Co-founder in Residence, Systems Architect for Water Treatment Technologies - Deep Science Ventures

Join Us as a Founder in Residence in Agriculture

We're on the lookout for entrepreneurial individuals with technical and commercial domain expertise with keen interest in founding, and building a global scale, impact driven, high growth company from ground up.

We are seeking applications from experienced industry, startup and/or new science or engineering based technology development professionals from anywhere in the world to work with us on hyper efficient distillation to prevent global water scarcity. 

You’ll work closely with the DSV team and the current Founder in Residence, Brad S. Roan, for this area to co-found and spin-out a new company. Once the new venture is incorporated with pre-seed investment from DSV, you and your co-founders will own the majority stake in the business and continue receiving support from the DSV team post-spinout.

The Opportunity Area

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis: within the next decade, demand for clean water is expected to outstrip supply by 40%. Water scarcity represents a global economic risk worth hundreds of billions of dollars, given water's critical role across industries. Compounding this issue, increasingly extreme and erratic weather patterns are causing most precipitation to be lost as runoff rather than renewing groundwater resources.

The challenge lies in the global economy being built on a foundation of unsustainable practices. Most water users—domestic, industrial, and agricultural—do not pay for the true cost of water, which includes sustainable practices. The true cost can be up to twenty times what end users currently pay. This unsustainable depletion of ground and surface water resources has led to the current trajectory of extreme water scarcity. With major cities like London, São Paulo, and Tokyo already struggling to avoid a "Day Zero," scalable and sustainable water treatment solutions are urgently needed.

At Deep Science Ventures (DSV), we are developing technology to make water treatment as commonplace as water itself. We are now seeking exceptional Founders to lead a new venture in this area.

Our Approach

Water is primarily treated as a civil project; treating wastewater and providing freshwater to the community is the purview of government agencies. Water projects are incredibly slow-moving and typically large capital projects with very low tolerance for risk. As a result, the water industry has suffered from chronically low private investment and a similarly abysmal lack of innovation. The overlap of an impending crisis with stagnant technological development represents a space that is ripe for disruption.

We believe the best strategy to change the way the world approaches water is not to invest in making water but in the technologies that make water. In the midst of a gold rush, don’t mine for gold; invest in picks and shovels. In the same way that myriad tech companies are facilitating the transition to sustainable energy, we see our role as facilitating the transition to sustainable water. Looking at other industries and technologies that have become ubiquitous, there are prevailing patterns that we’ve built our strategy around:

1. Mass Producibility - For a product to be inexpensive, it must be manufactured in a manner that allows for high-throughput modern manufacturing techniques that benefit from economies of scale.
2. Learning Curves - Every unit produced is another opportunity to make the next one cheaper. While mass production imparts savings through economies of scale, learning curves impart savings through making inherently better products and eliminating the NRE associated with individual units.
3. Scalability - Modular systems that can be applied for both the smallest and the largest possible applications move more units through sheer number of customers. More customers mean cheaper products.
4. Robustness - The best device is the one that you don’t need to think about. By focusing on the robustness of the product and process, we minimize labor, inputs, and downtime.

Applying these principles is leading us down the path of generating the most affordable water treatment systems in the world and, by extension, the world's most affordable water. In short: we want to build the solar panel of water treatment.

Requirements

Who Should Apply:

We are seeking a technical co-founder with deep expertise in the startup scene, excited to start a new venture to prevent global water scarcity.

The ideal candidate should meet the following requirements:

• A documented track record of successful projects or contributions in at least one of the following areas: desalination, water purification, or wastewater treatment. Potential examples include launching a product, leading a project that scaled to commercial or industrial output, or commissioning utility-scale facilities.
• High level of business skills to operate an early-stage company, with demonstrated experience in the above-mentioned industries. Desired competencies include building financial models, preparing operational budgets, predicting burn rate and runway, monitoring and analyzing financial performance, and assessing risk.
• Customer-oriented product development, marketing, customer acquisition, and pricing strategies.
• An advanced degree (MS or PhD) in a technical field like mechanical engineering, civil engineering, engineering physics, or similar.

Our technology stack touches on multiple industries, and exposure to one or more of the following is highly desirable:

• Water Market: Experience in the desalination and water purification industry, preferably on the utility scale, introducing and scaling innovation or new technology in the water industry; knowledge of water pricing, subsidies, public water markets, infrastructure, and regulation across different jurisdictions; knowledge of desalination environmental impact mitigation, brine management, and desalination distribution infrastructure.
• Solar: Experience with the deployment of commercial and industrial solar systems, or other large-scale renewable energy systems, particularly in remote locations.
• Construction: Experience interfacing with general contractors to execute the deployment of commercial or utility-scale systems.

Additional Skills: As an early-stage founder, some capacity level for the following skills will be highly regarded:

• Talent acquisition and retention, designing compensation and benefits packages, payroll management, and policy development.
• Understanding the rules and regulations that apply to the company and the product when operating internationally, and development of intellectual property documentation.

Desirable Traits:

• Entrepreneurial mindset with experience in startups or “intrapreneurial” activities.
• Strong desire to build a company and a team that will make a significant positive impact on global water scarcity.
• Willingness to spend time on-site in potentially remote locations following incorporation.

Benefits

About DSV:

Deep Science Ventures (DSV) is a science venture builder working to create a future in which both humans and the planet can thrive. We build new science start-ups using our venture creation process and recruit impact-driven individuals with specific skill sets to become Founders.

We operate in four sectors: Pharmaceuticals, Climate, Agriculture, and Computation, tackling the challenges defining those areas by taking a first principles approach and partnering with leading institutions.

Our Offer:

By joining DSV, you’ll be joining a team of operators who have founded companies and led the translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds, and government agencies. Two-thirds of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite, and 65% have a PhD. Our team dedicates several hours every week to each Founder or founding team to provide tailored guidance, resources, and feedback covering every aspect of what it takes to successfully launch a new venture from both the tech and commercial perspectives:

• We provide optimized, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources, and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch, using our venture creation methodology.
• We draw on opportunity area-specific know-how provided by our network of Partners and Advisors.
• We offer Co-Founder(s) sourcing and assessment via our proprietary tools, advisory board sourcing, advice on technical and commercial investment milestones, co-development of the technical roadmap and go-to-market strategy, investment readiness pre-launch with further focus on technical and commercial proof, and customer development support.
• We provide £250k investment governed by our Investment Committee to incorporate the new venture and develop early proof-of-concept data needed to attract high-profile non-venture studio VCs. This funding is also key to get grant funding, which most often needs to be matched with private investment.
• We provide guaranteed income of £4,166 per month paid to each Founder in Residence as a consultancy fee until the company is launched and the pre-seed investment is secured.
• You and your co-founders will own a majority equity stake in the company.
• We provide continuous support post spin-out, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment, and team-building (amongst other things).
• There are dozens of Founders currently at DSV across sectors working collaboratively and supporting one another - a unique resource to draw on.