Episode 13 - A Journey Through Water Innovation with Adam Tank
The way that they describe this and I think it I saw the I saw the I remember the graphic vividly. It was on David Perel. He's a big writing guy on X now. Just incredible guy. He said you have to collect the dots before you can connect the dots.
Adam Tank:So we had this graphic of all these dots on a screen. You're like, what the hell is that? And then he can he connects them and ends up being like the outline of a dog or something. You're like, okay. I get it.
Adam Tank:This makes a ton of sense. You have to have all of these experiences and only in hindsight can you actually connect them and make sense. But it's interesting to sort of reflect on those things. I think for everyone, really, and anyone listening to this, think about the yeah. Think about those things.
Adam Tank:Think about where people have recognized you for your strengths or think about the things that you've really enjoyed that maybe you've done a couple times over, and you're like, wow. I should probably lean more into that. I think that's gonna set you up for success for sure.
Ilya Tabakh:Welcome to EIR Live, where we dive into the lives and lessons of entrepreneurs and residents. I'm Ilya Tabakh, together with my cohost, Terence Orr, ready to bring you closer to the heartbeat of the innovation and entrepreneurial spirit. Every episode, we explore the real stories behind the ideas, successes, setbacks, and everything in between. For everyone from aspiring EIRs to seasoned pros, EIR Live is your gateway to the depth of the entrepreneurial journey and bringing innovative insights into the broader world. Check out the full details in the episode description.
Ilya Tabakh:Subscribe to stay updated and join us as we uncover what it takes to transform visions into ventures. Welcome aboard. Let's grow together. Alright. What's cool about this episode is, Adam and I, sort of kept running into each other's orbits before we actually, met each other.
Ilya Tabakh:But the sort of current chapter or at least the reconnection started, as my one might expect at CES, where I was sitting on a random bus, and chatting with a pretty nice gentleman who I just met, and telling him about my, you know, role that I was just rolling into as entrepreneur in residence. And and we got to talking, and he was like, oh, that that sounds exactly like a guy named Adam who happens to live in Kansas City. And I'm like, what are the chances of that? That's like, That's gotta be a one in a thousand, one in 10,000 of level occurrence. And so Dave Merrill was his name, and Adam had worked with him in the past, he really encouraged me to reach out.
Ilya Tabakh:And it was really cool because it sort of started me on this journey of, connecting with other EIRs because Adam, I think, was maybe the first, but definitely the first five of kind of other innovation EIR folks that I spoke with. So Adam, super excited to have you on the podcast. And, you know, ever ever since that point, we've had a lot of other touch points as well that we can dig into. But, yeah. Welcome.
Ilya Tabakh:Maybe we'll start with, you know, kinda going back to the beginning, You know, kinda your professional journey background is in kinda biology and processes and kinda bi biological engineering. So can you talk a little bit about that and then maybe some of the things that that drove you to, you know, be excited and curious about that, and then we can kinda jump in from there.
Adam Tank:Ever since I can remember, I've been interested in the stuff that we can't see. And I I if I had to guess, there's two two things I remember happening very early in my life that sort of set me on this trajectory of microbiology and bacteria and the science of stuff that impacts us, but we, again, physically can't see. So I remember getting a microscope as a kid, very young, like maybe six or seven. One of those little plastic cheapos with the mirror reflector on it, and you could do cuts of leaves and whatever else you wanna put under there to check that out. I remember being fascinated by that.
Adam Tank:And then the other one was a handwashing experiment in elementary school. So we had a teacher that put together they she made these Petri dishes, and I'm pretty sure she used instant potatoes, like the dry mix, and then mix it with water. And then she sent kids into the bathroom and said, okay. Right. Some of you aren't gonna wash your hands.
