The Fundamental Molecule

You may know by now that I get pretty excited when people walk through the figurative BIV door with an understanding of reality that is virtually impossible to diagnose from the outside. From the moment I met Dylan Wolff and he explained what he was up to, I couldn't believe what he was solving. We will go into some depth as to what he's building at CNSRV, but it's the vehicle for the deletion of a stunning quantity of waterway as well as the provision of a multi layered, deeply practical and financial set of value propositions, all of which drop straight to their customers’ bottom line. Once you see it, you really can't unsee it. Dylan also happens to be, as we say back home, a really lovely bloke to spend time with. Please enjoy my conversation with Dylan Wolff.Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-moleculeFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205-----------Dylan Wolff is the Founder & CEO of CNSRV, a startup transforming commercial kitchen sustainability. A product developer driven by California’s water crisis, Wolff identified a hidden source of waste: running faucets to defrost food. He built the CNSRV DC-O2, a device that saves 98% of water and halves prep time. Resilience has defined his journey; weathering the COVID-19 industry shutdown, he bootstrapped development and secured groundbreaking rebates from water districts. Today, his tech is used by industry leaders, proving environmental impact drives financial ROI.00:00 - Introducing CNSRV and the Future of Water Tech00:49 - Exposing Hidden Water Waste in Commercial Kitchens02:36 - How Dylan Discovered the Defrosting Problem04:02 - Validating a Silent Industry Pain Point06:17 - Turning Curiosity Into a Scalable Startup Opportunity09:01 - How CNSRV Saves Water, Time, and Labor12:10 - Matching Value Propositions to Kitchen Stakeholders15:12 - Navigating COVID and Early Product Development Hurdles19:42 - Building a Lean Team and High-Performance Product Design23:52 - Lessons From Founder-Led Sales and Market Education27:22 - Early Distribution Wins and Scaling Through Rep Groups30:18 - Product Evolution: Smarter Interfaces and New Models34:27 - Enterprise Logos vs. Regional Rollouts36:05 - Quantifying the Massive Market and Water Savings Impact37:05 - How Utility Rebates Accelerate Customer Adoption39:14 - The Emotional Reality of Entrepreneurship41:45 - Essential Advice for Water Innovators: PerseveranceLinks:Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/Dylan Wolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-wolff-032b1439/CNSRV: https://cnsrv.com/SM MaterialKey Takeaways:"Solve a problem you're passionate about. Translate curiosity into action.""Perseverance is everything. If you believe in it enough, don't take ‘no’ for an answer.""The kitchen is full of hidden inefficiencies. Expose reality to solve them.""Running lean is crucial. You can provide value without massive overheads.""Every day looks different. It's both the best and worst part of being an entrepreneur.""The market is massive. 15,000 units can save billions of gallons of water annually.""Entrepreneurship is a test of will, not intellect. Embrace uncertainty and keep pushing."

In 2015, all of the startup founders who were part of Imagine H2O's Accelerator had to bear with me as I had no idea what I was doing. One of those founders was Sivan Zamir. Four years later she was and remains the only person to go through the program twice, and mercifully, her feedback then was rather better. Now she's VP of Enterprise, Innovation and Venture at Xylem, Burnt Island Ventures’ anchor investor and a true partner. And Sivan has become a serious force in early stage water, taking on the enormous challenge of making a very large company very good at working with very small ones. She and her team not only set a new standard for corporate engagement with the startup community, we think they reinvented it. It has been fascinating to see how the ideas and principles of entrepreneurship are flowing into the wider Xylem organization as a result. She is a force of nature, an unyielding advocate for water and an astonishingly generous friend. Please enjoy my conversation with Sivan Zamir. Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-moleculeFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205-----------Sivan Zamir, VP of Enterprise Innovation and Venture at Xylem, shares her journey from two-time founder to corporate innovator. She discusses the systemic challenges large companies face when working with startups and her strategy to overcome them. Key topics include the criticality of team culture and "voice of customer," using agile sprints to drive change, and a unique "partnerships-first" corporate venture capital model. She also advocates for bringing enabling technologies from other industries into the water sector and advises all entrepreneurs to "be kind."00:00 - Introduction02:24 - Why Big Companies Struggle to Work With Startups05:53 - Breaking the Certification Roadblock for Pilots08:06 - Startup Lessons: Team Culture and Customer Feedback16:40 - First 90 Days: Research, Business Plan, and Execution20:32 - Running Sprints and Scaling Innovation Culture25:18 - Building Partnerships Before Launching Venture Capital29:49 - How the Accelerator Program Drives Go-To-Market35:25 - The State of Water Tech: Adjacent Innovation and Low Funding40:53 - Final Advice: Always Lead With KindnessLinks:Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/Sivan Zamir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivan-sidney-zamir/Xylem: https://www.xylem.com/en-us/SM MaterialKey Takeaways:"Team culture is everything. You can teach skills, but you can't teach culture. It's the backbone of resilience and innovation.""Voice of the customer is critical. Without it, you're building on a hypothesis without market validation.""In large companies, innovation must be baked into governance, metrics, and incentives.""The water sector needs to look beyond itself. Adopt existing tech from other industries.""Accelerators simplify complex processes. They coordinate efforts and focus on clear outcomes.""The water tech sector has grown, but we have a long way to go. Only 3% of climate tech investment is in water.""Kindness is essential in entrepreneurship. It's a small world, and relationships matter."

