Welcome to the Luna 9 Explaining Innovation Series! A set of exciting interviews with leaders in technology and innovation.
Our next instalment is a chat with Dr Thomas Fudge, founder and CEO of WASE.

Founded to create cost-effective and environment-saving wastewater solutions, WASE’s technology provides a revolutionary solution to treating water on-site.
Their vision is world where we unlock the power of waste to fuel our future; where waste will become the everyday sustainable source of water, energy and fertilisers enabling communities to flourish.


Read the interview transcript here:

Michael Green: I’m very lucky to have Dr. Thomas Fudge with me, who I’ve known for a while now, from sitting next to you in the Science Creates building and hearing about your brilliant company WASE. So why don’t we start off by you just giving me a 30 second elevator pitch about why WASE exists and what it is that you’re doing.

Thomas Fudge: So the reason why WASE exists is because globally, 80% of wastewater is currently discharged into our environment, untreated, which is causing huge amounts of pollution globally. We’re now seeing a shift from stricter environment regulations where there are restrictions on what can be discharged into water sources, what can be discharged into land. We’re seeing a lot of people actually standing up to say that they want their natural resources to be better cared for. And we’re now seeing a lot of the water utilities now starting to crack down on the biggest producers of wastewater and enforcing tighter restrictions, which is really affecting the food and drinks industry. They now have to have onsite wastewater management solutions that are either very energy intensive and cost a lot of money to operate, or they have to have trucks that will come to that site, collect the water and then drive it 50 to 100 miles to have specialist treatment, which is costing them hundreds of thousands a year.What we’ve developed is a solution where they can treat all of their wastewater onsite. We can extract the valuable resources within the wastewater so they can generate energy, we can recover fertilisers and then they can reuse the water or it can go back into that local environment. So then it can be rejuvenating.

Michael Green: I’m talking to a guy who’s clearly very accomplished at pitching! You’ve obviously been through several goes at getting investment and been very successful at it. So I think that the next question I want to ask you is around how you have to change the way that you talk about WASE and its value depending on who you’re talking to. If you’re pitching to investors or a commercial company. So for potential customers, how is the way that you describe the value of WASE changed and how do you have to adapt that depending on your audience?

Thomas Fudge: I think that’s a really good question and I think there are a lot of similarities depending on if you’re talking to a customer or the investor. Ultimately, I really have to start with why you’re doing something to really understanding the problem and communicating that problem. That real difference, I think, is when you’re speaking to the customer, you just have to really make it about them, their problems, their pain points, and really identify that and make sure you can communicate that really well. Not only is it a way to build trust with the customer that they know what you do understand them, but you can also get feedback from them to make sure that you do understand their problem and you might not want to change your solution for that.

Whereas with an investor you do it much more on a generalist sort of scope. So you’ll think about a variety of different customers, how the pain points can be spread across a certain region and then also on a global scale as well. And then when we want to talk about our solution and the value it creates it’s the same thing with customers. You talk about the value you create with them and how you can really accelerate their net zero journey and the benefits that it has for them. And growing their sales and ultimately benefiting their business. Whereas with their investors it’ll initially be talking about your your beachhead market, how you can create real value for them and address their solution with your technology, but then how it can really go global and then really looking at the overall vision of the company and sort of the where we’re going in the future and the global impact that we can have.

Michael Green: It’s really interesting stuff! I’m intrigued as – knowing that this idea started with your PhD, if I’m not mistaken – it’s very easy for you as a founder to describe the value of it, but how easy have you found it to translate that into your website or your sales material or bringing in a team and having them do it for you? And what role does that stuff have to play to take the pressure off you as a founder, as being the one who has to go out there all the time and convince people of WASE’s value?

Thomas Fudge: I think it’s really important to make sure you’ve got a really clear messaging on your website and the marketing materials you have, and I would hold our hands out. We haven’t been the best at it! We have gone on quite a big pivot since we started. First founded, we were really focused much more on decentralized sewage and sanitation, and now we’re really focusing on industrial food and drinks manufacturing wastewater. So we’re currently actually going through that revamp and revitalizing our website to make sure our messaging is really aligned to our customers. And we have to identify customer needs and pain points extremely quickly, because that’s the first point of call where a customer will go and he just needs a way to communicate exactly what they need and to make sure that you understand their problem really clearly and that’s something I think is really so important because that is everybody will go straight onto your website and look at what you’re doing before they have that point of contact with, you know, anybody else.

Michael Green: Yeah, couldn’t agree more. So then lastly, what’s next for WASE – what’s in the pipeline? What have you got to look forward to? I presume there’s some stuff you can’t tell us but I’m really intrigued to see the next step for you on your journey.

Thomas Fudge: So the next step is a really exciting one. For the last five years it’s all been about research and development, developing our product and getting it ready to launch. We’ve now just closed 1.8 million in orders, so it’s building those systems, getting it in front of the customers starting to create the impact that we’ve been working so hard on and growing the team out and I know everybody is really excited to get those first initial units out. So that’s super exciting. We’re about to close our latest investment round and that’s where we can start really hitting the acceleration button. And over the next five years I can definitely see us going global and creating huge impact where we can save huge amounts of water that can be reused, saving megatons of carbon, really trying to create that sustainable future that we’re working towards.

Michael Green: Amazing! Well, we’ve been very interested in your journey, love hearing about what you’re doing and people can go to wase.co.uk and find out more and keep up to date with the journey that Thomas and the rest of the team are on. And of course you can go to Luna9design.com to find out what we’re doing around communicating innovative ideas.
Tom, thank you so much for joining us. Really insightful stuff today and we really look forward to seeing what you do next on your mission to make the world’s water better for us and hopefully make a real impact going forward.

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