TTT031 Cultivating billion-dollar narwhals - Adam de Sola Pool

3:32PM May 6, 2024

Speakers:

jmill

Announcer

Adam de Sola Pool

Keywords:

ocean

technologies

companies

maritime

tech

terrestrial

areas

narwhals

land

hui

sounds

adam

coral

ecosystem

build

woods hole oceanographic

sensors

deep sea

barriers

commercial

There will be unicorns of the ocean, very successful companies, which we call narwhals. This is not for the faint of heart. But it will eventually be as successful as clean tech has been. It does cover 70% of the planet, and you will be able to do everything you do on land in the ocean.

Welcome to Tough Tech Today with Meyen and Miller. This is the premiere show featuring trailblazers who are building technologies today to solve tomorrow's toughest challenges.

Welcome to Tough Tech Today. This is the third episode in our series on maritime or blue technologies. Like my colleague, co host and Forrest could not join us today. But I am joined by Adam de Sola Pool. Welcome, Adam. Adam is is a special advisor for WHOI, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, one of the top institutes globally for these kind of maritime technologies and exploration and research. So Adam specifically is who is Special Advisor for innovation and entrepreneurship. And this is just one part of a broad career that he's had as an angel investor, as a mentor, and former entrepreneur. Welcome, Adam, to tell us, he's all ocean tech, Tough Tech.

Today. Thank you, Jonathan, it's a pleasure to be on the podcast. Most of ocean tech is tough tech, it's really hard to build hardware that survives in the ocean environment. It's salty, it's got extreme pressure, it's got a lot of energy, if you can imagine the energy in the ocean of one cubic meter moving through the ocean, that's a ton of water. That's all a lot of energy that beats up on whatever you've got out there. And as the Triton submarine that exploded over the Titanic proves if unless you build it really exactly, the ocean pressures will crush whatever you have. So yes, most of ocean tech is tough tech, there are a few examples. For example, if you're taking tested ocean technology, and expanding it to a terrestrial use, where then you often find that the terrestrial uses are less tough than the ocean. Or, for example, if you have a pure software play, but if you don't mind, I'll give an example of how even pure software plays are tough tech in the ocean. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where as you kindly mentioned, I am a Special Advisor for innovation and entrepreneurship has purchases 19 Different manufacturers sensors for ocean pH, ocean salinity, ocean temperature, and even among those 19 Different manufacturers, they have different issue dates, and therefore different standards. Every single one of those different manufacturers uses different methodologies for recording data, for transmitting data, because there are no global standards for information technology, like there are on the terrestrial world. So gooey has a team that humble gates, that's an old 19th century word for making standardized all the different outputs from these 19 manufacturers. That is a full time job for a big team of people, just so that they can get data comparability, for pH, temperature and salinity all across the Atlantic and the Pacific. And interestingly enough, that's one of the companies we're working very hard to spin out. Because this is a common problem that all companies go into the ocean have, you buy a temperature sensor, you buy a pH sensor, they speak different languages and who is got a team that actually knows how to make that all speak the same language?

I think that's that's incredible. That that it's it's still a tower of Babel issue with with this. Is it something we we've heard I know, over the years that that we as a society, know more about space and call it the final frontier. And we know more about that than the seas around us is, do you feel that that's, that's true? And is that measured based on like, square footage or, or in terms of overall kind of human potential, like, sort of species and life and materials and all that, like, what is it that makes it so that the seas are less known than space?

Well, it's always been much harder to go into the ocean, because of the factors I mentioned, the pressure, the salinity, the amount of energy that's in the ocean, than it is to go into space. Once you are in outer space, as forests, your colleague will know, well, it's relatively common environment. Whereas once you're diving deeper into the ocean, the pressures getting stronger and stronger, for every meter, you're going down. And humans have the tendency of if they can't see something, they don't really give it, its fair do or it's fair regard. The ocean is mapped roughly, at the 100 meter per pixel scale. Mars is at the 10 meter pixel scale, the moon, one meter pixel scale. So the bottom of the ocean is massively less well known. In addition, we are sending new and this is one of the cool areas, remotely operated vehicles or autonomous vehicles down deep. And they are finding basically a new species every time they go down. And so we really don't know the biology of the ocean. And this is one of the big risks, of course, because we have many people have dreams of ocean CDR, remember, the ocean produces 50% of the oxygen that we breathe, and it is a much bigger carbon sink than the atmosphere is. So they have all sorts of dreams about co2 capture of the ocean, but we really don't know the biology. So if you're going to package up land based biomass, whether it be seaweed, or palm fronds, and dump it into the ocean, hoping that the ocean will capture it for centuries, you really don't know what it's going to encounter out there. Because there just as been so little science done. And the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and myself, are urging that we do a lot of science experiments, before we start taking our land based stuff and dumping it in the ocean, just like we've taken land base stop dumping it in the air for so many years.