Adam Tank:Some of you are gonna wash with just water, some with soap and water, whatever, and came back. And, you know, of course, three, four days later, these petri dishes are just growing all sorts of disgusting stuff. So I remember just being fascinated by that. And I'm when I decided to go to college, that's what I ended up studying because I thought I was gonna go to medical school afterwards. Obviously, that didn't happen, and I'm sure we'll probably get into that a bit.
Adam Tank:But, again, as far as I can remember, like, and sort of that tech, call it geeky route, whatever, that's always been a part of my journey.
Ilya Tabakh:No. That's amazing. And and and we found, like, as we talk to folks, the a lot of the formative things that they're excited about, things that they were drawn into, maybe like a mentor that they've had that, you know, kinda have a long timeline impact on on what they get into. So, I guess not a huge surprise there. Yeah.
Ilya Tabakh:May maybe jumping from there, you know, actually, let's let's before we jump, you shared in sort of the the prep with us that, you kinda had an early entrepreneurial experience in college, and and were involved in some of the stuff at K State. So I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about that because it sounds like, it was sort of an early insight into a different world.
Adam Tank:It was mind opening. I had been spending whatever. I think I worked in a lab probably two hours a day on average. I'd spent most of my time, obviously, in hardcore science classes where we're cutting splicing DNA and playing with bacteria and studying pathogens and all this stuff. And so my whole world was science, and all the people that I knew that were in my classes were also science.
Adam Tank:So all of them, either going to medical school or they're going to grad school to get another degree in something science and maybe going to work in a lab. And so I never really thought about what private enterprise would look like and definitely hadn't thought about what entrepreneurship meant. I don't even think I could have spelled entrepreneurship if you would have asked me to in college. So one of my fraternity brothers was in the College of Business, and he had entered what was at the time the very first entrepreneurship challenge. Like, I think they call it like the big pitch or like the rocket ship chat, whatever.
Adam Tank:Right? Something like that, whatever plan words you want to use for those types of things. And he was going to enter it with his business plan that he had developed working at a Papa John's. And I'll explain that here in a second. And he's he knew that he wasn't the most charismatic person, not the best speaker, he knew that I had some of those skills, interestingly, from years and years of debate in high school, that I think led me to sort of enjoying, you know, public speaking in sales, if you will.
Adam Tank:And he's like, look, I'll write everything about this business plan, I'll come up with a product. I'll even manufacture these things. If you will just come and present to the judges and wow them. And I literally almost laughed him out of the room. I was like, dude, I literally know nothing about business.
Adam Tank:My dad was a military guy. My mom was stay at home for the most part. She worked in education a little bit. No one I knew in my immediate network that I was close with ever talked to me about business. And so I was like, why me?
Adam Tank:And he's like, dude, literally, all you need to do is just go pitch and present. So he came up with this idea that when you're in a Papa John's, it kinda looks like a Subway or a Chipotle in the back where all the ingredients are are in bins next to one another. And when you're making pizza, there is a big quality challenge when you're making them really quickly, when you're putting cheese on and then pepperoni on and olives and whatever else. All these ingredients starts to get mixed into the other bins. Huge cross contamination problem.
Adam Tank:And, obviously, for people that ordered one thing and maybe got something else, like a vegan gets a piece of sausage on the pizza. Right? They're up in arms. And this happened all the time. So he made these dividers that sat in between the bins to keep the ingredients from mixing with one another.
Adam Tank:It was super simple. Don't know why it hadn't existed before. We presented at this pitch competition. We ended up winning. And so here I am sitting on a stage with this, whatever it was, 5 or $10,000 check thinking, holy shit.
Adam Tank:Like, this is more money than I've seen my entire college career working in this lab. Like, what is this entrepreneurship thing? Like, what is this business thing? And that just sort of, like, set sort of set the course for opening the aperture to what my future career would look like. And so I owe a lot to him and to that entrepreneurship competition for, quite frankly putting me on the light, the light path.
Terrance Orr:This is very interesting, Adam, because this is not the first time that, that, that you did this. This was the first time you did this, but then you did it again. Right? And you did it again in grad school at a on a on a bigger stage. Right?
