Issue #29: Varuna, Career Advice, Peer Pairs, and The Problem With Podcasts.
I’ve decided to dive headlong into building Varuna. It’ll be a hard slog but, already, the support of family/friends and acquaintances have landed us a verbal commitment for a contract from a large midwestern water utility and funding commitments (see image below).
Poor water quality is a pervasive and big issue in the US. There is a one-in-four chance the water from your tap is unsafe. There are at least 100 ‘boil water’ warnings across the US every day. And utilities lack the resources to quickly detect and remedy the issues. Varuna provides consumers with peace of mind about the water they drink in their homes. Our sensor captures data on water quality at the edge location (building/home) and, through a dashboard, the utility can manage, process, view, analyze and collaborate to rectify the issues to ensure you and your family only drink good quality water.
We’d love your help too: with introductions to water utility folk (experts and decision makers), multi-location quick service restaurants (QSRs) and even investors.
As evidenced by this issue, I won’t stop curating PM. I enjoy it too much to let it go even as we build the business :) I hope you enjoy this issue.
Screenshot of a text from one of those supportive friends I mentioned above.
Article
I read this article about Texas over a year ago. It informed my prediction, despite all the hype and my hope, that Beto O'Rourke wouldn’t win his Senate race.
Information is no longer discernible from storytelling. That is a problem in a world where truth is (seemingly) no longer as important. ’How Podcasts Became a Seductive—and Sometimes Slippery—Mode of Storytelling’ has made me cull the number of podcasts I subscribe to.
A friend, whom I continue to hope to collaborate with, shared this McKinsey article on Africa with me. He knows how much I believe Africa is on the cusp of a business revolution.
Ignorance has never been an excuse. Turns out you and I have a moral obligation to ensure our opinions are informed. Especially in a world where your opinion is a tweet that can go viral pretty quickly.
I continue to be fascinated by intellectual peers who work in pairs. Especially when they are at the top of their game. We see this represented in the work of most Nobel Prize winners in scientific fields. This fascinating article about the pair who made Google what it is and making it what it will be, and it’s not Page and Brin, is a rare glimpse into this peer-pairing phenomena in technology.
It’s great to see people friends find success pursuing their dreams of empowering others. Aditi Avasthi, has been using AI to upskill millions of people in India and she was just selected to Vogue’s change-makers list. She’s building the knowledge tree. And she just got $180M to make that happen.
Some career advice. And, like all advise, the advisor does not know your context. But you do. Adjust, or don’t, accordingly.
Books
A topic that’s gotten a lot of my attention is AI (you know this if you’ve been reading PM) and THE must-read book on this topic is
AIQ: How People And Machines Are Smarter Together, written by Nick Polson and James Scott, proves that, unlike most other people who write about AI/data, if you truly understand it you can convey even the most rigorous concepts simply.
Change the subject ‘The Billionaire Raj’ from India to Brazil and you get ’Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country’. Both books talk about the tangled web of politics, people and corruption in developing countries. Webs that prevent the populace from participating in the growth and promise of these developing countries. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. They were/are familiar to me…
I’m still on my 'City’ kick - many water utilities are public institutions and I’m working with a fantastic company to curate the City of The Future conference in San Antonio - and I shared the five books below with a good friend who’s interested in cities.
The death and life of great American cities by Jane Jacobs is referenced in almost every other city book.
City: A guidebook for the urban age is a coffee-tablesque book that you will come back to time and again.
Aerotropolis dives more into the policy and politics of cities
Scale by Geoffrey West talks about the biology and physical laws that govern cities and how they relate to the life/death of companies
The Works: Anatomy of a City: a teardown of everything that has to happen to make things work in NY
All the very best this coming week. Do reach out with any introductions or commitments towards growing Varuna. We’re focused on providing peace of mind about water quality to every home in the US. And soon the world.
ps: Share the favorite article or book you read in 2018. I’m compiling a mega-list to share in 2019!
Best
Seyi