Can Nemo's Smarter Twin Save our Waterways? Liane Thompson, Co-Founder Aquaai

Watch out NEMO there’s a new clownfish in town and he’s a lot smarter than you are! Today we are talking to Liane Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Aquaai (Uh-qu-why)- which merges the words aqua and the term AI together. 

Liane has an incredible bio including stints in war reporting and television producing. And she knows a good thing when she sees it. She put Alan Bordain on TV. Today she has been named one of 50 Most Powerful Women in Technology and I can see why.  The unabbreviated list of accolades for Liane and her team is below

Liane and her life partner Simeon Pieterkosky have brought to market a robotic, intelligent clownfish that can monitor waterways and aquaculture facilities and provide actionable data. 

The inspiration came from Simeon’s young daughter who asked him one day to ‘save the seas.’ So, like any good parent, roboticist Simeon got to work building technology that can identify and track environmental changes underwater. 

Aquaai’s Nemo is put to use monitoring sustainable aquaculture systems, measuring and identifying sources of pollution, and is even working to monitor carbon capture. And Nemo is only getting smarter and more talented with time.

Aquaai
Liane Thomson
Simeon Pieterkosky


Accolades for Aquaai:
50 Most Powerful Women in Technology to Follow in 2023, NEOM selected 2022, World’s Top 50 Innovators Codex 2022, Top Tier Impact Awards 2022 (finalist), GreenBiz, Atlantic Council, Verizon Climate Resilience Prize 2022 (finalist), 20 Women Driving the Future of Climate Tech in 2021, OceanPitch Fest 2021 (finalist), 30 Women to Know in Robotics in 2020, Hardware Cup CleanTech 2021 (finalist), Awarded Innovation Norway grant 2020, TEKFISH (2020 trip winner) - Australian Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), European Commission's Seal of Excellence for Impact, Quality and Efficiency 2020, CDL Graduate 2020, Winner Top Aquaculture Innovation Award Fish 2.0 Stanford Global Forum 2019, Innovative Woman in AI / Blockchain to Follow in 2019

Transcript

INTRO:

HOST VO: Hey everyone!  Welcome to Happy Planet where we speak with entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders driving the impact economy. I am your host Abigail Carroll. 

Watch out NEMO there’s a new clownfish in town and he’s a lot smarter than you are! Today we are talking to Liane (Lee-ah-nah) Thompson, co-founder and CEO of Aquaai (Uh-qu-why)- which merges the words aqua and the term AI together. Liane and her life partner Simian have built a robotic, intelligent clownfish to monitor our waterways. The inspiration came from Simian’s young daughter who asked him one day to ‘save the seas.’ So, like any good parent, roboticist Simian got to work building technology that can identify and track environmental changes underwater. Aquaai’s Nemo is put to use monitoring sustainable aquaculture systems, measuring and identifying sources of pollution, and is even working to monitor carbon capture. And Nemo is only getting smarter and more talented with time.

But let's hear it from Liane. (Lee-ah-nah) 

Abigail (00:01:58):

It Aqua Aqua Aqua. Um, um, good cuz I have, there's this skincare company in Maine that is based off of, um, lobster blood basically. And, uh, and they're called Marin Marin. And like I keep saying it wrong cuz it's like basically marine without an knee. And so I had to go back and rerecord everything and it was just, it was, you know, once something gets in your head the wrong way, um, it's kind of hard to change it for an old fart like me, I guess. Um  , so I'm really excited to have you here. Uh, thank you for coming, Liane. No, you, um, I have, you know, since we last spoke, I read that you were one of the 50 most, uh, powerful women in tech to follow for 2023. So it's an honor to have you here

Liane (00:02:55):

<laugh>.

Abigail (00:02:55):

I was, I'm feeling a little intimidated now. No,

Liane (00:02:58):

I'm, I was a little surprised. Um, you know, sometimes you're just scrolling along on different social media channels and this pops up and you think, oh, really? That's cool. I didn't know <laugh>. There I am.

Abigail (00:03:10):

<laugh> nice to tell me.

Liane (00:03:12):

No, I mean, I, it's, you know, it's really an honor when you look at some of the women who are listed there, you're just thinking, whoa, okay. There's some real game changers in that list. So it's an honor to be among some others who are doing cool stuff in tech, and especially those are doing cool stuff in tech for the climate.

Abigail (00:03:36):

Oh. All right. Um, I am, I'm having an internet issue with you. Hmm. Uh, you flipped out. I am gonna just nip this in the bud and I'm gonna kill the visual, if that's okay. Can you work without visual? Sure. Uh, cuz that, that's just one simple way to, um, to, um, you know, get a better recording. All right. I'm still here.

Liane (00:04:04):

Yeah. I'm going to try to kill my visuals too. I've never used this, um, format before.

Abigail (00:04:12):

It's o it's, I mean, it's a fairly standard one. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, no,

Liane (00:04:16):

It's nice. It's a nice setup.

Abigail (00:04:18):

Yeah. Let me see. You sound good? Oh, I can cut my camera here. There. Okay. Does that work?

Liane (00:04:32):

Looks like it. I can hear you.

Abigail (00:04:34):

Okay. I feel like now I'm like, we're in the dark. Um, uh, but, but our conversation will show us the way. Um, so, uh, you were saying that, um, you are in very good company with the other women on that list.

Liane (00:04:55):

Yes. Um, I'm, it's, uh, like I was saying, there's so many, um, fabulous women out there who are working in technologies, who are working in climate, a  nd it's always a privilege to kind of find yourself next to them. There was one list that I was appeared on, which was 20 Women in Climate Tech, and I was next to some, um, women who are really also leading the charge on funding climate technologies Yeah. Um, as well. So it, yeah.

Abigail (00:05:31):

That's amazing.

Liane (00:05:31):

I Mean, at the end of the day, so there are a lot of opportunities out there to be on lists and to market your company. And there's even one, um, that I've talked about recently where we were asked to be on, uh, ocean Warriors or something like this, approached to be on some series that is being put together by the World Ocean Council and Reuters. Um, so they, they reached out to us, but then I found out that they wanted to charge like $25,000 to include us in this series, <laugh>, which

Abigail (00:06:07):

We have.

Liane (00:06:07):

Thank you. We, we have a policy at Aquaai, which is we do not pay for, [right]. Any media. We do not pay for any awards and we certainly won't pay, um, for pitching. So yeah. This is kind of like hard for us. So needless to say [Yeah[. We did not participate in that series. Yeah. Um, and I do think that there are so many coming from the media industry, there's so many of those, um, seemingly legit companies that have turned into marketing platforms that you pay for exposure. Right. And I'm not a, I think I'm just too old school, so I'm, I'm not a fan of, of, uh, PR journalism.

Abigail (00:06:51):

I totally agree with you there. Um, but what's interesting to me about, uh, both what you just said and that you're on all these top lists of women in tech is that you actually don't come from that world.