Out of 910 graduating students in the Class of 2014 from HBS, three went into water. Of those three, only Peter Brooks and I remain. And, meaning no offense to all our wonderful classmates, I'm glad it's him. Peter is just a really great guy. A former Marine, he worked across a variety of fascinating opportunities before setting up Sylmar Group. He and his partner Michael have been hard at work creating a compounding machine in water, building with an infinite holding period. And, as you will hear, it has developed exceptionally in the six years since it was founded. I have been looking forward to this for a long time because there are few people as thoughtful, practical, wise, self-effacing and talented as Peter. I was also amazed to find out that this is the first time he has talked about the Sylmar story on a podcast. So you're literally hearing it here first. Please enjoy my conversation with Peter Brooks.Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-moleculeFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205-----------Peter Brooks details Sylmar's "compounding machine" strategy, advocating for patient, long-term investment, cultural integration, and network effects to create value. He explains their entrepreneurship-through-acquisition model, targeting small, high-quality water businesses, and emphasizes operational enhancements while preserving an entrepreneurial spirit. Peter shares insights on managing growth, recruiting talent, and his military-informed leadership. He also addresses the future water market, noting AI's increasing demand and the critical role of infrastructure, and urges entrepreneurs to pursue their "true north" for societal benefit.00:00 - Peter Brooks & the “Compounding Machine”02:30 - Equity, Culture & Network Effects06:03 - Partnering with Mission-Critical Small Operators11:27 - Listen, Prioritize, Fix Systems17:02 - Operating System That Scales21:24 - Disciplined Growth & Smart Capital Allocation26:35 - Make Water a Talent Magnet34:46 - Sales as Market Discovery43:21 - AI Data Centers & Water50:49 - Tech That Matters Now1:01:27 - True North LeadershipLinks:Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/Peter Brooks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterharringtonbrooks/Sylmar: https://sylmargrp.com/SM MaterialKey Takeaways:"Compounding is the consistent accumulation of small advantages that allow us to win.""In water, patience is rewarded. Quick-turn investors often misunderstand this.""We're building a compounding machine with long-term patient capital.""Plans are nothing, but planning is everything. No plan survives first contact with reality.""Water is the third pillar of public safety, critical behind fire and police.""Embrace uncertainty. Entrepreneurship isn't for the faint of heart."“Roughly every 5 million of EBITDA, you're going to have a different job description if you continue to scale.”“So much of the M & A world, people just paste over underperforming bad business decisions with new acquisitions.”“When you have a long time horizon, you can literally say, ‘We'll talk down the road. Let us know when you're ready because we think you'd be a great partner for us.’”“I rue the day when…we're not actually thinking about customers.”

