The following interview is a conversation we had with Javier Marti, CEO & Founder of Divirod, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $7.6 Million Raised to Build the Google Maps For Water.

 

Javier Marti
Thank you for having me, Brett. 

Brett
Not a problem. Super excited for this conversation. I’d love to just begin with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background. 

Javier Marti
Yeah, I’m original from Spain. I came to the United States eleven years ago. I live in Boulder, Colorado, and this is after having lived five years in Chile and 70 years in the Netherlands. So have a pretty international experience. Life. 

Brett
How’d you choose Boulder, of all cities to move to? 

Javier Marti
Oh, gosh. Boulder is an amazing place. It’s a beautiful part of the country. It has a lot to offer, a lot of outdoors out there. But that back in 1999, I came to visit, I fell in love with the city. I came back home and said, I think I found my new place to live, and several years after, managed to get in there, and I’ve been living there since. 

Brett
That’s amazing. Take me back to your first entrepreneurial endeavor. It looks like that was a wine company, is that correct? 

Javier Marti
Oh, gosh. You’ve been looking into that. Yes. That was a sort of a side activity that we initiated, my wife and I. It was a company that was importing wines from Spain, that was bringing directly the wines from the winery sellers all the way to the customers. So we did all the import, all the taxes, distribution, and retailing, so we could actually make the entire profit from end to end and provide the best experience to the customers. That was the beginning of the e commerce. So that was very early on. 

Brett
Yeah, it looks like it. That was what, 2005, I think I saw online. 

Javier Marti
Yes, correct. And we closed the business when we moved from the Netherlands to Chile. 

Brett
And looking at some of the other roles that you had, I see it was a lot of engineering working at space companies. As you were moving through these roles and holding these roles, did you have the idea in the back of your head that someday you would go out and start a technology company, or where and when did that idea come to you? 

Javier Marti
Yeah, the idea of being an entrepreneur has been always on my mind. I guess, as you could see in my background, I’ve been working for a lot of space institutions and publicly funded endeavors, anywhere from 300 million to $1.2 billion on my shoulders. And all the time I’ve been thinking that these experiences are very interesting, providing a lot of information to science and to the world. But at the end of the day, there is no connection to the society and to the economy. And unfortunately, all these mega projects lack a little bit that facet of life, how to bring a practical thing into the market, how to bring something that creates value and can be really, truly helpful to the society at large. 

Javier Marti
So if you think about the type of projects that have worked in the past that were very interesting, but unfortunately, there is a limited value into understanding whether there is a neo quasar in the universe or a supernova quasar, especially in the timeframe and the type of life that we have. So I always opted for entrepreneurship as a way to go when I grew older. So I did. 

Brett
Well, lets talk about the big company that you’ve started today and the startup that you’ve started and working on today. So take me back to 2016. What was going on in your world, and what was it about this company and this problem that made you say, yep, that’s it, I’m gonna go dedicate the next 510, 1520 years of my life to building it. 

Javier Marti
It was a combination of things. In reality, at the beginning, I had a very good idea on where the problems with climate change were going to this climate change is a very strange animal. We still don’t know where it’s going to lead us altogether. But what really we can see in climate change is that people are looking into can we adapt to a hotter environment, to a colder environment? We can always adapt to temperature, but unfortunately, the sight of these changes in temperature are leading us to changes in weather patterns and with that, to water and water extremes, as we’re seeing almost every week a flood here, a flood there, flood everywhere, or droughts, water scarcity in several areas of the planet, which are getting more intensified. 

Javier Marti
So at the time, back in 2016, I was pondering about what to do with my life moving forward, and I found a very good opportunity to do this, to run this company and start looking into the water risks at large and put all my experience to the service of doing something which is a little bit visionary, but at the same time, it was something that I believed I had that responsibility of doing it because I knew how to do it. So that was exactly what was in my mind at the time. Back in 2016, let’s imagine that you. 

Brett
Meet someone randomly on a flight and they say, so what do you do? How do you explain what you do? In simple terms, I say something very basic. 

Javier Marti
Im building the Google Maps of water. And they say, wow, what is that? Everybody understand what the Google Maps is, and we all understand how traffic is affecting our ability to go from a to b and how useful that is to many industries. But the reality when it comes to water is that we have very little uncertainty about it. So after saying the Google maps of water, the conversation leads into the uncertainty that we have around water events. And how unfortunate it is that we know more about a pit stop coming our way than a flood event that may happen in your doorstep, but you’re not aware of it. You don’t know what extent it is and how it is going to impact your business, your person or your car in this trade. 

Brett
And who’s willing to pay for the Google maps of water? And what are they trying to solve when they pay you. 

