a huge range of issues.
On the local level, I’ve found it to be much more about networking, much more about visible things you can impact in a tangible way, and then also about your tone, your philosophy, and your resume. All of those matter in a different way than they would in a national election where there’s a partisan letter after your name that’s going to get you most of the way there. So that’s been nice.
It also forces you to talk to people and really connect with them in a nonpolitical way. I’ve been able to connect with people who have politics coming from all different angles. And sometimes their politics come up, sometimes they don’t, but it’s never the central area of focus and that’s really nice.
A lot of what you’ve mentioned has involved those most basic aspects of community building – talking one-on-one with people and networking. Can you talk more about the importance of that for strengthening the local community?
I think it’s the single most important thing you can do, honestly. What I’ve found is that when you talk to one person, at least when you’re running for something or working for a civic foundation, they’ll usually connect you with like five more people and from there you’ll keep connecting and encountering new perspectives. It’s important that you’re willing to be outgoing, you have to be willing to pick up the phone, and you have to be ready to have a lot of coffee!
I think it’s also really important to remind yourself to listen. I think everybody, myself included, loves to talk. But you learn a lot by listening and you start to figure out common themes. When you talk to one person, you get an individual opinion, but when you talk to 50 people, you start to see common themes emerge. That’s really what you’re working towards – bigger themes and once you’ve identified them you can focus on the details around how to make that happen.
Again, it’s refreshing to see that a lot of times those themes cut across political lines. What people are looking for often isn’t that complicated. And at the end of the day, people want to be part of a community that’s respectful and willing to interact and engage back with them.
So the major themes you hear while out and about center on respect and engagement?
I think those are two big themes, in addition to others that are more specific to our town. Civility is so important, and we’re lucky that we have it in this community. Like any community, we’ve had divisions in the past and I think we’ve maybe been a bit more divided recently than is typical, but overall, it’s an extremely collaborative community that really does prize civility.
Part of what pushed me to run in a concern about civility more broadly in our society. Our ability to be civil in our disagreements, well, it’s eroding at least as fast as any shoreline and that makes me afraid for the world that my kids will inherit. If we can’t have a coherent civil conversation where we might not agree, we are going to struggle to solve the many challenges we face. In Whitefish Bay, we are good at solving problems with civility, so I am going to do what I can to preserve that here in my town and improve it more broadly.
What made you want to get involved in local issues? What tips would you give to others looking to get involved in their own community?
Since moving here I’ve been pretty involved in the community, from helping with reviews of people’s tax assessments, which I did for about six years, to now getting more involved in our Civic Foundation and Library Foundation. It turns out groups like that really like you if you’re a CPA and have budget and financial strategy skills and I’ve always looked for ways to use my skills and background to give back to the town. I mean, I’m probably not going to be the most creative event planner, but I can definitely make sure we have the funds to pay for it!
At this point in our local government, I think my skills align with what we need, so that’s why I chose to run. It’s really for three reasons, which are themes of my campaign, community, consensus, and sound fiscal planning. There are a wide range of details underneath those themes, but they are the guiding principles for my campaign.
As far as tips for running for local office, if you’re interested, first make sure there are five or ten people who are well connected in the community that you can talk with about your ideas and campaign approach. Ask them, does your case make sense? Who can they connect you to? What tips do they have and how do they perceive you? It’s always interesting to learn more about how you are perceived compared to how you perceive yourself and I think good leaders adapt and grow based on this feedback. These first connections are incredibly valuable in the early part of a campaign.
When I think about a local community, I like to think about how it’s made up of building blocks of individuals, who make up individual families, who come together and form the culture of a town. So I want to talk about your own building block – your own family. Are you taking things you’ve learned from the community back to your own family? Are you taking lessons from your family out to the broader community?
Yeah, I think it goes both ways. When I think about my own family, my two kids and my wife, they’ve done so much to instill into me the importance of listening, kindness, stability – I definitely learn much more in my house that I take outside.