Terrance Orr:More people that would expect more of you as a grad student than Right. Somebody in undergrad.
Adam Tank:Right.
Terrance Orr:Tell us about that competition and what happened there.
Adam Tank:Yeah. It's it's hilarious because that that happened. Then, of course, we'll get into the robotics thing at GE. Right? So Oh, yeah.
Adam Tank:So in grad school, they had I I got my MBA, with a focus on entrepreneurship, and they held a pitch competition that was, like, again, like, the rocket pitch or whatever. And I entered with two of my other business school colleagues, and we came up with this idea because we had all been in the professional world for, like, I don't know, four or five years, maybe even longer before we went to grad school. And business travel is always a pain. So anyone that travels for business, if you're not if you don't do it, you think it's glamorous. You're like, oh, you get to go to Paris.
Adam Tank:That's that's amazing. Right? I fly to Brazil regularly with a bunch of customers in Brazil. Oh, you get to go to Brazil. Like, that must be amazing.
Adam Tank:I'm like, literally, I sit in a plane for ten hours. I'm tired as hell. I get off. I get into an Uber. I go straight to a hotel.
Adam Tank:I might have to freshen up or maybe I crash if I'm lucky. I deal with jet lag. I go straight to meetings. Might have a good meal every now and again, and then I'm back in an Uber, back in an airport, heading back home. Right?
Adam Tank:It's not like I'm get to kick it by the beach and go hang out with friends. That's just not business travel. And so one of the, you know, one of the things I was thinking about was, well, all this travel, it's a lot of Airbnb had sorta just come around at that time. And so I was like, there's gotta be a way for businesses to save money when their employees are traveling on business and to be able to use people's homes to do it. Like, why isn't there an an Airbnb for business travelers?
Adam Tank:So the concept we came up with was to have networks of intra company employees host one another when they're traveling. So as an example, if I live in Kansas City, I'm traveling to Atlanta for the week or whatever, and Terrance is willing to host me in his house. Right, the company will spend, call it, 50% less than they would for me to for a hotel. You'll get compensated based on that delta. I'll make some money based on that delta.
Adam Tank:It saves the company money. We get to establish a relationship as coworkers, like, win all the way around. And so we entered that competition. We won that competition. And, again, it was like, if that's not a sign for the universe that I need to do something entrepreneurial, then I don't know what is.
Adam Tank:And then the rest is is history, as they say.
Ilya Tabakh:That's amazing. Mean, I think that what's interesting to me and just kind of listening to you talk through it is, at least from my experience and lots of folks I talk to, like the path from the starting point out doesn't make any sense. But sort of looking back, especially in a conversation like this where we can dip into undergrad, graduate, sort of first role in the working world and then sort of where that's led you, it's sort of easier to pick up on the signal through kind of what's the through line. So it's just even like the debate thing, right? Being able to sort of decompose what the real kind of drivers for an issue are and then thinking about what are we trying to do here, whether it's convince or defend against or It's actually like a really powerful tool that you don't think about.
Ilya Tabakh:You know, I did, for example, a lot of improv training because I was doing an NSF fellowship when I was in grad school. And like, I don't really I do now, but I didn't really appreciate you know, what what that opened up. And and even to your point about, you know, being in deep science and not knowing anybody outside of deep science, like, that haven't been in deep science don't understand, like, what's that what's that like? What are the motivations? Why do people do what they do?
Ilya Tabakh:And so, you know, I think there's a lot of value in sort of thinking about, you know, and being able to even appreciate kind of that input. So I just wanted to kind of highlight that, before we move on.
Terrance Orr:I want to double down on this skill because it sort of speaks to sort of there's a direct correlation between sort of being a good storyteller, right? And commanding sort of a room if you will, you know, with his public speaking skills, understanding how to answer a question or, you know, objections from people, you know, if you will, from his skill and debate. These things carry over well in the role of entrepreneurship, but you just don't know that, right, when when you start. Right? It just seems like a thing that you're good at.