Liane (00:07:06):

No.

Abigail (00:07:06):

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, which is fascinating?

Liane (00:07:11):

Sure. So, no, I do not come from that world, um, per se. So I come from media. I, I, um, you know, actually come more from politics and social situations is what I studied. And then I went on to do my graduate work in, um, uh, journalism and public affairs in Washington, DC and, um, was first in print and then radio. So I was really, um, thrilled. Uh, also from the technology side as being a radio journalist, I worked on the Diane Ream show as a phone screener. Oh, wow. Um, I worked for WAMU in Washington DC Um, covered some really cool, uh, events taking place there as the Clinton administration, uh, won for the first time. And kind of Washington shifted from being, you know, everyone living in Chevy Chase to everyone living in DuPont Circle. If you know Washington DC what that means, <laugh>.

Liane (00:08:13):

Um, it was a really exciting time, um, to be in Washington DC and the program that I was in was fabulous in the sense that we were able to cover everything from, um, the Capitol to the Pentagon, to, I was even in the White House, um, during, uh, rock the vote, uh, times and stuff. So it was, it was a cool opportunity. So I was doing some technical work and at that time I was also, um, interning at cnn and it was kind of like you had to, back in those days, make a choice if you were gonna go towards editorial or through technical meaning camera radio. And I really loved shooting as well. So, you know, I was running around with a big, big 700 as a, as a, as a camera woman, but I also loved, you know, them being a, uh, you know, a radio reporter and writing my own content and reporting, and I didn't wanna choose. Yeah. Um

Abigail (00:09:07):

, people Always wanna put you in a silo, right?

Liane (00:09:09):

<laugh>. Yeah. You had to choose. Um, yeah. And it was after grad school that I, um, you know, I wa I was at the, at CNN and I went to the then President Eason Jordan. I said, I just wanna be like Christiane Amanpour you know, I'd already lived in Europe. I'm actually half American and half German. Um, and I had gone to university also in Germany where I studied international law and law of the sea, and I really wanted to be a foreign correspondent. And so when Easton Jordan said to me, Liane, just go be one, because, you know, it'll take you years and years to work your way up the line to get sent out at cnn. I, I, um, I did, I finished grad school and moved to Budapest and <laugh>. It was 1994, and we just putting together a radio show on the World Radio Network with some friends, um, of mine, Trevor Cornwell, and a bunch of other really, uh, cool people.

Liane (00:10:08):

And the great thing about that is I was covering things and doing radio. And around that time, another company was just starting out working with, um, small format cameras. And I think they were working with Sony to design the first small format camera. So they selected a few radio journalists around the globe to try out this new kind of, you know, high eight tiny camera. And I was able to be included in this. Um, it was called then Video News International. I'm really going way back. And so there all of a sudden I didn't have to, I didn't have to choose content or technical. I could still, cause I love shooting, I love camera work. So I was able to do my own camera work running around, which is now known as a citizen journalist. What my then boss, um, uh, Michael Rosen Luter coined the term video journalist.

Liane (00:11:02):

So I was like a video, one of the first video journalists and was able to cover some really cool things, including Apropo, the recent World Cup. I mean, congratulations, <laugh> on that. <laugh> Yes. Including, um, covering Bulgaria in the World Cup while being in Sovia in Bulgaria. And I'll never forget that, that was, um, really fantastic, uh, experience and other, other, you know, south in nor northern, uh, or Southeast Turkey. I covered the entire region, um, during some pretty interesting times, uh, in the early to mid nineties in the Balkans. So I was able to do both. And a lot of times when you're shooting, you're able to still do radio. And that's kind of how I fell in line with, um, what then became New York Times television, um, was this group was brought into New York Times, and then I relocated from Budapest to New York and kept working with them on some of the early first, um, reality shows.

Liane (00:12:06):

In fact, back then there was only real world and, and us. And this was, um, we are producing a series called Trauma Life in the er, which became very, very popular with millions of viewers weekly and many primetime Emmy nominations and so forth. In fact, um, I stay went on to then produce hundreds of hours of television. I Wow. Was ultimately put on staff at the New York Times and was an executive producer. Um, put Anthony Bourdain on television <laugh>, um, with that show, and did a lot of both, both reality and current affair hours. Um, a really great one outta Cuba for Showtime was a skin I'm in, no sorry, that was, um, um, skin Im was on actually Hendrix, uh, film, but the one in Cuba was dreaming in New Cuba. So yeah, just did a bunch of really cool stuff and, and then, um, nine 11 hit and found myself in the hole back out after      being an executive and managing a couple hundred people and all these hours of television for everyone from Nat Geo to Showtime new network and Discovery. I just kind of got the bug being back in the hole, if you would say. And um, then what,

Abigail (00:13:28):

What does the hole

Liane (00:13:29):

Mean? The hole from nine 11 when the buildings came down. Oh,

Abigail (00:13:32):

In the actual, in the actual of the building. Yeah. Yes.

Liane (00:13:37):

And I can't even imagine, you know, I just realized that I'm happiest when I'm in the field. Yeah. And then I went to the Middle East, um, and was based out of Israel covering a lot of the Middle East during the peak of the Antifada and other activities during I would say the early two thousands. Mm-hmm. Um, and went, had a production company ultimately left the New York Times after, you know, doing a few films for them, um, Arafat and Shaone, something on Saddam was saying. And then I ended up staying in Israel and kind of got the startup bug. So this is kind of a natural segue over to the startup bug. Um, you know, Israel's a startup nation and yeah, after I was, um, I went to Haiti and I covered the 2010 earthquake and met one of my first startup partners there. And when I came back to Israel, um, he and I and a few other people formed a company, a media startup, but it was still a high tech startup using, um, having people shoot through our app so that we could, could get the visuals and then sell them off to the usual suspects, you know?

Liane (00:14:55):

Yeah. That could then use those visuals. So that was a real sweet taste. But, you know, I have to say that even in Hungary, that was kind of a startup that I was working with then too. Just nobody was calling 'em startups back then really say, which was, which was a startup in radio, on the

Abigail (00:15:12):

World radio just starting a business.

Liane (00:15:14):

Yes, exactly. Right. But the whole, um, you know, I, I then had my own startup and then I actually met my now partner by doing a story on him. Um, he's 

Abigail (00:15:27):

Your life partner and your business partner. He, to be clear right?

