Burnt Island Ventures

BIV Monthly Update L (Yes, L! We made it to 50 of these!) below. Feels like good momentum before the end of the year. Welcome to FLOCEAN. Lots of stuff to come early next year. Have a super holiday, and we’ll see you in the second quarter of the century. Yikes.

"Investors are emotional. They want to invest in what they believe in." Tune into Episode 27 of The Fundamental Molecule featuring Debra G. Coy, Advisor and Prev. Partner at XPV Water Partners. Episode link here: https://lnkd.in/eJKtd3Av

We may be biased, but chatting climate investing is always so much fun! Excited to join our friends at Superorganism, Holocene, and Wild Assets later today for Investors for Climate NYC. 🥂🌎

By 2030, it's estimated that there will be a 40% gap in the global water supply demand. The need for new sources of water is real and urgent. But, in many places, seawater desalination (the generation of freshwater from vast quantities of seawater) is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Enter FLOCEAN, who are working in a different paradigm to develop seawater desalination projects ~400-500 meters down on the seabed where the seawater is cleaner, system energy requirements are about 40% less, land is available, and many of the non-value added costs and complexity of land-based desal are either eliminated or greatly reduced, while providing a much more environmentally friendly solution. Seawater desal has been on our watchlist for a time, and we are delighted to have finally found an on-ramp into the market. Alexander Fuglesang and the entire FLOCEAN team: thanks for letting us dive into it with you alongside some seriously strong partners at Nysnø Climate Investments, Freebird Partners LP, Katapult Ocean, MP Pensjon, and Siemens Energy.

Over the last decade, I've been so lucky to learn from seriously good water people, and Debra G. Coy is one of the best. Over four decades, she has built an extraordinary body of work from public markets analyst to XPV Water Partners, the preeminent water investing firm that has been extraordinarily supportive to us, to her current independent role advising and sitting on the boards of major water companies. She sits on the investment committee of our Opportunity Fund and it has been such a pleasure to benefit from her insight and wisdom as we have made our first two investments at the Series B. This is a really fun conversation. Everything from the lessons for founders, from earnings transcripts to lending her perspective on the overall history of private markets investing in water. Please enjoy my conversation with Debra G. Coy. Tune into our 27th episode of The Fundamental Molecule featuring Debra G. Coy, Advisor and Prev. Parnter at XPV Water Partners. Episode link here: https://lnkd.in/eJKtd3Av

"The CEO sets the vision. The COO makes it happen. It's a partnership of vision and execution." Tune into Episode 26 of The Fundamental Molecule featuring Guillaume Clairet, COO and H2O Innovation. Episode link here: https://lnkd.in/ePGTH8ZJ

As of this morning, over a million people walked up to a HOPE Hydration station in 2024 and #refilledwithHOPE. We're always hustling hard, but the end of the year is always important to me to stop and reflect on some of the amazing wins we've had. I hope you get a chance to do the same, and i'm excited to reshare this post in 12 months and see where this number is :)

What fun to join NYU Stern: Entrepreneurship & Startup Association (ESA) for a conversation on the future of the $1.4 trillion water sector. Thanks so much for hosting Tom Ferguson for the evening!

We all know about the CEO in a company. When the company is small, the CEO does everything, and when it's big, the CEO sets the vision, hires the right people and makes sure they have what they need to be successful. But what about a layer deeper than that? Guillaume Clairet is a fascinating example of a world-class COO. Now he's too modest to be known as the power behind the throne, but he's the guy that makes sure what needs to be done gets done. And it's an interesting time for him after both the $395 million delisting of H2O Innovation by Ember and their acquisition of NextEra Energy, Inc.’s Distributed Water business. Along the way, H2O Innovation have done things their own way and have built an exceptional business and this is a fascinating insight into the practicality of that journey. Please enjoy my conversation with Guillaume Clairet. Tune into our 26th episode of The Fundamental Molecule featuring Guillaume Clairet, COO at H2O Innovation. Episode link here: https://lnkd.in/ePGTH8ZJ

If you’ve ever been stuck holding your water bottle under an absurdly slow stream of water from a dispenser with a small red light looking accusingly at you (which means “Replace Filter”, and no one does), you know water fountains are… not ideal. HOPE Hydration have transformed water fountains from a pure cost sink to a revenue driver for venues of all kinds. It’s a simple idea - a high-class, reliable, connected drinking water fountain, with a large screen attached to run ads. They represent a step-change in the evolution of global free, reliable water access and having known them since 2021, we are delighted to announce them as our second investment in Fund II. Jorge Richardson, Cristina Gnecco, Dave Tigue, and the entire team at HOPE Hydration, thanks for letting us be a part of it, and welcome to the Burnt Island.