Terrance Orr:Right? Somebody else had to notice his superpower before he noticed it. Right? And once he got a hook like, oh, I'm actually pretty good at this. He did another competition.
Terrance Orr:He won that one too. And then it was sort of validation. Right? And then Adam was like, okay. Like, this is my sign, my calling from the universe.
Terrance Orr:I'm good at storytelling. I've won these things twice at the undergrad level and at the graduate school level. And now his life is about to happen. Real life is about to happen. And he's gonna move into getting into one of the most competitive programs that you can get into for an experienced person leaving an MBA program.
Terrance Orr:Adam, can you can you talk us through where did you go next?
Adam Tank:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. You know, on that point, I heard a really interesting phrase about this idea of connecting the dots. And the way that they describe this, and I think I saw the I saw the I remember the graphic vividly.
Adam Tank:It was on David David Perel, who's a big writing guy on X now. Just incredible guy. He said you have to collect the dots before you can connect the dots. So we had this graphic of all these dots on a screen. You're like, what the hell is that?
Adam Tank:And then he can he connects them and ends up being like that line of a dog or something. You're like, okay, I get it. This makes a ton of sense. You have to have all of these experiences, and only in hindsight can you actually connect them and make sense. But it's interesting to sort of reflect on those things.
Adam Tank:Think for everyone really and anyone listening to this, think about the yeah. Think about those things. Think about where people have recognized you for your strengths or think about the things that you've really enjoyed that maybe you've done a couple times over, and you're like, wow. I should probably lean more into that. I think that's gonna set you up for success for sure.
Adam Tank:So on that same sort of thread, when I so in between my first and second year of graduate school, there was a there was a case competition, and General Electric was a massive company at the time that had divisions from, right, like transportation, aviation, health care, you name it, power and water, etcetera. And we entered this case competition and competed against, like, five or six other business schools on the West Coast. And if you won this case competition, then you got to interview for GE's summer internship program, which was, in my case, the experienced commercial leadership program or also known as ECLP. So on the prep call we talked about, GE has has a number of these sort of developmental rotational programs. Terrance alluded to one called CAS, which is corporate audit staff, which was a feeder from a, which was a feeder from, I think it was some sort of other financial leadership program like FMP or FLP or something like that.
Adam Tank:So it's basically a way for if you looked at if you looked at the history of all the GE executives, like the folks that went from sort of director level all the way to CEO, nine times out of 10, if they were from inside the company, they had gone through one of these programs. And almost everyone that's graduated from those programs has gone on to become a CEO or CFO or whatever somewhere else. So we ended up winning this case competition. I got to interview with GE and the division that they were like, well, what do you know, what's your background? What do you think would most align with GE's priorities?
Adam Tank:And I was like, I mean, I did a lot of microbiology, like, maybe health care? And they were like, we don't have any opportunities in health care. They're like, how about water? I was like, sure. Why not?
Adam Tank:So I interviewed for the water division with a guy named Ralph Exton, who, I adore. He's a incredible mentor of mine was just tremendous boss, super well networked in the water industry, and quite frankly, ended up taking a swing on me. I didn't have any background in water. He was willing to to to hire me on. So I worked for GE the summer between my first and second year of grad school.
Adam Tank:And then after grad school, went to join them full time as part of that rotational program.
Terrance Orr:Man, there's something to be said about people taking a shot on people, taking a shot on potential and not not just your resume today, but who they think you will become, based off of some interaction that they've had with with you or something that somebody has said about you. And, and I think everybody owes somebody in their career something for taking a shot on them when technically we wasn't ready for it. Right. And they took a shot and somehow we rose to the occasion. Somebody took a shot on me.
Terrance Orr:That's how I got into tech. Right? Building data center products. Right? But before that, was working in hospitality.