Liane (00:15:29):

He is my partner now and my business partner, and he was my subject in mm-hmm. <affirmative> a story. And I had never done that. It kind of broke that rule in journalism never to get intimate with yourself for good reason. It sounds <laugh> <laugh>, it worked out. So yeah, I was doing a story on him, um, kind of, he's kind of as known in as The Q he's, he's really from Cape Town South Africa. His name is Simian Peter Koski. Um, and he had spent a good 20 years in Israel and he makes gadgets. So he's a product designer, roboticist. He built at least a dozen two meter tall humanoid robots by himself over the course of 25 years. Wow. He was the go-to gadget guy if you needed a solution to a problem that required mechanical engineering. Yeah. in a product. So when I met him, you could find him behind these massive, you know, Israel's really known for the music and DJ scene mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Liane (00:16:33):

And lighting. And, and so you'd see these massive concerts there with this extraordinary lighting that he would kind of oversee and put together and then he'd sit backstage building robots while the performer was out on stage performing. And, you know, it was really kind of funny that hilarious. So when we met, um, he, um, had had just kind of promised his daughter to kind of do everything he could to, to fight, if you will, the climate crisis and particularly protect our waterways. And, um, so when I met him, he was working on a proof of concept of a robotic fish, you know, kind of merging his Yeah. know-how in robotics and animatronics cuz he had built a animatronic museum for Sherry Harrison, um, in Tel Aviv, and she's the heiress of Carnival Cruise lines. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so he took his robotics animatronics and then he also had, you know, at least I don't know how many decades in climate technologies like water filtration systems and stuff.

Liane (00:17:41):

And that came about, he's actually way more interesting than I am. Um, but he's really shy and doesn't like to do these types of things <laugh>. But if anybody ever runs into him, any of your listeners out there, you know, either follow him on Twitter, just kind of, he loves to engage in social media, but you'll never get him on stage or interesting seldom on a podcast <laugh>, but interesting. Um, <laugh>, so he actually, at the age of 12, while living in Cape Town, South Africa, stumbled into a climate convention. Hmm. And at the, at the tender age of 12, was shocked about what was going on. Um, he's what, 48 now, so do the math. Um, and really wanted to dedicate all his life to climate technologies and then later it segued into robotics and, you know, like I said, water filtration. So that's how I actually came to Aquaai was through him and his promise to his daughter and through actually just doing a story on him.

Abigail (00:18:42):

That's amazing. But I can see, like you were absolutely ripe for the picking on this project because, you know, even the Anthony Bourdain, you know, uh, story you did, or, or TV series you launched, you know, it's about food. Your business was about, you know, their first business in Israel was about, you know, picking, you know, creating sort of digital data and having people access it. You, you know, the trauma of, you know, life and the geopolitical sort of, um, sorry, the, the trauma life in the yard. You're sort of, you know, showing everything that's going on the ocean where we're all seeing a lot of trauma at the moment, it seems like, and the geopolitical theme, like it seems like all of these themes we're already sort of part of your, um, sort of your thinking and your background. So I could see how this was actually a really compelling fit for you.

Liane (00:19:40):

Yeah. I guess, you know, when you cover a lot of, um, horrible situations as I did mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, conflicts, disasters, there was always something very, um, beautiful in the humanity of it all, where people really pulled together and helped each other out. Especially, you know, what I witnessed in, in Haiti in that aftermath of the two 10 earthquake. And, and I found myself always attracted to these scenarios, not   I had such, you know, yes, of course I love speed or I I love risk. And which, you know, if you're doing a startup, there's a significant amount of risk, but I also really loved the humanity. Humanity, uh, in it. And yeah. When I opted to walk away from media was when Simeon and I returned, you know, to my native, to the US and I looked around and I did not wanna do media at all, uh, domestically.

Liane (00:20:41):

Yeah. And so I looked at him and I said, you know, he's an inventor, so he has a large portfolio of different inventions, and, and I said, let's take the one we care about the most and build a company around that. Yeah. And we literally, you know, started from scratch in many ways. He, he a new immigrant, me not really coming from that world, not having the connections, being an older female no less. And, um, you know, we then raised our first split of, you know, small amount of money in New York and told the investor that, thank you, but we're moving to California because if you're gonna build a robot fish, you gotta do that outta California. <laugh> Silicon. Right. Silicon Valley. And I mean, I, I was born in the Bay Area, so I had other support systems there, and we had two children that were with us, um, at the time.

Liane (00:21:32):

And, and so we opted to go to Silicon Valley and founded the company on the summit on, you know, um, in lass Gatos Hillside overlooking the Monterey Bay, which was great for inspiration. And, um, I really think that the, the path, as you say, everything kind of came together. It is because you can really translate being a journalist into being a CEO of a company or even an, you don't have to be the CEO as an entrepreneur in a company because you have to be risk averse. You have to have what we call chutzpah or, you know, audacity to get access, whether it's to customers, whether it's to, to, you know, uh, investors. You have to be able to communicate Yeah. Um, to your team, to, you know, your supporters. And as you see, you know, as we started the conversation, we are in a lot, we are recognized in a lot of different, you know, articles and podcasts and such. Yeah. And, and that's coming clearly from very specific either targeting, um, or knowing how to kind of, how to say or how to, how to get that access or how to write even a cold email. I'm a right firm believer in writing cold emails and cold LinkedIn notes or cold <laugh> to, to, to introduce. And I, and I think that is, um, helps because of being a journalist.

Abigail (00:23:03):

Right, right, right. You know how to get to the story, you know how to get to the people you need to talk to basically. Um, so let's, I wanna get back to sort of, you know, the having a business that's really mission driven, but I don't wanna get too far along without really explaining to people what it is you've built and what it does. Um, so can you tell me, tell us a little bit about your, your, you're robot.

Liane (00:23:30):

Well, I'm gonna tell you what it does, because the reason we're doing this is when Simeon made that promise to Emily, um, it was really about how does one fight the climate crisis or navigate, you can't even fight it. Let's be whonest. How does one navigate the climate crisis and how does one protect our life source? And our life source is water. We all know 71% of the planet is, you know, covered in water and the majority of the planet lives on a water source of some kind, whether it's salt, fresh, lake, river, doesn't matter. So the idea was really about protecting that life source. And when you looked out what's out there on the terrain, um, you know, every system that had to do with water was incredibly expensive. Yeah. And so if you're going to protect your waters, uh, whether again it's marine, oceans or lakes or rivers or reservoirs, right.

Liane (00:24:30):

You can't manage or what you can't measure. Right. So the first step was measuring so that you could manage. And in looking at the measurement tools out there, either required human intervention or human, you know, dipsticks of some sort, or even if you looked at your autonomous vehicles that were harnessing data or information, uh, with which to manage, um, those systems, were you mainly working with military or oiling gas, or were at least targeting those two very Right. Um, uh, you know, deep pocketed industries. Yeah. And so what went into their R&D and ultimately the end user were these incredibly million dollar units. So what Simian looked at said it was, what we really need is an affordable unit with which to harness information so we could manage the waterways better. And that meant empowering all industries, not just military and oil and gas, which we by the way, don't work with it at Aquaai.