Javier Marti
So everybody is trying to have a better understanding of what are the risks and the real impacts of climate change into their balance sheet at large. It could be through an operational decision, it could be through what are the sustainability efforts that we have to put in place to adapt and survive going forward as a company. And when you look at supply chain, which is heavily affected by climate change, when you look at an insurance company, which is trying to understand whether your policy has to increase or I have to pay you x million dollars for whatever problem you have had in the past. These are the type of people who are actually looking into this Google Maps of water. 

Javier Marti
And if I unpack this a little bit more, Google Maps of water is just a term to define that you can actually visualize this. If you visualize this water impacts, then what you can do, you can tell essentially, is that we have lots and lots of data behind the scene, which is providing us the ability to compose that map of water. And this is what people, in the end, they are buying. They’re buying data and insights. 

Brett
How do they gather those insights? Is there a sensor that’s placed along the water’s edge? Or how is that data collected? 

Javier Marti
We do have two ways of collecting data. One is, of course, there is a lot of publicly available data that is very difficult to actually distill and put together, but we’ve done it. And we also realize that there is a problem with water data scarcity. That’s a word that I coined when I went to cop 28 for my invited talk last year. Water. The scarcities of reality. If you look at the map of the United States, you see about 12,000, 17,000 at most data points or locations where we’re collecting data about water. If you zoom into those data points, the data points are becoming more sparse and sparse. And if you do the math about the geographical extension of the United States, and you divide it by 15,000 just to do a quick math, you realize that’s not enough coverage. 

Javier Marti
And that explains also why models are failing, why models are not that accurate, and why the solutions that we have today in place are not really helpful. So what we do to combat that water data scarcity is to add an additional layer of augmented data using our own sensing technology, which is coming from ideas all the way back when I was working at the European Space Agency. 

Brett
How would you describe your marketing philosophy? 

Javier Marti
Well, a company like ours is all about awareness. We need to make sure that everybody understands that when you’re tackling a global problem with a global reach, you need to be known by a lot of people. And the more you get to be known by the audience, no matter if they’re buyers or not, the better. So we have a marketing, of course, which is dedicated to brand awareness and lead generation. But in the early phase, it’s all about getting your brand to be known, getting you to be known by what you’re doing, by who you are, what you’re putting in the market, what you’re building. And unfortunately, due to climate change, our story is quite compelling. 

Javier Marti
It has been the center of attraction to many invited talks and to many podcasts and points where we can actually present ourselves and describe to the world what we’re doing. 

Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. What tactics have you seen work the best? When it comes to increasing brand awareness? 

Javier Marti
The best is actually to partner up with somebody who is very much recognizing the public. We have put a lot of effort in creating partnerships of a certain size. And the reason why is because one hand, you need to be together with industry leaders to build something as complex as what we have built. And secondly, they also have an exposure that naturally is going to give you a side exposure that takes you forward. So for an early startup, as were in the past, we managed to get partnerships as large as Dosha Telecom, which is the number nine brand in the world at the moment, according to Forbes, and other partnerships with very well known, respected companies such as Databricks, SRE and Thales, SAS and others. 

Brett
How do you think about the competitive landscape today? 

Javier Marti
Competition spans in two different ways. So, first of all, we try to get a niche in between the main areas of competition. So one hand, we have competition from sensor companies, basically selling sensors in hardware for people to buy and do their own sensing networks or sensing gathering technologies. And on the other hand, we’re sitting in front of all the people that are actually consuming data for risk models and for flat risk models. And here we are sitting in between the two big players on sensing and data space. And we feel that we are getting our elbows in between these two groups, and we’re competing against the sensing companies with sensing technology, which is, I would say, one of the most accurate sensing technologies in the world at the moment when it comes to water. 

Javier Marti
And then on the other hand, we’re competing, or may see basically working together and alongside all the main players were using water data to actually build some sense out of their flat models and the risk analytic tools at large. 

Brett
And when it comes to your market category, how do you think about the category today? Is it a water data platform? 

Javier Marti
Yes, certainly it’s not just a water company, because we’re not a water company, but we are in the space of water data and insights altogether. So, yes, we’re building a platform. So you could say that the water data platform category is the one which is mostly applicable to us. But at the same time, it’s not just data that comes for free, like every other person is actually doing today. It’s water that is coming not only from publicly available sources, but also from proprietary augmentation using our own sensors. 

Brett
How much traction are you seeing in the market today? And are there any numbers or metrics that you can share that highlight some of the growth that you’re seeing? 

Javier Marti
Yes. So the traction is sort of slow. I would say that very plainly and simply because traction is not the key focus at this point, because when you look at traction in a field which is extremely destructive, where market is still like, yes, we know that there is climate change that is risk associated to the water. We don’t know how to tackle that at large. And introducing a product in the market which is as disruptive as we are introducing it is actually making the whole traction slower than everybody would like to. However, at the same time, no one can think that we’re not going to have this type of data and this type of platform going forward. So the future is there, that exists. The reality today is that we are still working towards that future. 