And then even though the kids are a little young to participate in the campaign, they like to be part of things when they can. They take pictures, they ask why there are signs up around town with my name on it, that sort of thing. I hope to make them proud! They may not know it now, but someday when they look back, hopefully they’ll think this was good no matter what happens.
“Even though the kids are a little young to participate in the campaign, they like to be part of things when they can.“
What are the best ways for someone to learn more about you or contact you?
Our election is coming up on April 2nd, you can check out my website, and you can also use one of the various contact forms on that site to connect with me via email. I’m not taking donations for this campaign, but if someone wants to contact me and learn more, whether they live in Wisconsin, California, or anywhere really, then feel free, I’d be happy to talk with them.
Is there anything else you’d like to talk about or highlight before we go?
The first thing is that I’d really just like to encourage people that if they’re on the fence about running for a local office or getting involved in your local community, I’d say you should go for it! It’s a really great personal and professional experience. It will be uncomfortable at times and it will challenge you in ways you wouldn’t expect, but it will also connect you to really interesting people you wouldn’t have met any other way. And you never know where those connections and learning experiences will take you. Whether you win or lose, you’ll have a good experience, and you’ll be glad you did.
The other thing I want to highlight is on that theme of civility that we talked about. I think the more you get out and talk to people, the more people will surprise you. They’re going to be more reasonable than you expect, going to have more complex views than you’d think. It’s so easy, at a national level, to classify people based on their political leanings, but underneath it, there is so much complexity that those parties gloss over. And that’s something that’s really harming our ability to be civil at a local level.
There’s a scene in the show Ted Lasso where Lasso is playing darts and references a quote, “Be curious, not judgmental.” If you are curious about people, you are going to learn something – and I think that’s a pretty good takeaway for anything you want to do.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Ravi Chawla, a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Research, who is currently in the very early stages of forming ChakraTech (formerly known as WheelBio). This company is dedicated to using microbes to make completely and naturally degradable bioplastics from greenhouse gases, potentially solving the problem of plastic pollution! He recently took third place in a pitch competition through Aquillius, and will be utilizing their lab space as he forms his company.
Over the course of our wide-ranging conversation, we covered topics like the risks associated with forming a startup, pushing through difficulties with commercializing this product, and building a resilient industrial biotech scene in San Diego.
It was a fascinating conversation, and a great opportunity to talk to someone at the forefront of both science and business, working to get a brand-new, innovative company off the ground.
I’m primarily interested in the concept of resilience – whether personal, communal, or societal. What does the concept of resilience mean to you?
That’s an interesting question!
The word resilience to me refers to the spirit of persevering in the presence of difficulty. To be resilient, therefore, means to prevail or succeed despite all the odds!
Resilience is a profound concept in philosophy and psychology, embodying a character marked by persistence in responding to challenges or hardships. Often, individuals are not immediately aware of their own resilience; it becomes apparent through their actions and reactions over time. I am deeply inspired by individuals who exhibit perseverance and courage. Their stories of overcoming adversity not only resonate with me, but also fuel my own aspirations and strengthen my own commitment to face challenges with similar bravery.
Achieving anything significant, particularly when it involves paradigm-shifting innovations, demands immense determination. And interestingly, resilience extends beyond personal tenacity; it is deeply rooted in the collective strength drawn from one’s support network and community. Therefore, it’s crucial to be in the company of people who offer unwavering support and encouragement during challenging times. This belief forms the cornerstone of my philosophy on resilience.
Overall, resilience is a harmonious interplay between personal commitment and communal support, underpinned by strategic thinking, persistent action, and reliable execution, all directed towards a common goal.
So seeing a vision, and then doing whatever it takes to get there.
Yes, by going full force!
I attended an Anglo-Vedic middle school in India, where I drew much inspiration from ancient Indian texts. I am often reminded of a powerful quote by the late 19th-century Indian Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.”