Liane (00:25:36):

Right. But the blue economy, the, you know, heat, Simeon grew up on a farm, so he also knew that whatever you built, it had to be, um, durable and simple enough. And not having the brain of an MIT person with a 3,000 page manual, but something that a farmer or person wanted to use simple enough to use, yet durable and reliable. So that's where our technology comes in, is what we are doing is we are harnessing information from all different water sources in an affordable, durable way. And why, how we do that is we adopted biomimicry and created bio-inspired, uh, looking drones. So our drones look and swim like fish. We, uh, which is wonderful because, you know, 20 million years of evolution probably tells you something why fish are in water. So we, uh, <laugh>, if you looked at engineering and robotics anyway, um, biomimicry is certainly the future and a lot of that future's already here.

Liane (00:26:45):

And so [for sure], we really wanted to make an affordable system. We, our patents are mechanics in design and we use the, uh, the movement of the tail, uh, to swim primarily. So that's really making our units, um, power efficient as well. And so we are offering information that you just log onto a web dashboard like everything else, like SaaS, we call it FaaS for fish as a service. You log on, you get your data and sense and your visuals, and we lease out the hardware or the robot fish, um, or fish leg sensor platform, whatever you wanna call it mm-hmm. <affirmative> Fish Drone, um, in order to provide that information affordably. So it's much the same as, like in the old days you had a cable box and you got your cable channels, so you still needed the box to get the cable channel. You still need a phone to get, uh, you know, all the different stuff. Yeah. So it's the same, same idea. You're getting information and there's a, uh, it's a software hardware aspect.

Abigail (00:27:46):

Yep. Yep. So they, they're paying for the data and the access to the software to get the data. But um, the hardware is, is a lease, because I'm ex I'm assuming that would be very expensive for a, you know, an aquaculture or other smaller business to try to, you know, buy some sort of um, uh, AI unit like that.

Liane (00:28:06):

Yeah. So the, the data is over subscription. Exactly. Um, which you log into and accessible obviously by the cloud on your phone, website, web dashboard, whatever. And then the hardware is leased. So we lease it out. We do not sell the robot business. We lease that. And our, our initial, um, users are, came from sustainable aquaculture. That's actually a, a pretty sweet story. Um, I dunno if you want me to go into [please] into that or <laugh>. So we actually, you know, living in Silicon Valley, the first question is you try to raise capital. This is, uh, I'm assume there's some startups here listening, um, is Yeah, great. Go prove it, build it, you know, so not coming from some of the chosen universities which get funding thrown at them, we had to be very, um, creative. And so we built our first robot fish that, um, could tweet your picture.

Liane (00:29:10):

This is, uh, going back to 2015. And, um, it looked, it was a smaller robot fish that looked a bit like the clown fish. Yeah. So it was a, a very small clown fish and it could tweet your picture. And we did the clown fish for a few reasons. One, to get on the map, you know, everyone loves Nemo. Yeah. Everyone, you know, again, thinking about how am I going to get people to know about us and how do I get on the map in the media? And being a sweet clownfish really helped. So our first one was this, uh, robot fish clownfish. And we proved it. We said yes, we proved it, we made a robot look and swim like a fish <laugh>. And we expected to have all the money thrown to us after we proved it. And that didn't happen, <laugh>. Wow. So what happened next was great, you proved it.

Liane (00:30:07):

Now go get customers. So that was the next phase you had to, who's gonna pay for it? Who's gonna buy it? So then, um, being incredibly capital efficient as we were and, and had to be. And I really do think that it was, in hindsight, the best for the company is to really be as capital efficient as possible in those early days so that you're not giving away so much of your company early on. And since we didn't have investment coming in, we certainly weren't giving away our company. Right. And we were being creative. You know, we both had been very successful in our previous career, so we had a little bit of, um, ability to not take salary. And the people who joined us were, you know, good. So who loved the project. And a lot of people who had other jobs just loved the project so much that they wanted to be a part of it.

Liane (00:30:57):

So we were able to get a really great group of advisors or occasional, you know, team members, um, together to really do some outstanding, amazing things. Um, and these guys and gals are all huge, huge professionals in their own industries, whether it's electronics or, or software programming or marketing or security and stuff. So we've been fortunate that way. Yeah. Um, our first industry getting, you know, to to our first customers, we started with, uh, we were approached by a global reinsurer, uh, who saw the value as a risk mitigating post-disaster technology and coming from disasters, we were really enthusiastic about working in, especially in flooding cases and the so forth. And so we souped up the, the robot to do more than just tweet. Um, it was a much more established robot with different cameras and sensors on it. And, um, we were, uh, aiming to do tests in global ports at that time.

Liane (00:32:01):

Yeah. Um, when there was a massive restructuring, another big lesson learned, you think your ticket or your ships come in and it's gonna be coasting from that moment on as a startup because you have this big global reinsurer who wants your tech and is setting up trials and all the global ports. And then there's a restructuring. So after about Right. Eight months of that, and they're, they're internal restructuring, um, which didn't make us most favorite nation anymore and kind of put us on a shelf for a while. I went out to look in, you know, cash flow and I was like, okay, so what else? You know, how else that's not gonna take a year to put together with some of these, of these larger corporates. And, you know, instances like governments. And I saw a documentary called A Fish on Your Plate, which featured uh, the most sustainable salmon farm in the north of Norway that supplied, uh, and farmed, uh, incredibly sustainable salmon, meaning they don't use fish to feed the fish to grow the salmon.

Liane (00:33:00):

Right. You know, very, very sustainable. And so I sent a 30 second clip of our robot to them. They said, oh, thinking by the way, oh, robot fish to monitor live fish, that's a story I can sell. Right, right. Again, drawing from media. And they said, come. So we did, and we first test was to see how our robot would, or how their salmon would react to our robot. And to everyone's amazement, it was like, I don't know, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, and everybody was work swimming together. We were adopted like one of them from their salmon. I love it. And then the next phase was come longer. So we then went and spent two months living on the farm, learning really the pain points and how to improve our tech. And we brought the team over and we 3D printed, you know, seven 3D printers there cuz we 3D and SLS print our technology, which makes us very unique also on the manufacturing side of things.

Liane (00:33:58):

Yep. And in six weeks we, we made eight robots from scratch, including the boards[?] and, um, put them in the water and, and said Okay to the farmers, break 'em and Yep. It's kind of a running joke that they didn't put us in the, the softest place in terms of rugged water, but this is the Arctic Circle mind you. They put us way out where the water is really rugged and, um, and well you challenged them. Yeah. And, or they challenged us. So it was really a beautiful partnership. They also ultimately, um, Kvarøy is the name of, of the farm, and they sell to Whole Foods and Michelin chefs, and they have now like these great, you know, salmon dogs, hot dogs, salmon, you know, hamburgers. Nice. In fact, I was just in Whole Foods in, in LA the other day and I said, I want the salmon from clare and took a picture of us with our robots and their fish salmon.