Javier Marti
And hopefully it’s a question of one to three years more in which we’re seeing the explosive growth of this market and we can actually recoup on the metrics in a different form. But today the market is slow. I have to say that. And it’s not only slow for Diderot, this is slow for many, including the big ones. 

Brett
Yeah, I think most founders, if they’re being honest, that’s how they would answer that question. I think there’s very few companies that are experiencing rapid, insane growth in the last twelve months. 

Javier Marti
Yes, and that is certainly part of the b’s that you have to put up when you’re hearing some of the funders talking about their own companies. But in reality, the truth is that the market is slow. If you’re in the disruptive market, it’s even slower. And if you’re honest to yourself that you always want things to go faster, the reality is that they go at the pace that the market is accepting it. So here we are at the mercy of the market, the small ones and the large ones. 

Brett
Given this is such innovative technology, I have to imagine that who you’re really hunting for in terms of customers are the early adopters. How do you find early adopters? 

Javier Marti
Well, it’s a tedious process to find early adopters, but there’s always one early adopter, every hundred people that you talk to. So you start with those that believe. And in the very early days, it was like that. I mean, one in a hundred, you have to talk to a lot of people. Now we’re seeing more re adopters, especially because people are desperate when it comes to technology. They’ve been using a lot of things, and we found that the people that we talked to, they have been burned by other solutions which may not have provided them the answers that they were looking for. So when they talked to us, they said, we tried everything, we tried this, we tried that, and then it was stumbling to the road and what you’re offering. This actually makes sense. And they tried. 

Javier Marti
So it’s a little bit of perseverance, it’s a little bit of luck, it’s a little bit of being there at the right time with the right person, in the right moment. It’s a combination of multiple factors. There’s no magical recipe to find early adopters, otherwise everybody would look for it. 

Brett
As I mentioned there in the intro, you’ve raised 7.6 million to date. What have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey? 

Javier Marti
The fundraising is actually very enduring. It’s not a simple thing. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack, right? You have to find the right venture capital, the right investor type, the one who understands what you’re doing, the one who can help you accomplish what you’re doing in the right theme of investing for your category, and that altogether starts to narrow down and filter down to a number of investors. And raising capital has been very interesting, especially in the past years when went through COVID and all the aftermath of COVID and people were slow investing and so on, so forth. And even today, we are seeing a very slow market when it comes to investments. 

Brett
Based on everything you’ve learned so far, what would be the number one piece of go to market advice that you’d give to a Founder? 

Javier Marti
Well, that’s a very complicated question, but if you were to do what I’m doing, I would tell you, work on your partnerships, surround yourselves and your company with partners who can help you understand how to get to the ultimate market, adoption. And not only that, but also have experience in direct sales, talking with customers and listening to their pain points and understanding what they could do and they couldn’t do, understanding what could be the ideal solution and seeing whether your product is actually feeling that ideal solution or not, and adapting your product. There’s a number of things that you actually have to do. 

Javier Marti
So for me, would be partnerships, direct sales, listening to the market, and have a very good feedback loop into the product definition so that the product actually responds to the problems of the market, rather than imposing the market to adopt the solution. 

Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out into the future. Let’s say maybe three to five years. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building here? 

Javier Marti
The big picture would be that at the end of the day, we learn how to live with water risks in a way that we can be more in control if we can ever be. So I foresee simple access to the data and the information that would be in your fingertips. And all the time when I’m talking about this, the only thing that is at your fingertips nowadays is your phone. So I really hope that we can have everybody using our water risk insights to understand the water risk that is around themselves. So if I’m in San Francisco and a huge tidal search is coming, you will be wondering, would this affect my street, would this affect my neighborhood, would this affect my car, my parking lot? 

Javier Marti
I really would love to democratize that data in a way that every level can actually live better by the water and still enjoy in the water, which is very enjoyable. 

Brett
Amazing. Javier, I love the vision. We are up on time here, so we’re going to have to wrap before we do. If there’s any founders that are listening in, they feel inspired and they just want to follow along with your journey. Where should they go? 

Javier Marti
Well, they could go into the diligent.com, first of all. But the most interesting thing is to look at the wli dot de rut.com. That’s a website that we are actually providing openly to the public, and we’re offering an insight to the world map of water. So I invite you to look at it and contemplate that now we have more understanding that a couple of years ago, and it inspires you. And the way we are collecting the data, visualizing the data, and you believe that we can help is get in touch. I mean, I’m reachable via LinkedIn and many other social media points. 

Brett
Amazing. Javier, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. This has been a lot of fun, and you can definitely consider me a big fan of everything that you’re building. 

Javier Marti
I really appreciate it. Thank you, Brett, thank you for having me. 

Brett
No problem at all. Keep in touch. 

Brett
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