Wow. So it's something that we they that there's an advocate for, try to slow or be more thoughtful about some of those, those commercial and some governmental work to for like carbon sink or work for climate mitigation to try to to slow those developments with the condition that we need to we need to really understand what's going on down there. Before we can know that we're actually going to be solving a problem if we start to build in to view the ocean as an appropriate like big carbon sink or something to get us. We may just be planting a problem or amplifying it in years time. That

is spot on Jonathan. Yes. Ocean has the potential. But if we let the business run ahead, before the science, and before the governmental regulations, we risk creating a garbage dump in the ocean that poses a more difficult problem in the future. And the one we have today.

Well, so then, um, we so we need to explore the sea, particularly the deep sea. Right? And that's, that's got technological barriers, barriers, their decision, the incredible pressures, disorienting command and control I imagine it's very challenging. And there may also be scientific barriers. All right to being able to do that, that exploration? Could you touch on some earlier? Could you elaborate on some of those specific aspects of the science and tech barriers that are, are like, I mean, wouldn't it be cool if or like I, you know, hopefully in the next 10 years, we can, can do X or have a way to meaningfully engage in the deep sea?

Well, one of the very interesting areas, and the bearer interesting areas for investment and the barriers also, is that the basic infrastructure that we have and take for granted on land does not exist in the open ocean. So the electrical grid doesn't exist. And almost every sensor almost every way of collecting data requires energy. Secondly, we don't have the communication issues, our did the communication structures, we don't have the cell towers, we don't have the ability to link into the internet easily. So when you're in the ocean, you have both the air water barrier interface. So if you are sending a message underwater, the you can't get up into the air to be picked up by the satellites, unless you have a device that is sitting right there at the barrier, a buoy, let's say that is picking up the underwater signal and retransmitting it up to the satellite. So all the things we take for granted, in building our networks, our Internet of Things on terrestrial soil, don't exist in the ocean. And we have to build them and get that sort of connectivity before we can have ubiquitous sensors throughout the ocean that can tell us what's going on. So some of the very interesting areas to invest in, are taking this terrestrial network and rolling it out into the coastal areas. You know, we see that there will be Unicorns of the ocean, very successful companies, which we call Gnar walls in the near shore area. So for example, the Internet of Things, stops, basically when you get to ports and marinas. Marinas are, in essence, parking garages for boats, but they have less sensors involved in them than your typical parking garage does. A typical parking garage knows when the slip or when the spot is occupied or not. And a typical Marina, it's a guy out there with a clipboard, jotting down, there's an open spot. They don't measure at the moment, the amount of energy that's used, the amount of water that's used, all the utilities that go to your boats generally don't get measured. One of the companies I've invested in called Falco coming out of France is a complete Internet of Things. sensor package for marinas. And so they are taking off by taking the IoT from the land into the first watery realm. Another company I've invested in is in essence providing electric vehicle charging stations so that you don't have range anxiety for your electric boat. And they're floating them off shore 10 miles, 20 miles. And so you can actually go out in your electric boat, far into the ocean and not worry about running out of power. Just simple land based technologies moving into the near ocean are where I see there's going to be huge growth opportunities. But there are still huge obstacles. Then, let's say 100 miles from shore, or 1000 miles from shore. How do you get the electricity out there? How do you get the communications out there? Those basic fundamental issues are real barriers to science and commerce.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. Yes. So that one, I really like the terminology that can start in startup land, a unicorn being like, usually like a billion dollar company, and that the maritime equivalent of that kind of startup it'd be a narwhal. Good choice of words there, too. Yeah. So when I think about farther out to see where there are, the deeper the deeper depths, were on the at the surface level, like the sea surface, we could benefit from from things like Starlink, where a ship floating out there can can gain access to, to that celestial communications network as good as if we're, you know, in the mountains of Appalachia, for example. But then, it starts to that's one part, that's not going to help your electric boat get any get any juice, you know, 1000 miles to see. But then, as we start to go down on the z axis, that's where the complexities sounds like they really start to to like to proliferate. I'll, how did Can you describe that the the entrepreneurial ecosystem and how that may evolve? Probably globally, I think and you know, toward that deeper sea exploration, is there a maybe commercial benefit at all to going into the deep sea? Or should the entrepreneurs keep thinking on this like near coastal stuff, like you were describing earlier?