This quote, which was inspired by a shloka from the Katha Upanishad, continues to resonate with me.
Ravi Chawla pitches ChakraTech’s innovative technology at San Diego Startup Week
Your background is an interesting one. You’re from a small town in India but became a chemical engineer. How has this background influenced your career?
Growing up in a small town was a formative experience for me. Limited opportunities translate into limited expectations and limited aspirations. My dad was just happy that I finished 10th grade.
When I finished 10th grade, my dad brought me a job he saw in the newspaper for a position as a constable. I was like, “do I look like someone who could do that? I’m the biggest nerd that exists!” But I, somehow, have always had a determination to challenge the status quo and defy the norm. Perhaps, I get this trait from my mom, who I’ve always thought to be both fearless and a force of nature, and has always been a tremendous source of inspiration for me! Anyway, this drive led me to successfully persuade my family to relocate to a larger city, Chandigarh, that opened the door to more educational opportunities.
After relocating to Chandigarh, I completed 12th grade and appeared for the engineering school entrance exams. My interests primarily lay in physics, chemistry, and mathematics. However, when someone suggested a career in chemical engineering, I was initially distraught. Even though I was preparing for engineering school, I had no understanding of what any of the engineering fields entailed. Among my peers, the prevailing belief was that chemical engineering involved extensive chemistry and rote memorization, with limited career prospects. This perception made me hesitant to pursue it.
By a fortunate coincidence, Panjab University in Chandigarh had an outstanding chemical engineering program. Financial constraints led me to choose this path over the then-popular computer science or other engineering majors. Thanks to the program’s affordability and the scholarships I received, I could pursue my education. Surprisingly, I fell in love with the chemical engineering curriculum and education. It quickly became apparent that this was my true calling. I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of it, and it continues to shape my approach to solving scientific and technical problems. In retrospect, my initial concerns were unfounded, as I stumbled upon my passion in a field I had chosen by chance!
In my opinion, “success” is a delicate balance between determination and destiny. One has to attempt to create their own destiny, but then let nature take its own course. It’s actually a philosophy from a Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita – you only have the rights to your efforts, and not the rewards or fruits of it. I think that is something that fundamentally governs me. Give it your best attempt, and then everything else is out of your control.
Your biotech startup, ChakraTech, is still currently in stealth mode, but you have recently begun to pitch for fundraising, coming in third place at a recent pitch competition in San Diego. What can you tell me about your company so far?
We are in early stages of our journey, and I can tell you in very broad terms about what we are doing and how we got here.
The biggest thing that came out of the Industrial Revolution in the 20th century was the introduction of plastics. Plastics fundamentally changed the paradigm. It actually totally moved our society to where it is today – without them, we would not be here! Imagine life without milk containers, shoes, everything – everything has plastics.
However, what was a boon for the 20th century is a bane for the 21st century. They’ve served an incredible purpose, but the truth is, these plastics are accumulating in our environment at an incredible pace.
Growing up, my mom was always concerned about plastics entering our food chain through contact with food, and she preferred to use reusable containers made from materials such as steel, glass, and ceramic. It turns out her hunch was spot-on. Recent studies suggest that an average person is ingesting up to a credit card worth of microplastics every week! The full extent of how these micro- and nano-plastics affect our health and environment is still not completely understood, posing a concerning and largely unexplored risk.
What we do at ChakraTech is emulate ancient microbial processes to create biodegradable plastics. Over billions of years, certain microbes have figured out a way to make a degradable plastic, or polyester. It’s actually a fat reserve for them! Similar to how we get fat and have love handles, for bacteria, they’ll end up making their own version of fat reserves – bioplastics. These bioplastics degrade completely in a short time, typically a year or less, and have the power to totally change the 21st century.
Wow, that’s incredible. Is this a new discovery?