Liane (00:34:56):

So that was a great relationship. And as I said, they also invested in us and they said, if you really wanna grow here, you have to open a subsidiary in Norway. Yeah. Which we did. So we opened up a subsidiary in Norway and 2019 and just barely got our residency permits approved. And, um, COVID hit <laugh>. So yeah, it was, uh, kind of interesting. But yeah, so we do have, we are a US, you know, company, Delaware Sea Company, headquartered in California and working closely with, um, in the south in southern California at Alta Sea as our US base. And then, um, and have our subsidiary in Norway where we have the bulk of our customers are in Norway, either, um, or in Europe. So we've been planning also work with the European Space Agency and other, um, seaweed farms and other entities. We have like about 20 LOIs, um, letters of intent signed from different government groups and customers.

Abigail (00:36:06):

So for starting out, you've really been looking at aquaculture, and I just wanna have a take a little dive into Norway for a second. I've, you know, I've been just started this podcast a few months ago, and all roads are seeming to lead to Norway. I mean, it's just this, in the next, you know, three months, it's a theme that's gonna come over and over and over again. What is it, you now you've had both perspectives. You've been, you know, you started this in California, now you have a, a branch in Norway. I mean, what do they have? How did they build this? Why is, why are they so strong in this se segment?

Liane (00:36:46):

Um, are we talking specifically aquaculture or water technology?

Abigail (00:36:49):

Well, yeah, I mean Blue Tech generally, but I, I mean, I guess aquaculture specifically, they're really incredibly strong on it. Yes. Um, is that an attitude that they have about it? Or is it technology that they've really invested in? Do you, do you have any thoughts on that?

Liane (00:37:04):

Yeah, I do. Um, well, let me just back up and then I'll answer each of those. So first off, we don't consider ourselves an aquaculture company, but you're right that our first market entry has been aquaculture and then we've been embraced there. And that's been golden. There are no aquaculture, at least offshore aquaculture in the finfish, uh, off the coast of, in, in the United States. Well,

Abigail (00:37:27):

There's only two period. Yeah. and they're both going out of business

Liane (00:37:29):

And there, and there's shellfish and I know there's a lot of talk and new bills that have been signed to, to, to generate more aquaculture, which is great. And in fact, I'm hoping, and we're in talks with some, some people there. Um, and we're really looking forward to finally having some customers in the US who are Yeah. Either in need of our technology for shellfish farming, seaweed or finfish. And you know, you look at what like, um, you know, people like Donner doing at Manna Farms and stuff to it is really remarkable and stuff. So, um, and also on the, on the West Coast Pacific. So there's some really cool groups that are trying to be sustainable and grow that industry in the US Now, Norway, you know, the farm we're working with is a three generation owned family farm. Now that's beautiful. One because they can make decisions fast. <laugh>.

Liane (00:38:22):

Yeah. And two, um, they really come with amazing know-how of the industry. And I think also if you look even prior to let's say aquaculture, which is not a very old industry at all, all per se, a lot of that is coming from, you know, far, uh, fishermen or the, the diet, you know, the, uh, the nor the Norwegian diet of necessity being fish, you know? Yeah. So much of their, you look at that, you know how large their coastline is. Yeah. Um, so that was a big, is a big part of their culture is is the diet as well. And then Yes, technology, early adoption. Early adoption, yeah. Of some of the greatest technologies. So Norway had gone through a big change itself as a country, um, from going from one, one of more of the poorer countries in Europe to one of the more wealthier countries because of the discovery of oil.

Liane (00:39:20):

And then, um, because of the, the, uh, the salmon market, which, you know, ultimately became a very, very profitable, um, uh, industry for Norway. In fact, they're, they took half of the, the fu sovereign, the pension fund. you know, fund and put half of it into, uh, developing aquaculture as well as just, um, you know, their oil and gas industry. So, uh, pension, the pension fund pension, sovereign wealth money. Yeah. Corrected the, the pension fund. So, um, unfortunately I have to say that they also recently just decided to slap a 40% tax on fish farmers in Norway, which I still don't understand why they've done that. And I do think it's going to harm the entire global industry in aquaculture. Yep. Because they are early adopters of technologies and they're really willing to, to try everything out. I mean, especially folks like Fare. Um, I mean, we're fortunate that we got to  Kvarøy , I think it was 2017, so we knew them and had developed a relationship before they were so well known.

Liane (00:40:30):

And kind of now they're pretty famous in the industry, but you know, these guys are, are really on the edge of what's new and what's out there, and how can we do it better and more sustainable and more precise. So if you're looking at those factors that brings Norway, you know, they have the capital, they have the desire to, to really protect the environment and the waterways, not all, but the groups that we're working with. Um, and, uh, I think now in, in, in these new generations of farms or even older farms that need to reinvent themselves so that they do look more sustainable, it's important as future generations embrace, um, the planet in protecting the planet. So those factors, you know, there are places, there's lots of aquaculture going on, but they don't have the resources necessarily to, to engage in precision aquaculture, which is why, you know, technologies like ours are so important because it's, again, getting back to the everyday farmer, the person who, you know, know doesn't want to, to, to, he has to keep up with demand, doesn't wanna cut corners, but is, is unable to keep up with demand.

Liane (00:41:41):

So they find themselves just racing. But if you give them the affordable technologies, we're not talking that every technology needs to be $300,000. Right. We're talking about affordable technologies that everyone can use, including a farmer, you know, and I'm not talking about an R O V either, because everyone owns a remote operated vehicle, they all sit on the office floor. But you need autonomy, you need automation and integration in precision. And it doesn't matter if it's a fish farm, a port, or even suit, smart city, finally integrating water into their smart city planning. All of these use cases are important when it comes to protecting our, our vital source, which is water.

VO:stay tuned to continue the conversation with Liane (Lee-ah-nah) in just a moment. We’ll talk about more use cases for the Aquaai (Uh-qu-why) technology and get real about the funding gap facing blue tech companies. 

BREAK: MAINE TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE + SPARK

VO: Welcome back to happy Planet

Abigail (00:42:23):

I've seen that. I mean, I've seen that play out even on my farm. It wasn't this type of technology, but, you know, we brought in a few different technologies and then there are technologies that only helped me because, and then there were the technologies that helped my team and the technologies that just served the owner were technologies that usually sort of took a lot of time from employees, but didn't make their lives, that didn't help them achieve their goals faster or better. Um, and, and then the technologies that helped them were the ones that were really fully adopted. And, uh, and I I think you're right about sort of the autonomy, you know, if you've, if you've gotta bring this like clunky thing out there, you know, every time, and then the fish get weirded out by a, by a robot, uh, you know, a robot that looks like a robot, um, the, the adoption's gonna be much slower, much harder, and you'll get less use out of it.

