BIV Welcomes Partner II - Christine Boyle

One of the great truisms of building a business is that people are everything. That truism is, of course, true. Over the last 2 1/2 years, we've operated pretty lean with Marissa and I supported by an excellent investment committee, advisory board, and venture partners. It's time to take the next step. Since the inception of Burnt Island Ventures, the intention has always been to do this with a partner. Despite all the chitchat around solo capitalists, lone wolves, etc., I've always believed that our LPs and our founders (i.e., Burnt Island Ventures' customers and partners, respectively) are best served by a team of decision-makers working together. Obviously, the first step of building that team is adding a second decision-maker.

Christine Boyle is an exceptional person. I first met her about two weeks before I started at the accelerator Imagine H2O in 2015. She was receiving the award for the best early-stage company on behalf of the team at Valor Water Analytics, and I had no idea that she would become such an important guide, mentor, and friend as I learned what was what the water sector. They always say hire people who are smarter than you. Christine is a data science PhD, exited founder in a challenging market, and fluent in Mandarin. I think we can check the "smarter" box. After selling Valor to Xylem, she became an integral part of the digital team for five years before getting the early-stage urge again. We are delighted she is bringing her considerable technical commercial and water talents to the Burnt Island.

We thought that the best way for you to get to know her is not through my ramblings, but in her own words. You'll like her as much as we do.

Christine, welcome! How does it feel to be getting back to the early-stage company side of things?

It feels right, Tom!

I genuinely cannot wait to help current and future BIV companies scale and succeed. The caliber of water founder talent right now is exceptionally high, with the best innovators and entrepreneurs seeing the start of significant commercial success. It's an exciting time to be in the water technology sector. If I'm anything, I'm a "zero to a million" specialist, and there are so many areas to dig into.

Early-stage water technology companies are fragile and must be handled with care. It is a time when the fundamentals all need to come together, from early customers to building a team to the depths of scaling - it's a lot. Nailing product-market fit, building entrepreneurial skill & judgment, defining and refining your business model, establishing culture and brand, and ensuring early customers succeed - and even with all these things going right, many companies will still fail. Becoming a "zero to a million specialist" in dollars, users, customers, etc., is hard, but when you have the right founder in the right market, magic happens, and that's deeply exciting to be a part of. I'm here to help the Burnt Islanders avoid the pitfalls and maximize their odds of success.

What are you most looking forward to, moving to the fund side?

I vividly remember the pain of fundraising for my Seed Round for Valor Water. Very few VCs knew much about water…and what they did understand were tropes that took a long time to counter (slow, high risk, etc.). I am incredibly thankful to funds that supported my company (Urban Innovation Fund, Y Combinator, Apsara, Syzygy, Shore Fund I, 500 StartUps), but fundraising for water tech companies was an uphill battle. No fund specialized in water, and it took a great deal of time to educate everyone on the industry. I am proud that we provided these investors with a good return and put a notch in the exit column. Imagine H2O also played an important role in connecting us to key customers and partners - thanks to the team for that.

What I hope to bring to the fund side is harnessing the collective wisdom of our team and the Burnt Islanders to avoid what must be avoided (running out of cash being a big one) while deliberately building value. I've been lucky to experience much of what entrepreneurship has to offer in the water sector, both directly and indirectly. I think it will prove to be rewarding and fun to pass that on to this talented group of entrepreneurs in Fund I and the founders we will back in the future.

The last decade has been an entrepreneurial journey, as well as working with one of the best teams in water at one of the most significant water brands. What are the biggest things you've learned?

I have had the fortune to grow as a member of the water sector in various roles and guises. I have learned that this industry is special for many reasons. The water sector is filled with wonderful, hard-working, mud-on-the-boots professionals. These are our unsung first responders, and they're people who really care about what they do. Fortunately, there aren't too many jerks in water - and that is underrated. Water is a fairly small space, with industry, utilities, NGOs, and academia working together to advance our sector and solve gnarly water issues (think of droughts, floods, PFAS, arsenic, and more). It's important not to poison the well. If you make a mistake - a defective product, a failed project, or exhibit bad behavior - word gets around - so be good and play the game fairly. Lastly, for the various organizations I have led or been a part of, the team is everything. Enjoy the team, select great people to work with, and celebrate together. We have so much important work to do to solve local and global water challenges; you better have a great group along with you to keep chipping away at solutions every day.

You've known me for a long time and know my strengths and weaknesses! What do you hope to bring to the Burnt Island?

Most fundamentally, Tom, I am honored to join and take part of what you have built - so thank you! I'm excited to 'double the trouble' and harness our combined firepower around founder support, company selection, and amplifying the voice of the water sector.

I spent 7 years living the peril and promise of a water startup. I'm eager to bring those hard-learned lessons to the Burnt Islanders. How to structure a company, build a sales team, hire and fire, scale, manage acquisitions, invest and kill product lines– it all makes a difference - and I'm thrilled to bring an insider's edge to what we expect to see from companies, both present and future.

Venture capital is inherently an exercise in optimism. What makes you optimistic about the future of water?

I have been in the water sector for about 15 years and have read plenty of doom and gloom predictions. Brown's prediction that China would eat the world's food supply was a particularly poignant one for me because the book served as a wake-up call for the Chinese government and agriculture technologists globally to think about how to address these pressures - and they did. That was inspiring.

Over and over, I have seen dire predictions about climate, water shortages, water wars, famines, and more. These dire predictions are important - and I certainly appreciate when they also involve some actual scientific rigor. They spur innovators, financiers, communities, and governments to wake up and address these issues. Now, why do I continue to be optimistic? Because the call to action for water and climate is driving technological ingenuity and action. Solutions from atmospheric water generation to forever chemical destruction to novel biofilters for pollution removal, all represent solutions to vital problems, and we are just getting started.

I think it's important that we bear in mind that the distribution of water solutions is not even. Poor communities and impoverished nations often bear the brunt of climate catastrophes and have the least capability to recover. Equity is an important part of our sustainability journey that we need to keep at the forefront of discussions.

As an exited founder, what's the single biggest lesson you want to pass on to the Burnt Islanders?

The Burnt Islanders will need to do everything they can to draw the best talent and resources to their companies. If they (and we) do this right, entrepreneurs who might be developing anything from drones to autonomous vehicles to AI models and consumer software today will alter their path and dedicate their ingenuity to solving water. Data scientists and chemical engineers should be clamoring to join the water sector - and it's not as common as it could and should be. You get the right people, you get better customer insights, better products, quicker adoption of technologies, better commercialization models, more funding, and larger contracts. With the right people, we can build the start of an ecosystem that can support wave after wave of new companies to solve our water issues. Model a level of consistent brilliance in everything you do to attract the right people. Do that, and good things will happen.

Christine, you rule, and we're so happy to have you officially on the team. From Marissa, me, and all the Burnt islanders - the biggest and warmest welcome. We've got some work to do…