No, this polymer is not a new discovery. The earliest reported sighting of this bioplastic polymer was actually from 1890 in a German textbook! Efforts to commercialize it since 1980s have faltered, struggling to compete with the economics of petrochemical plastics. Yet, the potential for scientific and technological advancement is vast — a direction I planned to explore in academica as a tenure-track faculty member. When faculty search committees didn’t embrace this vision, I remained steadfast and decided to pursue this opportunity through my own startup venture.
Anyway, at ChakraTech, we are taking an innovative approach to make this bioplastic. To understand how, you need to understand what plastic is – a polymer is a chain of monomers, basic repeating units. How does a microbe or bacteria turn monomers into the polymers we want? They transform carbon from food source into “fat stores”. Historically, expensive carbon source such as vegetable oils have been used as carbon source, not only elevating expenses but also threatening food security in low-income countries. This approach renders the technology unaffordable and inaccessible to much of the world.
Well, what else could serve as a great source of carbon? Greenhouse gases. That’s where we come in – we’re going to take these microbes in giant vats, feed them greenhouse gases and get them to create bioplastics. What’s interesting about this is that it solves two problems at once. First, we can repurpose the carbon emissions, namely the excess carbon dioxide or methane that is emitted into the atmosphere, for manufacturing various types of materials and chemicals. Second, the bioplastics degrade naturally! This positions us to bridge two historically very different industry segments – biotech and cleantech/climatetech.
The reality is that plastics aren’t going anywhere. Neither are the carbon emissions for the foreseeable future. But perhaps our technology can help to solve two huge environmental challenges at once!
Marrying science and engineering, Ravi hopes to scale bioplastics in a cost-effective way.
And no one else is working on this?
Various companies, some for over a decade, have concentrated on solving different aspects of the technology and challenges. While they have achieved some progress, most of them are yet to realize their full potential. This, I believe, is largely due to an insufficient integration of science and engineering.
In my experience, the distinct training backgrounds of engineers and scientists often lead to communication barriers, which translates into insufficient technological advancement. Bridging this gap between basis sciences and engineering is therefore vital for effective collaboration on complex projects. Particularly in the case of bioplastics, biological systems don’t necessarily conform to engineering constraints in terms of scalability. This underscores the fundamental need for an integrated approach, combining process engineering with biology and chemistry, to develop bioplastics in a cost-effective manner.
Fascinating. I don’t know too much about microbes, but I’ve seen a few companies lately using microbes in incredible ways. One such company is up in Escondido, Aquacycl, and they use microbial fuel cells to treat wastewater. The microbes generate electricity and clean water as part of that process.
Is microbial engineering an emerging field? Or has the science simply progressed enough that companies can begin reaping the rewards from microbes in a cost-effective way at scale?
Microbial engineering and biomanufacturing have been around for some time, but they are far from a mature industry, and have a unique set of challenges – including a capital-intensive research and development budget. While still in its infancy compared to the petrochemical sector, it is the future of next generation of sustainable manufacturing!
If you really want to put a start date on it, things started when Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. And if you want to be even looser with it, people have been fermenting things pretty much forever! The biotech industry, however, really took off in its current form in the late 1970s with the advent of molecular biology tools, notably when Genentech produced insulin using recombinant DNA technology.
There are different kinds of microbes. There are fungi, bacteria, archaea…and companies have been using them at scale for a while now. One of the well-established companies in this field, Genomatica, based in San Diego, utilizes E. coli to manufacture the precursors for nylon and various other products. The tools and the technology to scale them have actually been available for a while now!
So the tools exist, and companies are using them.
Yes, but there are still significant challenges.
Microbes are natural – they exist in nature. But how do you engineer them to perform their best? How do we get it to do what we want it to do, not what they want to do? We want them to produce the maximum amounts of our product, whatever that might be, not what the microbes wants to produce. Microbes have billions of years in their favor. It simply boils down to finding a way to get your microbes to do what you want them to do.
