ABOUT THE ROLE
The world is facing an unprecedented crisis; as temperatures rise, anthropogenic ravaging of nature expands, and weather patterns become increasingly erratic and extreme, land that was once verdant is now decaying into barren wasteland. This loss of productivity robs both humanity and nature of precious resources, resulting in increased risk of food security, loss of habitat, and elimination of ecosystem services. However, in some of the world’s harshest environments, inexhaustible resources are left untapped: sun, wind, and sea. At Deep Science Ventures, we are developing technology to harness these resources, revitalise degraded land, and unlock its productive potential. We are now seeking outstanding Founders to lead a new venture in this area.
The role is full-time and fully remote until venture incorporation and spin-out, after - TBD.
THE CHALLENGE
Drylands make up 41% of the earth’s landmass, and 93% of that land is currently at risk of desertification. In fact, every year we lose over 100 million hectares of land, exposing 38% of the global population to increased risk of zoonotic disease, land use conflict, food and water insecurity, and negatively affecting the world economy by approximately $15 Trillion. Furthermore, this degradation can depreciate the value of land by 5 to 17 times, due to loss of productivity. However, this problem represents an opportunity: reversing this process, and restoring productivity increases the land value by the same factor. Barren land can be purchased at low cost, and once transformed into productive farmland can be sold for a handsome profit.
Our mission is to unlock the latent potential of coastal degraded land by developing technologies that facilitate profitable land uplift operations. However, land is predominantly driven from a state of health to a state of degradation, and not the other way around. This is for one simple reason: it has historically been much cheaper to clear cut healthy natural ecosystems than it has been to install the infrastructure to uplift degraded land. However this short sighted strategy is failing as the world loses more and more healthy land to desertification. Business models and technologies that can tap into the massive natural resources available in degraded coastal land and profitably revive that land have the potential to provide enormous benefits to both humanity and the environment, and bypass the impending blight on agriculture that has not been hardened against climate change.
OUR APPROACH TO THIS OPPORTUNITY
It’s actually extremely easy to return life to degraded land; it all starts with water, and ends with regenerative agriculture practices. However that high level simplicity is undermined by layers of nuance. Water is simultaneously the world’s most precious and most undervalued resource. It is routinely taken for granted, until it runs out, upon which it is worth its weight in gold. Global aquifers are being depleted at rates that are orders of magnitude higher than their rate of replenishment, and major cities are rapidly approaching their “day 0”, when municipal water supplies will run dry. Despite this, agriculture accounts for over 70% of global water consumption, and due to the estimated $700B in global subsidies related to water, farmers rarely pay for the actual value of the water used on their land. So with regulations and economics obscuring the true value of water, and with farmers and landowners unable to bear the financial risk of desertification, how can one possibly overcome desertification?
Our technology stack is designed to enable a business model that will allow agricultural ventures to successfully operate in coastal desert regions, by employing several strategies:
- Mimic environments where we know life thrives - we have explicit evidence that shows life is most abundant in areas with higher humidity, and where temperatures are optimised for photosynthesis. We also know that it is possible to replicate these conditions cost effectively at large scales.
- Minimise the non-value added costs of desalination - desalination is often derided as being too expensive and energy intensive to solve the water crisis. What doesn’t come up in those statements is the cost associated with all desalination being run as industrial reverse osmosis facilities; non-recurring large scale engineering, maintenance and membrane replacement, pre and post treatment, expensive pressure vessels, and purchased (not generated) electricity. By attacking the true cost drivers of conventional desalination systems, we can build smaller, modular, mass producible devices; effectively the solar panels of desalination.
- Optimise diversified revenue streams - Our technology stack leverages synergies that maximise revenue from multiple products, minimise capital expenditures, and increase reliability in order to generate high levels of value for both landowners and the earth; producing fresh water, allowing for cultivation of fruits and vegetables, and even capturing carbon.
- Use every resource available - Through a rigorous ground up, first principles thinking process, we looked at every factor of coastal arid regions and state of the art desalination in order to create an elegant system of technologies that extract maximum value from abundant natural resources (sun and wind), recycles outputs, and minimises environmental impact. Arid regions can provide 1 kw of low grade thermal energy per square metre to evaporate water, evaporating water can cool solar panels to improve efficiency, brine can be used to make water treatment chemicals and purify water. Virtuous cycles make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
Collectively, these strategies come together to form the backbone of successful desert farming business models, with our technology being sold and / or licensed to customers to implement.
We are seeking two co-founders to build this venture with us: one with experience in developing ventures in the water and/or agricultural space, and the other - experienced developer of ion exchange membrane systems.
Requirements
We are seeking a business oriented co-founder with deep expertise in the startup scene, excited to start a new venture reversing anthropogenic desertification.
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 and water purification, extreme environment agriculture or carbon capture. Potential examples are: launching a product, leading a project that scaled to commercial or industrial output, or commissioning of utility scale facilities.
- High level of business skills to operate an early stage company, with the ideal candidate having demonstrated them in one the above mentioned industries. Examples of desired competencies include:
- Building financial models, preparing operational budgets, predicting burn rate and runway, monitoring and analysing financial performance, and assessing risk.
- Customer oriented (non-technical) product development, marketing and customer acquisition, pricing strategies.
- You’ll likely have completed a Master’s in Business Administration, or equivalent level of industry experience; a technical undergraduate degree in relevant fields such as chemical engineering, chemistry, agronomy, process engineering or similar demonstrated experience in technical industries is very attractive.
- Our technology stack touches on and is adjacent to a wide range of industries and concepts, and experience with, knowledge of, or exposure to at least one of them is desirable:
- Carbon markets: Experience in establishing pre-purchase agreements or off-take agreements for carbon capture and sequestration; experience in successfully integrating third party measurement, recording, and verification; experience with locating and interfacing with deep well injection sites for CO2 disposal.
- Water Market: Experience in the desalination and water purification industry, preferably on the utility scale; knowledge of water pricing, subsidies, public water markets, infrastructure, and regulation in national markets; 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 on deployment of commercial or utility scale systems.
- Agriculture: Experience in the identification of ideal sites, interfacing with land owners or government agencies to buy or lease land, real estate investment, and price negotiation; Experience with agriculture in arid regions or extreme conditions, ability to develop farming schedules and rotations of locally grown crop; Knowledge of soil health management, experience with biodiversity uplift, reversal of land degradation, and controlled environment agriculture.
- 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.
- You have an entrepreneurial mindset and have experience with startups or “intrapreneurial” activities.
- You have a strong desire to build a company and a team that will make a huge positive impact on environmental restoration and cannot wait to get started!
As this program is focused on remote arid regions, candidates that are willing to spend significant time travelling to potential site locations following incorporation will be highly regarded and considered advantageous during the qualification process. Fluency in Spanish would be highly desirable for this position as well.
Benefits
ABOUT DSV & THIS OPPORTUNITY AREA
Deep Science Ventures (DSV) is a science venture builder that is 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 4 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 translation of science at some of the most respected universities, charities, funds and government agencies. 2/3 of the team have founded or led a company at C-suite and 65% have a PhD. Our team dedicate 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 optimised, purpose-built, proprietary tools, resources and processes to help create high-impact ventures from scratch, using our venture creation methodology. Read more about one of our key tools here.
- 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 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 that’s 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 after post spin-out, including fundraising, commercial partnerships, recruitment and team-building (amongst other things); plus
- There are dozens of Founders currently at DSV across sectors working collaboratively and supporting one another - a unique resource to draw on.