Liane (00:43:16):

Yeah. We have actually found, you know, even in  Kvarøy when we were there last, there has been so much growth in precision aquaculture over the last couple of years. And we've been doing this, as I said, for quite a while now. So we, um, but we have seen the market catch up, which is beautiful. Yeah. We see that there are a lot of technologies there. Most of them are focusing on the software aspect, machine learning, biomass, um, you know, lice detection, which is beautiful, but none of them were focusing on, on the hardware aspect. And I mean, there are some, but, but not a lot. So what we're doing is we're taking all of these static cameras and sensors, and we're putting it on our fish like drone. So we're like the sensor platform that lives and swims amongst the fish and goes along with the school.

Liane (00:44:07):

So we're always right next to the fish or whatever the habitat is that we're monitoring. Um, and what even the farm says to us is that, you know, some of these other technologies, as wonderful as they are, they're still spending a lot of time trying to locate where the fish are. And you know, the idea is, well, why not just use our hardware and we can tell you at all times where the fish are, and then your zapper can work, work better, or you'll get better. You know, it's proximity to the source is what's going to help you a lot on the backend when you're doing your machine learning or in, in, in terms of, of that. Um, so I do think that the market is big enough. The need is big enough that a lot of our, our technologies could really work well together.

Liane (00:44:50):

And in fact, there have been some groups that we've done white letters with, um, mostly from the autonomous surface vehicle market where we are in their ship holes and then deploy out at site, you know, like we sail out, um, on an autonomous surface vehicle, go, go and get to a site, let's say a coral to monitor and then redeploy and swim around the corals and then come back into the hull,  um, and transmit the data or charge from there. So there's, there's lots of ways where all of these new technologies popping up in the, in the blue economy can work together. We're very open to that and always have been. And then that also comes with people who say, Hey, I got a new sensor, can we try it out on your, your fish? And we're like, yeah, come on. You know, we, we have a plug and play system that can hold up to 16 different sensors and we built it that way so that it could be really, um, you know, module for the different use case. Yeah.

Abigail (00:45:46):

Very interesting. I think that, um, the inter-operability also becomes really important when we start talking about these government clients that you're talking about. When you're really starting to just try to get data on the ocean and the rivers and the lakes. Right. Then it really is helpful to be able to be part of like a much bigger ecosystem of data. And does that make sense?

Liane (00:46:10):

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of people are looking to map the world, the ocean, which is great. We're not trying to compete with that. Our sweet spot is surfaced down to about a hundred meters. Um, and most of the challenges that cause the algae blooms is the runoff that goes to the ocean. So if you're able to mitigate some of those runoffs, so if, let's talk about, you know, ag runoff. So the problem with a lot of our rivers, especially in the states here, is that our, you know, our, our, our rivers are all polluted

Abigail (00:46:41):

with pfas among other things.

Liane (00:46:44):

Yeah. They're all polluted and everyone points to the next guy and they're the cause or they're the perpetrator. But what if we're monitoring in these riverways and we're detecting the high nutrient spikes, and we can then ascertain which farm is the one really dumping in that area, and then try to get them to improve their practices. Because right now what's happening is nobody's really policing it and nobody's really able to, to pinpoint where the, the spikes are taking place. Yeah. And then it goes to the, to the ocean, and then it turns to algae blooms and what and you know, the whole problem when everyone focuses on the ocean, we should really be looking at, you

Abigail (00:47:19):

Know, it's upstream

Liane (00:47:20):

Upstream, exactly. Yeah. Freshwater reservoirs. And in the case of flooding especially, so this is an area that I'm particularly, as I mentioned, enthusiastic about because of my background in, in, in disasters and crises, is that, you know, so much of what happens in flood areas, you know, look what's going on here in Europe and Portugal and, and Spain and in, in, you know, it's every year and it's getting worse. And in Pakistan not so long ago. So if all of that water just sits there and it turns Yeah. Very, very toxic. And then what you'll have is you'll have, um, a lot of the sewage gets dumped, you know, into as a flood happens. All of that sewage is in the flood water too, building up more toxicity levels. So you really need systems that can, can monitor those toxicity levels before you send humans back into these flood zones. So that's another area that's just, um, really in need of autonomy. Absolutely. Yeah.

Abigail (00:48:23):

I hope I start seeing a lot of clownfish clownfish swimming up rivers.

Liane (00:48:28):

I hope I

Abigail (00:48:29):

Will You modify the design.

Liane (00:48:30):

I hope you, you know, the design is pretty, is is pretty easy. So the reason we're using the, the fish, I guess the vertebrae Yeah. Um, is because of power. So it really does increase our efficiency because we're using the indelation of the tail or we're able to swim with the inertia of the waters around us. Yeah. Um, we are able, we go slow, but we are able to, to swim upstream, um, up to a certain, I think three knots is what we can swim against, three to four knots. So there is, you know, but there, there is some serious science behind the reason of having as cute as it is, and maybe it's cause it's a female saying robot fish. Oh, it's cute, but there's some serious science behind our, our technology.

Abigail (00:49:18):

Oh, I'm sure. <laugh>, I'm sure. I just love the look. It's very, uh, and

Liane (00:49:23):

They look and change fun. This, you know, and first we, we were gonna make it look like a salmon and, and our, and our partners said, no, no, no, no. We love the clownfish color scheme. Yeah. Because when we have schools and education, uh, come by, or when we have schools come by to give them education Yeah. They, they really love [the kids.] The, the cuteness of it.

Abigail (00:49:42):

That's, that's great. Hey, there's nothing wrong with a little cuteness in, in, uh, in the world. Well,

Liane (00:49:47):

And if you look at robotics in general, I mean, unfortunately a lot of what's coming out of the US is all kind of military, you know, looking and if you look in other places around the world, right? A lot of the robotics, you know, out, out of, out of Asia are certainly more adoptable and lovable. And so, um, you know, Simian again, coming from his 30 some years in robotics, he wanted our robots to be lovable. And that way they're more embraceable and, um, in the case of the habitat, they're more, they're embraced in all of the natural habitat that we've, we've swam with coy duck, salmon, and even a cat or two, but <laugh>.

Abigail (00:50:28):

Oh, that's funny. Um, so where are you, today, I think you mentioned that you were gonna go, you were starting to fundraise. How, how's that going and, um, what are some of the challenges?