Terrance Orr:Right? But I would I would say the skills that I got from hospitality was being a service driven leader. Right? Learning how to lead with service in mind about the customer around everything else. That sort of carried me and followed me throughout the rest of my career.
Terrance Orr:So it's really nice to hear that somebody took a shot on you, got you into the water sector. Right? But look at you now, Adam. You're doing, you're doing interesting things. And, and and I always think the the the people who take the shots on us, they wanna be able to look back and think that was a good shot.
Terrance Orr:That was a good bet. Right? And and and now you just wanna pay that forward. I'm gonna back up and rewind a little bit before we continue in in the story because you were paying it forward well before you started building things. Right?
Terrance Orr:Talk to us about the time that you spent in Mexico, right, as as as a volunteer at an orphanage and how that impacted you and follows you out for through the rest of your career about a life of service?
Adam Tank:Man, for whatever reason, I probably owe it to my parents. They've you know, they always said leave the world a better place than what you came into it. You have an obligation to give, if you can, either your time, talent, or your treasure. Everyone has something to give. Don't care who you are, what status of life you're at, what your background is, everyone has something that they can give to somebody else.
Adam Tank:And I I just I always wanted to experience different cultures. I enjoyed learning new languages. So in college, I lived in Mexico for a summer and volunteered in an orphanage down there as part of it was a, like, kind of like an sort of an exchange program of sorts, but we lived down there full time and spent our mornings in the orphanage and then our afternoons at a bilingual community center teaching English classes. And it's interesting, there's another thread there when I later on in life when I moved to Brazil too, where I recognize that, you know, happiness and fulfillment have very little to do with your job and how much your title, or how much money you make. Really, the things that are most important are your health, the health of your friends and family, that you have people that love you, people that you love, and the ability to provide something of value to your community or to your customers or whoever it is that you're interacting with.
Adam Tank:And so I saw it in Mexico, kids that were living on dirt floors that didn't even have a pencil to do their homework with some of the happiest kids I've ever seen in my life. Right? Kicking a duct tape ball down the street. I saw the same thing in Brazil. I've seen the same thing when I've traveled to other countries that are quote, unquote, developing.
Adam Tank:And it really makes me wonder, like, are they the ones that have their priorities straight? Cause a lot of folks, they talk about, like, one day when I retire, one day when I make all this money, or one day when I get x, y, or z. And you're like, okay. What are you gonna do? They're like, oh, well, I'll kick back and spend time with my friends and family.
Adam Tank:It's like, you don't need to make a billion dollars to do that. You can do that anytime you want. So that that has carried through with me, you know, just, yeah, almost everything. And I always think about, like, anytime there's a challenge at work or, you know, a challenging situation. It's like, man, this isn't life or death.
Adam Tank:We're gonna be alright. Some people do have careers where it's life or death. That's a different story. But for me, it's like I sit in an air conditioned room all day staring at the screen. Like, life is not bad.
Adam Tank:Fact is really good. So I I just count my buttons every day and remind myself that this is all we have is the present moment and to enjoy it.
Ilya Tabakh:I just gotta jump in there for a second. I think the the I really like the collect the dots, connect the dots. But the thing I would add there or not but, but and. You know, the thing I would add there is I think there's some algorithms and some sort of behaviors that allow you to get a much wider cross section of dots. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:And I think one of them is kind of taking the leap, looking at the opportunity. Another one is kind of thinking about, What don't I know that I don't know? Right? And thinking about maybe who's ahead in the journey. There's a couple I don't you know, I I didn't consider them this way, but but sort of they're they're almost algorithms in how I make you know, and actually, Terrance and I have dug into this one.