Yet another challenge has been to build a robust scale-up framework, so that the microbes behave in the same way at an industrial scale as they do in the lab.
Ravi works to scale the microbes from the lab to an industrial setting.
You mentioned the environmental pushback with plastics, and how a biodegradable plastic can help solve that problem. But there’s another issue with plastics, which is that they’re endocrine disruptors. Does bioplastic solve this problem?
Great question!
Honestly, I think that bioplastic is our best shot at solving this problem. Based on the 2018 EPA statistics, less than 8% of things get recycled. The plastic itself isn’t getting recycled like we think it is! Moreover, recycling itself generates microplastics, which end up in the soil or in the ocean. If you eat a fish that’s has consumed microplastics in the ocean, these microplastics will enter into your body. Same thing when you drink soda out of a plastic bottle. Plastics used in food packaging are a source of microplastic contamination, gradually leaching tiny particles into our food.
Our truly degradable bioplastics breaks down into its simplest, harmless form (technical term is monomers) in a relatively short time span and our bodies are able to tolerate this! It’s not like the plastic in a soda bottle which our bodies don’t make. Our bioplastics are biocompatible, since our bodies already make the base unit that make the bioplastic. Interestingly, there are already implants and sutures made out of this bioplastic since it’s not foreign to our body!
As an extremely early stage startup, you are prone to lots of risk. What are some obstacles you are currently navigating, and what are you doing to create resilience in this fledgling company?
That’s a good question! Transformative endeavors inherently carry risks, yet it is these very ventures that redefine our world.
In the realm of hardtech start-ups, we typically encounter three broad risk categories: scientific/technical, team/execution, and market dynamics.
Firstly, the bioplastics technology we’re focusing on, initially commercialized in the 1980s, has evolved significantly. Earlier, its adoption was limited due to high production costs. Our current objective is to refine this technology scientifically and technically to make it more cost-effective, thereby unlocking new opportunities.
Next, regarding team and execution, we’re consciously assembling an interdisciplinary team with deep expertise in science, engineering, material science, and business development. It’s essential to achieve a harmony between scientific rigor and robust business strategy.
Lastly, market risks can’t be overlooked. Past instances in this industry reveal that premature scaling in absence of market demand or acceptance can lead to failure. Over 40% of start-ups fail due to inadequate product-market fit, a trend even more frequent in our particular field. Hence, we’re prioritizing product development and forging key partnerships to ensure our product meets market needs.
What is next for you, personally, workwise, and otherwise?
I’m looking into transitioning into doing this full time – if you work on ideas part-time, the company will stay part-time.
There is burgeoning start-up scene in India, and I have considered moving back to India to pursue a startup related to bioplastics or other independent ideas. But there are currently other bottlenecks in India which would take longer to resolve. Certain tasks might take five years to accomplish there, tasks that would only require a year or two in the US, especially the research and development (R&D) part. Consequently, I’ve learned to exercise patience in these situations. US has an excellent ecosystem for supporting tech start-ups, so it is a great place to pursue innovation and works out favorably for us.
At this early ideation stage, our focus is on establishing a strong foundation that encompasses both technical and business aspects, as well as assembling an interdisciplinary team. We have an impressive global team of scientists and engineers working on this idea already. Friends and former colleagues in the US, Europe and India who have decades of professional science and engineering experience are helping us too. We are actively working to get advisors on-board with a diverse range of experience, spanning science and technology, government and international policy, business, and finance.
You mentioned deciding on the United States vs India for some of this, and have people all around the globe who want to help. Can you talk about why you’re in San Diego, and any pros or cons that you see in this community?
I think there’s a very big spirit of kindness and generosity in the greater San Diego area, which resonates deeply with me. Furthermore, people are really environment conscious and there is a great ecosystem to support the startups.