Liane (00:50:39):

So I think the challenges are few fold. One, it's deep tech in water. So I don't know if you follow climate, um, vc I love this, this new platform. It's all about the climate, climate tech VC um, CV I think is what I'm saying. So they have a deals of the week, um, and I read the deals of the week and millions and millions of dollars are going into climate. And in fact, I tweeted today asking anyone the percentages because what I've noticed in looking at it weekly is that you have millions of dollars going into everything from, um, you know, tree protection, from forest fires to bees, obviously carbon. And now finally, some biodiversity conversations are taking place, which are great, but I never see water technologies being invested in. So after about a few weeks of never seen a water technology, I finally this past week saw that a water tech got some investment, not a lot, but a little bit. And so I think the big challenge is that everybody's focusing, I love how everyone's jumping on the climate frenzy bandwagon and investing, but it's not just about carbon. And, and even if it is, let's look at Blue Carbon. I mean Urchin, omics is a great example. They just got the first Blue carbon credits. Yep. Um, so

Abigail (00:51:58):

They're coming up, uh, in, in December. We, we, I I just interviewed him like two days before he got that deal. Oh, great. Or it was announced. I, I

Liane (00:52:05):

Am a big, big fan of Brian and his team and have known him for years and he's been very gracious. You know, he's also out of Norway. Um, yep. So, um, he's been very, um, yeah, good, good company. So there are blue carbon credits that need to be taken into consideration. We've been told by those entities, Brian Urchinomics is also signed an LOI with us that, you know, we're kind of like a tool Oh. For tool tool, you can't build a house without a hammer, so you can't sequester carbon in the water without, uh, uh, the ability to harness the data and what you're doing, whether it's in seaweed or whatnot. So,

Abigail (00:52:42):

And monitor

Liane (00:52:43):

And Yeah, exactly. So we're, you know, we look at that, you know, but it's still, it's hard for I think climate investors to engage in deep technologies. Yeah. Um, they'll, they'll find, they'll fund simpler technologies that, you know, whether it's, you know, there, there are great tech out there, but they're not typically robots that cost as little as ours does that swim 24 7 in the waterways? So we've had some challenges in terms of funding. We are, we do have a lot of purchase orders and we've gotten this far through paid pilots and prepayments. And we have now, um, uh, quite a, quite a few signed purchase. We have purchase orders that are valued over, um, you know, a million dollars, a million and a half. [Wow. That's great]. And we're doing some really tremendous work. Um, now in other parts of the world, uh, that are very, very promising.

Liane (00:53:39):

We just wrapped, um, a food program with Neom, which is the Red Sea Development Project in Deloitte. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we did a three month program with them as they're developing their entire aquaculture industry on the Red Sea. Um, we're targeting to do trials with them and that will lead to, uh, significant growth for the company. So I'm really enthusiastic that we were, I was told, I don't know if this is true, I was told we were one out of a thousand applications that were selected to be a part of this Wow. Food program. Three month accelerator, really intense building business cases and feasibility studies and yeah. Working, uh, hand in hand with NEoM and Deloitte on that. It was a great opportunity. Um, [amazing]. And again, I loved, I love the NEM team and I'm, you know, really enthusiastic about proceeding in that direction. Um, and as I said, you know, there's no shortage of inbound requests from different use cases globally.

Liane (00:54:44):

So where we're, where we're trying to do is where we are getting a lot of inbound requests. You know, the venture capitalist world is still very timid, especially nowadays in the US with the recession fears. Yeah. We're raising primarily from individuals and family offices who, um, wanna really make a dent in water technology. Again, I'll say it, water is our life source and kind of lead Yeah. Lead change that ratio. It shouldn't be so minuscule investment in water when water's such a big part of our climate and our, and our, and our sustainability as humans. So, um,

Abigail (00:55:24):

for sure, I,

Abigail (00:55:24):

Yeah. I've heard you speak too about the sort of, you almost framed this in a geopolitical way. Uh, you mentioned that other countries are, are making sure, I mean, this is a, a, a tough stage of investment, right? You have an early product, but you're not fully like in the market. And it seems like in a, in the states, maybe we don't, or even in the western world, the appetite for that, that segment is, is low and it's, and it's being filled in other countries by different sources of capital.

Liane (00:55:59):

Yeah. So, um, I did appear in Portugal recently at Global Planeteers on a ocean innovation panel in kind of express <laugh>. My, my concern for, uh, the gap and the gap is Yeah. Is there are a lot of, a lot of accelerators, especially in the last couple of years popping up. There's all these people who wanna help you in your early, early, what I like to call the napkin idea stage. Yeah. And we'll, we'll give you, join their accelerator. You know, they show their LPs that they're doing something to help the environment or helping the blue tech. And then Right. You know, with the promise that you'll then be able to, you know, segue to the next level, which is great. Um, for those of us who are already kind of have further along, we're kind of too far along for a lot of these accelerators.

Liane (00:56:51):

Yeah. And what their asks are. Um, and then if you go to the other side, you know, they'll, we're either too late for them or we're told from at least series A people, we'll go first deliver these hundred units that have been ordered. Yeah. And then we're interested. So the US likes as much as, as, as we are in terms of great idea places. And I still think that there's no place that you can be so spontaneous and walk down the street and run into somebody and go have a coffee and walk out the door with a $50,000 check, which has happened to us. That I think really only happens in few places AND US being one of those, um, especially California. But, um, where, where we're problematic, that's not the early phase for the 25, $50,000 check or not the later phase for the 20,000 or 20 million, 10 million.

Liane (00:57:44):

Cuz you've already have proven the production line and you have not five customers, but you have a hundred customers. It's that in between place, which some people refer to the gap, others call it the valley of death when your plane is already off the ground, but you haven't, your flying over the ocean and you have to get over the ocean or you're gonna go and Yeah. You know, value of death is great for some technologies. I think for blue economy, we should come up with something like, you know, <laugh>, the, the, the, I don't know, the deep blue, black blue hole or something, <laugh>. But, um, yeah. So that gap is where it's been quite difficult to, to, and there are other countries, and I'll say it again, Asia certainly is more embrasive of, um, we're talking like robotics, deep tech and funding that gap and batteries.

Liane (00:58:33):

I mean, some of the early cars and batteries could get their start in the US even at MIT. And, but then they couldn't fill the gap. So other players, China being one of them, stepped in and funded some of those gap, um, technologies that ultimately became Chinese technologies. So yeah. Um, this is an issue in the US and I'm, I'm, I am, you know, I do find that as an American, I I'm going to point out what is broken in our society. Yeah. And not, uh, because I don't like our society, but because I think our society can improve. And unless we have, um, some self-reflection about how we approve, improve a society, whether it's also on the form of empathy and, and where our, where we stand with the climate and what's important. And I'm really tired of hearing from impact investors about risk.

Liane (00:59:25):

When you look at what's the greater risk if we don't have these technologies, the risk is life. Yeah. It's not your roi, it's life. Life, uh, right. So these are, I'm, I look at it and, and maybe it's cuz I come from a war correspondent or conflict reporter background where there's life and I, I look in it and I'm not afraid to point to the problems. And our company is very vocal at, at standing up for what issues are existing, whether it's, um, in the impact community or in our, in our rivers and in, and lack of attention to how to improve our water sources so that we can, um, flourish and, and live healthily and certainly for our next generations.