Ilya Tabakh:Anything that's making you anxious, sort of run toward that. Don't run away from it. You know, because there's normally some tension, and there's a reason why you're feeling that way. But it's sort of collecting the dots isn't just like, you know, looking at what are the things I can do, but also sort of manifesting some of these things. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:And then as you were kind of talking through it, I think it's an important addition, somebody taking a leap on you or kind of a bet on you where maybe they shouldn't have. But the thing is, you still have to lean into that, Right? And you have to take the opportunity and you have to have sort of the clarity of mind to really absorb that, hey, not, you know, being locked in your head about what are you gonna do on the next step of your career when you get back from Mexico, but actually being in the moment and seeing that, you know, hey, your new friend or the kids that you're working with are having a completely different experience. And so I just wanted to kind of point that out because I think it's The process of collection is actually really interesting. You know?
Ilya Tabakh:And I may we'll probably expand on this. I have a feeling this collect and connect thing will will become, you know, something that we revisit. But I just wanted to point out that I think part of it is you know what you know, but there's a lot of things that you don't have exposure because, you know, nobody can give you that perspective. And there's some things you can do to sort of expose yourself to more. And I think that's a kind of important part of the process.
Terrance Orr:Yeah. I think this this idea of sort of, taking the leap or adaptability, which, you know, you had in school when the guy asked you to pitch, you did it again, right, for another competition. You did it early on before you even got to that stage in your life when you went out to Mexico, that was already a leap, you know. And then somehow you ended up in a career where you need to be on a plane going back forth to Brazil, right? And thinking about your formative experiences, what you remembered in your early days and letting that sort of carry you throughout.
Terrance Orr:I think, I think those experiences give people sort of exposure leads to you knowing things and giving you perspective about things to help you lead better as as a CEO, as a founder, as somebody who will have people reporting to them. Right? And understanding that it could be a lot worse. I've been in way worse sort of scenarios and situations and to sort of how do you lead from the front that way? And, and I think that's a very important part of, you know, starting anything, leading people, inspiring people along the journey and the mission that you have, and and building anything new.
Terrance Orr:But you you managed to do this, Adam, inside of a company like GE for for your first, like, massive swing. You know? Talk to us about you being a venture leader, you know, inside of GE. Do nothing about water. By the way, people.
Terrance Orr:Let me remind you guys before we move into this. Do nothing about water before this. Okay? Got into this, drinking from the fire hose, and now he needs to lead a new venture. Talk to us about that part.
Adam Tank:I again, looking backwards, connecting the dots, I had had so many run ins with water over the years, especially in my microbiology training. So it's interesting. My first job out of college was a quality engineer for General Mills. I So was responsible for making sure that the food that we produce was safe for people to consume. And safety is a function of a couple different things, but one of them is how the absence or presence of water and the manufacturing process can lead to the growth of all sorts of nasty, disgusting things.
Adam Tank:So counterintuitively, GE or General Mills, sorry, actually went to many different manufacturing schedules where they would run continuously for like three, four, five, six days without cleaning. Because bringing water into the process would actually create more harm than it would do good. And it's it's you don't really think about it that way. But that happened to me. I had some really interesting experience with the water living in Brazil.
Adam Tank:Of course, traveling internationally, you're you think about it all the time. Right? Do I have this raw fruit? I eat this raw vegetable? Is this clean in water?
Adam Tank:Do I right? Does it have the water have ice or not? Blah blah blah blah blah. Of course, we all use water every day too. So the first thing we do in the morning, usually go to the restroom, brush our teeth, make coffee, whatever.
Adam Tank:Right? All has to do with water. But no one's thinking about it. No one's thinking about it. It's out of sight, out of mind.
Adam Tank:Fortunately, our water utilities here do a pretty good job of keeping things on. So you turn on your tap, you get water, you flush your toilet, it goes away. When you don't have to think about it, you just don't, right, when the service is good. So I became really interested in this whole concept of water and what it takes to to make water work at a societal level. And so that was my that was my interest that sort of carried me into my venture role at GE, which was looking at early stage water companies that were bringing digital technology into the ecosystem because water was and still is many ways probably twenty years behind any other major industry in terms of technology adoption and seeing who we wanted to cut checks into.