San Diego is one of the top three cities in the US to pursue startups, especially in technology and biotech sectors. However, it appears to me that compared to other major hubs such as the Bay Area, NYC, or Boston, we are still lagging in terms of the overall support and funding opportunities for hardtech startups. In addition, there are not many startups in the field of industrial biotech, but I am hoping the success of companies like Genomatica will pave the path for others to follow.
Well Ravi, I hope that you do succeed. What is the best way for someone to contact you if they’d like to learn more?
Thank you. You can find me on LinkedIn! I check it pretty often, so I will be responsive.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Dr. Yi Chao, Founder and CEO of Seatrec, a startup that designs and manufactures products that generate electricity from the temperature fluctuations in the ocean.
When I first heard about this technology, it almost sounded like magic! A way to generate energy just from the naturally occurring ocean changing temperature? Wow!
It turns out that it’s actually not that new of an idea – the research has been around since the 1970s, but generating enough energy from these fluctuations to, say, power the energy grid, is remarkably expensive.
This is where Seatrec is different. They’ve scaled this technology down to essentially provide infinite, sustainable energy to power research instruments, like undersea robots. Currently, these robots have to completely rely on the dwindling charges of battery packs, brought to them by researchers on ships – making research costly, difficult, and primarily close to shore. Thanks to Seatrec’s technology, researchers are no longer beholden to voyaging out on ships, and can gather more data from autonomous robots that can endure missions for much longer in harsher conditions – sparking the next generation of ocean data insights.
You’ll learn about how Seatrec uses this technology to power ocean research all around the globe, how Yi’s science background made him more resilient for the business world, and some of the major research successes that this technology has enabled.
It was a great interview with a company on the cutting edge of energy and ocean research. If you’d like to learn more, you can explore Seatrec’s website!
The Founder and CEO of Seatrec, Dr. Yi Chao (right)
I’m chiefly interested in the concept of resilience – personal, communal, and societal. What does the concept of resilience mean to you and Seatrec?
For us at Seatrec, we’re primarily concerned with societal resilience, since we deal with the planet’s resources. We’re totally ocean focused. There’s only so much land on earth, but over 70% of the planet is covered by the ocean. So it makes sense to turn to the ocean to find solutions to problems that we can’t solve by land!
Everyone knows about traditional ocean industries like shipping, but there are a lot of interesting things being done with resource exploration in the ocean – whether it’s oil and gas, offshore energy, offshore wind farming, or even growing our own protein instead of fishing. The ocean is becoming more and more important – and as it becomes more important, it’s also in more danger.
Seatrec was formed so we can understand the ocean in a deeper way, manage our resources, and protect our ocean. We’re bringing new and innovative technology to study the ocean and collect data.
Really, when it comes down to it, our mission is to digitize the ocean and capture the ocean’s data, so we can better understand and predict the ocean – all so we can better protect this vital resource.
I feel when people think about the ocean and generating energy, most people think about waves. However, you generate energy from the ocean’s temperature fluctuations. Can you talk about how you’re solving that problem, and the approach you’re taking?
Sure! So the concept of OTEC (or, ocean thermal energy conversion) is actually not that new.
The first wave of dealing with renewable ocean energy, including OTEC, was back in the 1970s. A lot of research was done back then that pioneered the whole field – studies were done with ocean thermal energy, ocean waves, ocean wind, everything. A number of different governments spent a lot of money on renewable energy to support the innovation, but when the oil crisis ended, everyone just went back to gasoline like nothing had happened. A lot of the research only started to come back in the recent decades.
The technology for ocean thermal energy conversion is relatively mature, but it’s very costly. You have limited geographic distribution since you have to work in the tropics where the water is warm. You then have to pump cold water up from the deep ocean. Converting that small difference into energy is rather costly, and is just unrealistic to use that energy to supply the power grid.
This is actually why you’ll hear a lot more about offshore wind when it comes to the ocean. Ocean waves are still in the early stages of commercialization as well.