Abigail (01:00:09):

Right. I don't think it's a question of, I mean, it's, it's an imperative. It's, you know, we, these problems of are getting so big and so immediate that we can't afford not to say anything at this point.

Liane (01:00:21):

Absolutely. And it's funny, you know, I'll, I'll refer back to my, my founder and partner Simeon. Um, he's been telling me this stuff for a decade and every day he's like, see, told you. I mean, he doesn't, he looks, because this is exactly what I've been saying for a decade. It's all

Abigail (01:00:36):

And you're still married, <laugh>. Oh yeah. And

Liane (01:00:38):

Very, I mean, we, very happily, we are perfect.

Abigail (01:00:41):

He's told you so.

Liane (01:00:42):

He's so amazing in the sense that, you know, besides being just, just megamind with technology, he also really knows markets. So he really focuses on markets. So it's not a lot of inventors will just focus on like their invention, but not him. His is about how it can help people first. So everything he builds or designs or invents, uh, is really about mission, about helping people and looking at the market and what, what will be in the next five. He runs about seven years ahead. Um, and we've been doing this about seven years. So yeah, the market is caught up and

Abigail (01:01:18):

Finally catching up.

Liane (01:01:19):

Amazing. I'm, I'm, I'm really happy to be on that curve as opposed to chasing the market that we're kind of on the

Abigail (01:01:26):

Curve. Yeah. When people come to you. So, uh, what advice do you have for other entrepreneurs in this sort of impact climate space or aspiring entrepreneurs?

Liane (01:01:38):

Um, I think I can only say regardless, impact or not impact is that, you know, be true to your gut. And every, you hear this from everybody that you gotta love what you're doing because it's hard. And there's some mornings you just say, why am I doing this? Or, or you read about everyone getting funded, but you, and you go, but what about us<laugh>? You know, I know it's, it is a rollercoaster ride. Even sometimes when someone writes back, I know I have this correspondence with a few super angels and, and people from even like, you know, Steve Wozniak who will say, I love the robot fish. Just, no, they don't invest, but they give you those words. Doesn't matter who they are that I'm rooting for you. You know, I send out quarterly updates consistently. Um, or I try to consistently to people who've been following us, who I would love to have invest those who didn't, but just have given us, Hey, I'm rooting for you words so they can follow the project.

Liane (01:02:41):

And I think that's important. So for any entrepreneur, I do think that creating a database early on about who you're, who you're communicating with and following up with them is crucial. Cuz you never know, five years down the road, maybe like Adam Draper, you know, he got my, my updates for four years straight, Hey, it's me, robot fish lady. And finally I think on the fourth year <laugh>, he said, oh my gosh, I, I gotta, I gotta, you know, I gotta talk. And we were one of his first, uh, us in Cora Vita were one of his first, um, water tech investments in at Boost vc. So that's important. Ignore also the whole climate thing, I think is a lot of noise. Yeah. The not one of our investors is a climate investor except for Adam cuz Right. But he's not tick typically a climate investor.

Liane (01:03:28):

He's crypto, right? He's robotics. He's someone who sees the future. That's why I liked him. He wasn't a climate investor when I was riding him all those years. But I really think it's about look who you wanna partner with, who you like. Um, yeah. And I would say to the climate community, especially those who, who constantly write on LinkedIn that they wanna help founders, that you should open up your DM so that you can link to somebody with a note and not just require an email because either you're open or you're not open. And either you are dedicated to the climate or you're not dedicated to the climate. And I do think that, um, for all the people who won't take cold emails or cold notes, that's not being open. Right. And so, you know, practice what you preach is what I wanna say there.

Liane (01:04:14):

And just, um, you know, I, I think that ignore the noise. Put your blinders on like a racehorse. Hit your target and just go for that target. Cuz you're gonna tell, everyone's gonna tell you a different way to make a deck. There's a million ways to make a deck. Everyone's gonna tell you to do, do this way or don't do that. Or, or be more focused. Just be you and you'll find your people and you'll find your investors. Um, we did people who invest in aqauii, we got a cap table of about 25 people in family offices and a handful of VCs like Arlene Hamilton and Boost, as I mentioned, DTN out of New York ad Astra outta San Diego Gro GrowthX as well. So these guys all are unique people. Each and every one of them who stepped forward, I came because they themselves lived very interesting life and adventurous lives. So I already know the type of people who invest in Aquaai. And so for you people starting out in your own journals journeys, look at who you are and, and start noticing the type of people who, who follow you and are attracted to you and are investing in you. And that'll help you down the road when you're doing your seed in series A.

Abigail (01:05:31):

I love it. That's just great. It's great advice. Um, and I, I don't think we talk about the importance of your cap table enough in the industry. I think it's sort of like, oh, we need money, let's grab it. And these are people that you're really gonna be kind of wed to. So one, you need to like them, but two, they can be so strategic and helpful. So two, it's so good to have a gr like a cap table of, of investors that really, um, are gonna bat for you and fight for you and, and help you in those moments where you, you need a boost. So I think it's really great advice.

Liane (01:06:10):

Yeah. And especially the further along you get, so your early days, you know, you're obviously taking smaller checks from people and you know, they're not in, in the, they might not have the capacity to do later rounds with you. Um, and as you grow more towards your seed level, um, of investors, it is important that you engage with people who are, um, either A introducing you to others. Boost is great that way. Um, and or able to follow along. Um, yeah, not, you know, a lot of, a lot of, uh, funds have their mandates that they don't follow along, which is fine. That's their mandate. Um, yeah. But you know, if they're helping you in other ways, it's important. Whether it's, uh, telling the story better, whether it's, like I said, through introductions or just, you know, like being there, you know, um, answering your emails. You need that from your, from those that you are engaged with.

Abigail (01:07:15):

Yep. Cheers to that. Um, hey, thank you Liane. That was amazing.

Liane (01:07:24):

Thank you.

Abigail (01:07:25):

You. Like <laugh>, I'm just, I wish everybody were like you. I was just like sitting back and enjoying the story. I felt like that. Oh my

CONCLUSION

What a treat. Liane is one of many fearless women - can I say badass on my own show? -I have spoken to who are putting it all on the line for their mission. I love how personal the story is to Liane and her partner and how, as with BRian and Tore; the motivation to build their business is so personal. Planetary health for their next generations. I am confident Liane will overcome the funding obstacles and she's going to grow more and more robotic sea animals. I connected her with an upcoming guest who is looking to build a robotic whale! Can’t wait to see that happen! Another important lesson from Liane: You don’t have to be a marine biologist or engineer to play a big part in the blue tech revolution! It’s going to take all of us. Come join the mission! And if you don’t know how, send me an email.

CREDITS

Thank you for listening. Please follow Happy Planet wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review - it really helps new listeners discover the show. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me. I am also the Executive Producer. The talented Dylan Heuer [hoyer] is our producer and editor. Composer GEORG BRANDL EGOFF created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetpodcast.com.