Adam Tank:So I was working with GE Ventures, looking at I probably looked at 01/1950, 200 different, you know, call them they call it time as digital water startups, thinking about where do we want to invest? How do we want to expand the portfolio of GE solutions in the water space? And through that, I engage with a bunch of different utilities in The US because for every entrepreneur that came to the table, I'm like, okay, great, you're gonna sell me whatever bill of goods you want to sell me and tell me that it's gonna be a billion dollar company if I could only get 1% of the market and blah, right, all this other crap. What do your customers have to say? That's ultimately who matters.
Adam Tank:Who's cutting the check? And are they gonna pay you or not? That's it. And so I engage with a ton of the end customers. In a lot of cases, those were The US water utilities.
Adam Tank:And so I came across a bunch of really interesting problems, one of which I could bore you with stats all day, but one of my favorite stats is at that time, this is more than ten years ago at this point, but roughly 30% of all of The United States water that was treated and being sent to an end customer that could be a home or a business 30% of that water was lost in between the treatment plant and the end customer gone. So that could be from leaks, it could be from theft, it could be from inaccurate metering, there's a whole bunch of reasons why that might be the case. But think about that when we talk about, you know, all the you know, taps are running dry, people are our wells are running dry. Right? You see these, sort of clickbaity headlines with the lake levels dropping in these, you know, sunken boats from the eighteen hundreds reappearing all this stuff.
Adam Tank:Thinking You're like, well, how in the hell could we be losing 30% of our clean water? Where's that stuff going? So I just I sort of stuck that on the back of my head and thought, you know, that's a really interesting set of problems that maybe one day I can work on. And then that, of course, led me into my my next adventure.
Terrance Orr:Oh, man. So many threads. There's one. I'm drawing this sort of a at at first, on on the surface, I thought, okay. Adam is our first, like, water guy expert, like, you know, can go deep.
Terrance Orr:But then when I started to drill out, you're sort of thinking about the relationships and the people who have I'm thinking right now as you're talking, woah. We had another EIR on the show who's a chief product officer for a water company, water treatment sort of company, MK, for for a short while. And and and then we have Jen who's starting a water company right right now, more on the the retail side around clean water and fresh water from around the world, another EIR who's at Shutter Hill Ventures. Right? And and then we have Janine who lives in Brazil half of her her time.
Terrance Orr:Right? And moonlights between back and forth in in The US. So I'm sitting here thinking, like, I can't wait to get these guys in a room together. You know, just so they can talk water and travel and adaptability and the journey of sort of being an EIR, but just thinking about all the things that you just went through just now. One, I'm noticing the trend that you tend to like to help companies grow with names that start with general at the beginning, whether it's General Mills or Electric, let's just start there.
Terrance Orr:Right? And have created a ton of value inside of those companies in many of ways. But you took that value and translated that value to going outside of of GE. Right? At at some point, great things happen.
Terrance Orr:You built the company. Great outcomes happen as a result of that. And now you're at this stage where what are you thinking? Right? You go on to do a few other things before you start Transcend, but but why?
Terrance Orr:What were you thinking at the time when you when you left GE?
Adam Tank:Couple things. So I had just just sold the startup that we spun out of GE. And I love that journey. It was a ton of fun. I found out the things I'm really good at the things I'm not very good at.
Adam Tank:I learned a lot about the venture ecosystem that I didn't even understand having come from my time at GE Ventures. And I met a lot of super cool entrepreneurs, Dave Merrill included, who is the one Ilya referred to that introduced us. And so I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, but I wasn't sure what and how. And I got a call from a former colleague at GE Water, who they had then been purchased by a company called Suez. And they were like, hey, we're setting up the smart cities division in The US.