Where we come in is, we decided to utilize ocean thermal energy to power sensors and underwater robotics, not the power grid. We want to focus on ocean sensing, to provide ocean intelligence, and this can support other forms of energy – like providing data for the offshore wind energy market, and to help those companies optimize the planning, the sights, quantify impact, monitor their operations. And that’s a unique angle.
So, would it be fair to say that your technology is like a recharging battery pack that could go on measurement instruments, allowing those instruments to stay out longer and be more self-contained?
Yes, that’s correct!
Essentially, we deliver the first self-charging underwater subsea robot. There are a lot of robots on the surface. They can be powered by solar, wind, and waves. But ours is the first that can power itself underneath the water. We can go as deep as 1000 meters today, and, if we want to, even as deep as 2000 meters in the near future! Today’s subsea robots are powered by batteries with limited lifetime and capabilities. When the battery runs out, we need to send ships to replace those dead batteries or the robots fall to the bottom of the ocean. If you want to collect data far offshore, you need to use a bigger ship. This causes a huge carbon footprint, there need to be lots of people onboard, and it’s just extremely costly. Ship time starts to cost tens of thousands of dollars a day!
Our robot can recharge its batteries without the need of ships, and therefore be scaled up. Today, there are thousands of subsea robots in the ocean. In the next decade, this number will go up tenfold or even hundredfold.
When I was researching this company, I see that you’re the rare oceanographer who stays far away from the ocean due to seasickness! I’m glad to see that didn’t stop you.
I was trained as an ocean scientist, and I have a Ph.D. in oceanography from Princeton University. I then worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena for many years. And even though my work was related to the ocean, I tried to stay away from the ocean as long as I could! For example, I developed a satellite to measure salinity on the surface of the ocean, from hundreds of miles away, using remote sensing technology – so I studied the ocean from space!
Through my work, I continued developing computer models of the ocean and studying it that way. And eventually I thought, if I can develop robots that go to sea, I don’t have to physically go on ships! As long as I can measure the water, I think I’ll be happy.
Seatrec’s technology generates power through the ocean’s temperature differences.
Startups are notoriously prone to risk. What are some ways you’ve worked to build resilience within your company?
The biggest risk for any startup is cash flow. How do you stay alive? How do you find just enough capital to help you grow? You don’t want to grow too fast, because you may not have the right product that fits the market. And then, of course, you always have to make payroll at the end of every pay period. Cash flow is the challenge we are constantly struggling with.
The ocean market is very fragmented. It’s not as well-defined as other areas like consumer products, or startup categories like fintech or agtech. The market is emerging. It’s still new. My goal, the biggest challenge, is finding the product that fits the market, so we can raise the capital and grow. How do you get your product to take off?
That’s my job, mainly. Opening up new markets, coordinating different sectors of the market, defining the market, and product market fit. Then, finding the right time to scale. Raising money from investors and then growing and scaling our technology in the marketplace!
You have a significant background in engineering and oceanography. Has there been any surprising crossover from the science world to the business world? Anything that’s been a particularly good fit?
I think as a scientist, you automatically build resilience. I do experiments, and they often fail. But then, eventually, you pick a new way, and make it right the next time! And you keep trying and trying to get it right. That’s my mentality, and I think that will carry through my entrepreneurial career.
Being a first-time entrepreneur, I’ve read lots of books, talked to lots of mentors and different people who have experience to grow from 0 to 1 and implement deep tech successfully in the commercial market. That’s helped guide me day to day, and helped me keep looking forward and following my vision into the future, but at the same time staying focused on the present enough to continue making payroll and scaling the company.
San Diego’s biotech scene is well-regarded. And Seatrec seems to be especially relevant to the San Diego area, poised to take advantage of engineering and oceanography pipelines from universities like UCSD and Scripps. How would you describe the San Diego business scene? Are there any pros and cons that you see about being in San Diego?