Before I answered that question, I will give you a very interesting little anecdote, at least interesting to me. The greatest migration on Earth is the daily migration of the photo plankton. Zuko plankton, all of the tiny animals that go from down deep up to the surface or close to the surface each day, and then come back down again, they are basically avoiding predators, they're going hundreds of meters, up and down every day. And they're such density, that the sound waves bounce off them rather than go through them. So if you are transmitting a sound wave, the US Navy in the 1950s, thought that the seabed was some miraculous way moving up and down, because at different times of day and night, when they bounced the sound signals, they would hit all of these plankton animals. And they would say how can the seabed be moving up and down. So it creates this interference. And so if you want to transmit from near the surface to 5000 10,000 meters deep, you will suddenly end up with a signal that it's blocked by the density of these single celled, double selves, small, tiny animals that are moving up and down. To answer your question, there is a really wonderful opportunity for the commercial world to get to know that deep sea, but it's going to be take a long time, and it's going to have you're going to have to be patient. On the biology side, for example, they're finding some very deep sea sponges have unique antibacterial properties. So there is a whole area of going down and sampling for medical and pharma opportunities. On the more physical side, there is the opportunity that one of the things that we're told Oceanographic Institution is discovered is a way of sending sound in a very narrow path over long distances. And this is something that you have to do when you're down deep. Otherwise, the sound goes in all directions, and propagates everywhere. And it would just be like being in a noisy bar with lots of background interference. So if you want to communicate, you want to send this line of sight, you might say, pinpoint sound way. And this may just may have a great impact on hearing aids. Because one of the problems with hearing aids is, is all the background chatter coming in. And so one of the interesting possible narwhals for the ocean is this Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, audio signal being applied to a land based technology and we wouldn't have discovered this. Had we not been doing this In the deep ocean,

that's, that's fascinating. It's something that I really enjoy hearing where we may be able to take inspiration or even sort of directly take, say technologies developed to solve a problem in one wide realm, and then apply it to another, our, our episode sponsor, this is The End Effector. And in that we wrote Space for Earthlings that looked at and say how NASA developed technologies for, for the for for space. And some of those can be really useful for terrestrial application. So being able to see where there's a, a, a team of individuals who are able to, to look across, you know, multiple domains and see potential applications for this, say what sound like so like a parametric or like directional audio capability. That's, that's really exciting. I'm gonna hop in here, on the topic of bringing together folks from different fields and domains to solve really important problems. I want to add in that our sponsor, The End Effector, is hosting Tough Tech On Tap, a social gathering for the community building hard things. Our first event will be in the Boston area, this May. So check out ToughTechOnTap.com for more details, it's all free. as we as we return to our conversation with Adam, just look forward. Remember this. No one builds alone. You know, there's there's like the blue technologies are in and the maritime work. Of course, it's a global, global thing. But the entrepreneurial ecosystem, do you see sort of hotspots or areas where there's sort of percolation among entrepreneurs that are maybe more exciting or that you're more likely to place a bet into?

Oh, absolutely. The marine world is filled with hot hot spots, who might say and New England is certainly one of them. You have the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole mass and also in Woods Hole mass. You have the Marine Biological laboratories for more biological research in the ocean. You have the wood Well, Climate Center, you have the NOAA Governor Maura Healy has really committed to making the New England or the Massachusetts area and a hub of climate tech investment, akin to the health care investment. You have seen ahead, which is a great organization in Boston that does incubation and angel investing. I'm a member of their Blue Angels group. You have Toby Stapleton, down in Rhode Island and you doing the blue venture forum. And you have the Naval War College there, which is a big promoter of really interesting technologies for naval uses. You've got the propellor venture capital fund, which was set up by Brian Halligan coming out of HubSpot. All this is in the Boston area. So Boston is really a focal point. But I would say that Europe is doing even better, you know, places like Portugal, they've got to venture capital funds focused on the ocean. Faber and Indico. You've got the blue invest in Brussels, you've got the blue bio Alliance in Lisbon as well. You've got a whole active ecosystem. The Sweyn VC fund is actually the biggest in the world. And close. Close second, I guess running back and forth is the Aqua spark based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. And so Europe is a number one. Boston is the leader for America. Halifax is the leader with the ocean supercluster up in Canada. Singapore is the leader on the Asian side.

