Why Joining Professional Associations as a Water Entrepreneur Matters

Before I knew that I was building out my company’s category ecosystem, my entrepreneurial instincts led me to join leadership of North America's leading drinking water association, American Water Works Association. Here is the story of why I joined and how it helped me build the category of automated apparent loss detection. 

I first joined the North Carolina Section of AWWA, as a graduate student at UNC in 2009. As a student it was an easy decision, I got a discount and could use that membership to attend conferences and publish papers in the Journal AWWA, a win-win for any burgeoning PhD. The two published papers in Journal AWWA’s then-peer-reviewed section were certainly a nice bonus in racking up my professional credentials. But far and away, the most valuable part of the membership was the community of water professionals. This group of humble, hard-working and dedicated professionals quickly became the crucial differentiator that allowed me to scale Valor Water Analytics, the company I founded in 2013, and catapult our sales velocity with utility customers. By 2019, I joined the Cal Nevada AWWA Board and served as Board Chair for 2022-23 and as a Trustee of AWWA Management and Leadership Division. Here’s why every entrepreneur with any overlap with utility leaders should include leadership in a water association as a key strategy in their sales arsenal.

Be Where the Customer Feedback Lives

The year I graduated from UNC and moved to San Francisco, CA to begin building what would become Valor Analytics was also the first year of the devastating 2011 - 2017 California drought.  I attended the Cal Nevada Section AWWA Spring Conference in Santa Clara, CA that year and listened to story after story of the struggles, suffering and frustration of utility managers trying to cope with the extremities of drought. Their feedback mimicked the stories I had gathered from the Southeast drought of 2006-2008 while conducting research on the revenue impacts of drought and how to establish drought resilient water rates. It suddenly dawned on me, I could actually be quite useful here.

In large part, that was because my AWWA membership allowed me a close up view to the world of my would-be customers whose insights and feedback on the reality of their work became my key differentiator as a company leader. By the next conference, I had multiple speaking roles and was holding sessions that felt like group therapy to desperate utility finance managers whose utilities were on the verge of bankruptcy due to sharp inclining block rates and the revenue impacts of conserving water. I was creating content, educating the marketplace, and building an ecosystem around the problem of water loss and apparent loss detection - the key components to creating a new product category. I rose to chairwoman of the California Nevada AWWA Financial Management Committee and was now part of the leadership of a network that brought me face-to-face with hundreds, if not thousands of customers.  

A Hive of Buzzing Customers

Meanwhile, in 2013, I moved to San Francisco and had started building Valor Water Analytics, a utility analytics software company. If company building wasn’t challenging enough, in California, I knew no one. A tip for aspiring entrepreneurs, start your company in a place with a strong network. Trying to start a business and build a network simultaneously is quite the mountain to climb. Over and over, I relied on the association of outstanding, hard-working, humble individuals I knew through AWWA to build the network I needed to scale the company and boost sales velocity. I met all of my initial customers at either California Nevada AWWA conferences or ACE, the AWWA’s national cousin. The cost-benefit of not being part of this community became overwhelming obvious. Utility customers are part of this association, it’s where they gather to learn, share, grieve and laugh. Where else could an entrepreneur better spend their time than elbow-to-elbow with their customers?

Be the Subject Matter Expert, Set the Agenda and Shorten Your Learning Cycles

In the water industry in particular, consultants serve as gatekeepers and instill extreme risk aversion in their clients. Joining the table as a technical expert allows founders to become the subject matter expert and to set the records straight about technology, not the gatekeepers. Leaders set the agendas, the programs and the conference tracks. As chair of the Cal-Nevada AWWA, I set tracks I felt would be most useful to the customers I had gotten to know so well, which always included technology and innovation. I was also the one in the seat to select abstracts for inclusion in the conference program, which again, gave me an edge to include mine, or a client of ours speaking about Valor. It’s a trick long recognized by consulting firms, but rarely utilized by technology companies. We need to see more entrepreneurs competing for leadership in this space because if they don’t, their competition will, excluding them from being part of the conversation that sets the agenda for a wide swath of the water sector. Committees are where the hot topics and items from the industry are discussed and mitigated. Get to be an insider quickly by joining the right committee, setting agendas, and staying on top of the learning cycles.

Join the Club and Leverage the Anti-Sell

Many technology, manufacturing and product company staff have a known stigma around “being a vendor.” We need to break this down by participating in the water sector in non-salesy ways and contribute to leadership and meaningful subject matter expertise. The team at Ziptility, a BIV company, calls this the anti-sell. They’re direct and upfront about what they can and can’t do. They’re the first to tell a potential customer when they’re not a fit or they think they’ll be a waste of time. And that genuine transparency has led to massive relationship and brand building. Ziptility customers proudly refer to themselves as Ziptilians because they feel connected to the community Tyler and the team at Ziptility have built. 

Being a part of the leadership at the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has taken up a significant portion of my time as a water professional and has played a crucial role in building my product suite, my company, and my career. The benefits of volunteering, participating and leading in the water industry association have been manifold in building my own professional reputation in the space, and the ease with which I was able to acquire customers. There’s no question that being a leader on AWWA helped me more rapidly scale sales at Valor. I could not more whole-heartedly advise any water entrepreneur working with utility customers to join their sector association of choice. It’s where the fun’s at in water and there are plenty more spaces that would be a far less productive use of an entrepreneur’s valuable time.