It's always worth listening to someone's ‘why’ for doing something. What is their core motivation? Are they a tourist, or are they here for the long haul? When you combine a compelling ‘why’ with the right mix of technical brilliance, charisma, kindness, and energy, you get someone who looks and sounds a lot like Allan Adams. He is the founder and CEO of Aquatic Labs, who have made amazing strides in bringing lab chemistry into real time, eradicating one of the core monitoring problems that is profoundly bad in both water operations and ocean science. This is also the only conversation where the guest's idea of a misspent youth is teaching particle physics at MIT. He is genuinely amazing. Please enjoy my conversation with Allan Adams.Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-moleculeFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205-----------Allan Adams joins Tom today to discuss how witnessing dying coral reefs after the birth of his son inspired him to leave physics and found Aquatic Labs. He critiques the inefficiency of slow, lab-based water analysis and details his mission to create real-time, scalable sensors. By first optimizing industrial processes, Aquatic Labs aims to commoditize its technology, making it affordable for vital future applications like verifying ocean carbon sequestration and tracking the true impact of climate change on our most fundamental resource.00:00 - Introduction to Water Innovation and Entrepreneurship00:49 - Allan Adams’ Journey from Physics to Ocean Science02:29 - Fiji Expedition and Life-Changing Career Shift05:25 - Passing Ocean Stewardship to the Next Generation07:29 - Global Climate and Human Impacts on Oceans11:12 - Founding Aquatic Labs to Scale Real-Time Ocean Sensors15:43 - Industrial Use Cases and Aligning Profit with Conservation19:42 - Lessons from Academia and Startup Realities22:50 - Breaking Lab Bottlenecks with Real-Time Water Sensing26:43 - Commercialization Journey and Market Pivot Post-Election32:05 - Hard Lessons in Sales and Building a Mission-Driven Team37:41 - The Big Vision: Aquatic Labs’ Role in Water and Carbon Markets43:29 - Allan’s Advice for Water EntrepreneursLinks:Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/Allan Adams: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allan-adams/

The saying, "Those who tell the stories rule the world," is such a core truth that it is both a quote from Plato and a Native American proverb - two entirely distinct societies coming to the same conclusion. We in water know that our inability to tell our story is one of the most frustrating aspects of the sector and one of, if not the most, negatively impactful. So what happens when you put water's story in the hands of two of the best storytellers and creators on the planet? Matt Fitzgerald is the campaign architect of #TEAMWATER, which, after #TEAMTREES and #TEAMSEAS, is the third major campaign from MrBeast, the world's largest YouTuber, and Mark Rober, the world's most prominent science YouTuber. #TEAMWATER's aim is to mobilize $40 million in one month in order to provide two million people with clean, safe, reliable drinking water for decades. It is one seriously entrepreneurial undertaking, and Matt is a remarkable guy. We thought it would be fascinating to sit down with him and find out how he thinks about pulling off something this audacious, and we were right - it was. Please enjoy my conversation with Matt Fitzgerald.Subscribe to The Fundamental Molecule here: https://www.burntislandventures.com/the-fundamental-moleculeFor the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205-----------Campaign architect Matt Fitzgerald discusses the strategy behind #TEAMWATER, the $40M clean water initiative with creators MrBeast and Mark Rober. He shares his philosophy on building successful movements like #TEAMTREES and #TEAMSEAS, focusing on harnessing the "attention economy." Fitzgerald explains the importance of simple, emotionally resonant narratives that make complex issues universal and inspire mass participation, turning viewers into heroes and creating tangible change.00:00 - Power of Storytelling in the Water Sector02:28 - What Makes an Effective Campaign05:39 - Building Narratives That Inspire Participation08:12 - Inside the #TEAMWATER Mission and Impact11:05 - Leveraging Massive Creator Reach for Change13:29 - Lessons from #TEAMTREES and #TEAMSEAS20:44 - Competing in the Attention Economy25:25 - Messaging Strategies That Resonate28:57 - Balancing Grassroots and Grasstops Influence36:17 - Matt Fitzgerald’s Career and Campaign Insights42:12 - Using Emotion to Drive Action43:20 - Shaping Philanthropy for Water’s Future47:20 - Call to Action for #TEAMWATER Support at https://teamwater.org/49:18 - Matt’s advice for water entrepreneursLinks:Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/Matt Fitzgerald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattfitzgerald/Contribute to #TEAMWATER: https://teamwater.org/SM MaterialKey Takeaways:"Water is where climate and people meet. You either have too much of it or too little.""The best campaigns build relationships, activate them, and provide a next step… a cycle of engagement.""#TEAMWATER is a $40 million crowdfunding campaign to bring clean water to 2 million people.""Water is like the sun; everyone has a relationship to it. Yet it's stuck in conference rooms and reports.""The greatest change you can make is the change that happens after you're gone.""If you know your North Star, you can navigate the squiggly line of your journey."“If you do one thing, go to teamwater.org and donate.”