Sounds like there's yeah, there's an incredible amount of activity that I think a lot of folks would would be almost blind to not thinking about it. It sounds like it's like true blue enthusiast, partly pun intended. I'm really, really are able to see where there's such an advantage to pursuing this unknown space of of this ease. Now, I you know, I in the past, I had the opportunity to To help found a company that was in the in the water space, broadly water speaking. And and these companies roughly as a demographic are generally atypical for like traditional venture capital investment or other forms of, say, risk capital, because people are just generally unfamiliar, unfortunately with with maritime space. So, how, how does, how do the local ecosystems need to come together? Like if there's maybe regulators listening to this episode and is looking at how can they better support their location on an on a coast? How, how do we help them help startups in securing funding for these these types of Tough Tech Today ventures and, and get better at sort of incubating these kinds of innovative projects?

I have two answers for you on that. First of all, if I'm a regulator, what the biggest challenge is, for many of the startups is proving the concept works in the ocean for at least 12 months, if not 24 months. So having a project facility, both a physical place where you can put your device in the ocean and get it proved out, as well as the funding to build the first three to five units of this and get them in the ocean working. That is the biggest hurdle. But, Jonathan, on the more optimistic side, I would say that most of the companies that are getting funding these days, and they're quite a few. For example, in my sia head, Blue Angels, we've done more than 30 different investments. And so, yeah, there's a lot of interest out there in this. But and it's a big, but I would say that the companies that are getting the funding, have a link to something terrestrial. So they're an aquaculture, ie, they're feeding human beings. We may be growing fish or having better sensors or better batteries for aquaculture farms. But the fundamental business is feeding humans. Or they are new technologies for shipping, maritime uses. Maybe they're cybersecurity for maritime, maybe they are better carbon sequestration or better fuels are better management of your vessels. But shipping, it's a huge business. You know, it presents 3% and alone shipping is 3% of all the co2 emissions. It's It's It's giant, and it's an existing business. Where do we have a real drought of venture capital and it's hard to solve? It's doing the basic fundamental sciences out deep in the deep ocean, that aren't linked to any immediate terrestrial market. But if you can link it to shipping or food, you'll get funded.

That's really interesting. Could you Could I just have such a, like a 360 perspective of on buying a really interesting company that technologies in the space are can you describe some of your favorite companies in the notion technologies?

I have a lot of favorites because I've been invested in a lot of them. And all my children, you might say, are my favorites. But I can pick out a couple. Let's take a company called in Versa, in Versa, makes leather for various famous fashion designers, but it makes it out of invasive lionfish and invasive carp. So they pay spear fisherman or other fishermen to go out and catch lionfish or the Asian carp in the Midwest or actually pythons in the Everglades. And they take those skins of animals which have a rightful place in some ecosystems somewhere but they're Out of the bad ecosystem and nothing wrong ecosystem at the moment, take those invasive species. And they take the lead the skin, and they have a technology IP a patented process for converting it into very fashionable leather, so that you can get a watch band or a purse or even sneakers made out of an amazing animal. It's in the wrong place.

Wow. That's I had no idea. It sounds like it's a great way to solve one ecosystem imbalance and put into a different place in a meaningful way and collect good margin on the process

itself. Oh, yeah, so it's, it's a fascinating business model. Of course, if they can, you know, if they can catch every Asian carp and every invasive Python and every lionfish, which they you will never do, or I hope they do someday, but not in the short term, and they will be out of their business. But this, it, it is almost inconceivable in app that happens. Another cool example, oral Vita down in the Caribbean. You know, probably your house, Jonathan, you have a gardener who comes and takes care of the garden.

I am the gardener. But yes.

When you plant the flowers, and you cut the grass and all that sort of thing. Well, imagine you had this for a coral reef. That's what coral Vita does. So hotels around the world, pay them to maintain, plant and maintain the coral strips in front of their property. Net. And so they will go out and they will plant a beautiful coral reef strip in front of your hotel chain property in the Caribbean. And they will go out on a weekly basis and make sure that there's no plastics on it, and that there's no algae growing on it. And if there's a coral, it's sick, they will replace it. And therefore they maintain a healthy coral reef, just like a gardener does for you on land.

Well, so then that's something a it sounds like it's in a niche, certainly. But it's something where, say biologists or ecologists who have been able to, to research study, publish on this. And then folks would come as like a practitioner or physician learn, you know, the the way that coral row and the whole ecosystem around that, and take care of it as a custodian. And then I imagined in the hotels and other folks who would own beachfront properties would be interested because then what it probably just looks better instead of having like trash bags and junk stuck on it, but also for, for maybe for diving in for recreational purposes, as well as maybe even for some elements of like, sort of climate resistance as as for storm buffering, things like that.

Exactly. Right. And coral beaches, secret sauces a day, actually run the nurseries that grow the baby corals into the little plants that they go out and plant.