We actually moved to San Diego for precisely that reason! Los Angeles is great for certain areas of tech, like consumer tech and aerospace. But I think that San Diego is one of the few ideal locations in the country to grow a blue tech company!
As you mentioned, we have the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, all the engineering out of UCSD, a big naval presence, and access to supply chains. You have the port, coast guards. Even the border. I see all of these not just as adding to our intellectual capacity, but as an opportunity with many stakeholders and potential customers – not just from the research side, but from the defense and military side.
We also have a great investor ecosystem – there are lots of investors in San Diego that support our industry. Really, San Diego is the perfect place to grow into our next chapter.
Seatrec’s latest product, the InfiniTE float.
Have there been any major successes that Seatrec has celebrated?
Yes! Recently, one of the biggest successes we’ve seen is opening up a new market and making the customer very happy. We were able to enable the customer to do something that they were not able to do in the past.
For the first time, we were able to add an acoustic hydrophone, an underwater listening device, to our robots. This was impossible before due to power limitations. We deployed our robots in the ocean out in Monterey and we heard whales singing! It’s tough to see what’s happening under the water, but sound provides a way to discover what’s going on. In fact, when it comes to the ocean, it’s all about sound.
This hydrophone was really cool. It provides almost like a natural fingerprint of all the activity of the ocean, from the natural sounds of the wind and waves, to the manmade sound of the ships and other vessels, then the marine mammals and the rest of the ecosystem. We can learn how all of these groups interact together.
It was very interesting – traditionally, those hydrophones have to be powered by ships, and the surface is extremely noisy, so you couldn’t hear very well. Our robot, on the other hand, can dive much deeper where it’s much quieter. You can hear for miles and miles. It’s a lot like how if you were building a telescope, you’d want to build it on the top of a mountain. That’s the same principle with this ocean robot!
So that’s really our major milestone – our customers can now do something that’s never been done before. We get to enable other technologies too. We can build our business model around these early customers and early technology adopters. And this makes us very excited to grow and make our investors happy about the total available market.
Looking ahead, what do you see as the future for Seatrec? Are there any opportunities or risks you are working to navigate?
In the near term, well, we launched our product early this year. We’ve been going to a few trade shows, getting customer feedback. We’ve been very encouraged about the traction so far, and there is product market fit. Ocean tech is hard – it’s taken years of engineering and commercialization efforts, but we have a strong differentiator to sell! We have some significant sales so far, and we interest for increased sales targets for next year.
We hope to break even on our current operation next year, that’s our main milestone. And then, further out, we want to take the opportunity to scale. We’re planning to fundraise our Series A next year to put some more fuel in the fire. We want to take Seatrec to the next level.
Then, in addition, we also have a really interesting project called Project FIND. This project is really about providing this cutting edge technology, and our robots, to researchers and customers who traditionally can’t afford them or don’t have the opportunity.
We launched this project two years ago, hoping to provide cutting edge technology, like the same type of technology a researcher at Scripps would have, to countries and researchers who normally can’t access it. The ocean is global, it affects everybody. So everybody should be able to study and protect it. And we hope that, if people are interested, they can reach out to us, be a part of it, and can help out.
So through Project FIND, you provide your technology to different countries to help foster more scientific exploration?
Yes!
Our end-to-end product with the platform and sensors sells for between $50,000 -$75,000. That’s what we sell to universities, researchers, nonprofits, and the government. But we’ve been able to provide one to Mexico already, as well as Brazil and South Africa. We’re working on two more for Sri Lanka and Ghana. They’re very interested in the hydrophone I mentioned earlier. A lot of researchers in Sri Lanka, for example, monitor whales. They have conservation programs, they understand the ocean. But they have to use binoculars to identify whales! If we can provide a hydrophone robot to them that lets them hear for miles, they can expand their search area and better understand whale behavior protect their part of the ocean.
What are the best ways for people to learn about, or get involved with, Seatrec?
Mick Hammock 