Oh, wow. Okay. Wow, that sounds that sounds cool. So now with with Where does Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute then have a position in all of this? What you know, there's, there's there's commercial there are commercial opportunities. You describe several fascinating ones there that are that are up and running a how does how does Hui view itself and were like What are its its sort of boundaries of where it should go? And are there collaborating partners? And how do they approach that? I know you can't necessarily speak on behalf of them. But for your from your work. I'm sure you have a perspective. Yes.

And yes, I'd like to reiterate that I'm just their advisor. I'm have no executive authority there and therefore I can't speak on behalf of them. But who he is a great research institution. And almost all the people there are want to do and are doing impactful research for or whoever is sponsoring it. And usually that's the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US government's military, arms. But many of these ideas also have dual uses in the commercial side. And so many of the people say, well, oh, who are the researchers called, I'd love to get this out as a company. And that's where I'm advising them on how they can spin these out as companies. But 99% of the researchers I've talked to, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have no interest in leaving Hawaii, which is a beautiful place to work, and becoming an entrepreneur. So one of the things I spend my time doing, and one of the things I would ask all of the listeners today is if you know of somebody who wants to be a CEO, or CFO of a ocean tech company, call me up, please email me, because there are people at Hui who know that their technologies have commercial, impactful social opportunities, but aren't doing it, because they are doing the pure basic research, which is what they are paid to do by the government agencies who fund most of the activity at Hui.

That's, that's, that's great. And I'm really glad that you you sort of offered that and that you that that's a great talking point for, for folks who are enjoying the episode or like, like, so I you know, the the self selection and perhaps of like, I need to engage with Adam, because you, you know, where like a, like air traffic control in terms of where where to steer them. It's something that I that I hear sometimes what I want to working with, with entrepreneurs, where it's they may have some, maybe like hydrophones or some sort of a new development and looking for for to understand is Hui maybe a collaborator in that in that respect. And I would like your perspective on on helping these the individuals or companies who have developed something that may be of interest or applicable in maritime, should they? Is there a way to go to Hawaii and say, we invented a thing or a new capability? Are you interested in that? You know, or is that even? That's not what who is about so it's buoys

not really about the commercialization side. If you want to collaborate on a grant from the US government, I'm sure we can help with finding a researcher who wants to collaborate on that. But this is a very academic institution. It is not where you bring your your device and get it tested. For example, that's one of the things that the state of Massachusetts could do really well, as I mentioned earlier in the show, is build a piloting facility. So you can take your device into the ocean and get it tested. Boy, he doesn't do that. We doesn't rent out its facilities for hire, who we does basic research, does it very well, and is willing, if other people want to use that basic research in a commercial way. We're very willing to license it. We have an office of technology transfer. We have an express licensing process for early stage companies. They can come in and quickly get access to GUI technology. But no, we does not generally work collaborative lab, commercialization and collaboration.

I have I have two more questions in the first is, is what what I've been asking you have a variety of questions. Is there something that you know, we didn't prepare questions on that you think would be really important for for our audience to know about the space?

I was one of the very, very first investors in the clean tech space in the early 1990s. When I set up my first venture capital fund in the clean tech space, so it was less than a billion dollars a year, going into clean tech. It eventually turned out to be very successful, which is why I got to retire at age 55. And I started putting money into the ocean tech space. Again, before there was a billion dollars a year going into ocean tech. There will be major corrections, there is a large, I would say frothy area of investment going into ocean climate tech at the moment. There are a lot of people who are hunting for any climate solution and are throwing money at it, there will be a shakeout there, the market is not going to grow forever and ever, there will be downturns as I experienced in climate tech. And so this is not for the faint of heart. But it will eventually be as successful as clean tech has made. It does cover 70% of the planet. And therefore, all the things that you see on land will eventually be in the ocean. And you will be able to do everything you do on land in the ocean. Whether it's living, or science, or sport, there will be people who perfect the art of going scuba diving down 1000s of feet deep. You may be in some sort of housing to protect yourself from pressure. But it will all be possible. And now is a great time to start getting in to it as an investment. But as I said it's not for the faint of heart, there will be corrections.

I thank you for for that, that well earned advice, on and on on that about being about being resilient. Something that we invite each guest to do to help conclude our show is to give to state your name and say stay tough. Is that something you could do for our audience?

Absolutely. I'm Adam de sola pool and I hope you stay tough.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Adam. And for the purposes of the show. That's a wrap. That was really great. I really appreciate your conversation. That was as this is a lot of fun. You

had you had fun because I had fun too.