Adam Tank:We you know, Suez is based in France. They're literally the ones that built the Suez Canal. That's how they got their name. For a lot of folks who know them, they're a massive company, huge French company. And they had a they have actually have a really cool smart cities program in Europe that they wanted to try to copy and paste here in The US.
Adam Tank:And they're like, we want you to lead that. And it really it, you know, I really had to think about that, because I enjoyed the entrepreneurial journey. I was thinking back to my days at GE, in some cases, definitely General Mills, where I was like, literally in a cube, sitting in meetings that I had, I was just wasting my time and everyone else was too. And thinking about all the corporate crap that I just hated. I was like, man, do I really want to go to a big company again?
Adam Tank:I don't know if I can if I can cut it. But the role is going be super entrepreneurial. So it was just me ragtag running around thinking about how we how can we make this happen, right? The technology was there. The funding was there.
Adam Tank:They were sort of willing to give me carte blanche to say, hey, go build this thing how you want it. And so I was like, you know what? It like, even if this is a stop gap, it'll be a really cool stop gap where I can learn a lot. So that's why I went to work for Suez. I made it twelve months.
Adam Tank:Almost twelve months to the day and couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I had to go back to to the true entrepreneurial route. So and I'm glad I did. I'm very glad I did.
Adam Tank:Also very fortunate for my colleagues at SUEZ because they're an amazing bunch. They really are, and they're doing really cool work. It's just that when you when you're in a big company, it's something I've also learned building Transcend now to you know, through series b and a lot of financing is that you have to start to layer in processes and systems that slow things down. There's just no way around it. Like, you can't keep that sort of ragtag maverick, you know, crazy founder mode hat on through the lifecycle of the company.
Adam Tank:It just doesn't work that way. You've got to hire teams, right? People have to be managed, you got to have different layers of approval. You certainly hope to keep it flatter and faster than a big organization, but you still have to have it. And so at the time, you know, I just abhorred all of those corporate the corporate just bullshit that I had to deal with all the time and the layers of approval and how slow everything was.
Adam Tank:It just pissed me off. But it's also sort of a necessity when you're that big of an organization. And I've never seen a big company that doesn't have that stuff. So it makes me think it's sort of it's not a flaw. It's just how the system is designed, and that's just the way it works.
Terrance Orr:So something happened in between there. Something happened in between this way where you got more ingrained in water again, you know, after after Suez and, you know, you go on and you cofound, right, Transcendent. You you're doing what you're doing now. And I think what you just said now, I think is is a very, very, very important point for for individuals who do not get the privilege to make it to series b, right, like yourself, right, and and beyond, I'm sure, right, they don't really understand the fact that at some point you grow up to be an adult as a company. You you don't stay an infant or a toddler forever where you can run around and do what you want and fly under the radar and people don't mess with you.
Terrance Orr:At some point, you're you're a big kid on the block and people start to notice you and and now you had to tighten up your operations and everything else in between, your systems. Can you talk a little bit more about that, Adam? What it takes to to to make that leap from a series a company, which you're in the early stages to now you're into growth stage around b and c and how that's very different for you as a founder and how you operate.
Adam Tank:It's completely different. At least it has been in my experience. And to be honest, it's something I still struggle with. Every single day, it's a struggle for me because my mindset is just get shit done. You might piss some people off, along the way.
Adam Tank:You know, the things may not be a 100% perfected and whatever else, but, like, you just need to get it done. You respond quickly. Like, that's just the way things work. And that's not our company anymore. Right?
Adam Tank:Our company is is processes and systems because that is how you grow scalably. And I think the keyword there is scale. So the things that I do don't scale well. They don't. So I have to work with people who are operators, who are system builders, who are process people that that enjoy that stuff.
Adam Tank:That's the other thing that's interesting is that there's a lot of stuff that I hate doing, and then I'm sure we could all talk about things we hate doing that other people would love to do. I'll never forget. I had a conversation with a woman once who you know, we were talking about what we do. She works for a water utility in UK, and I was like, yeah. You know what?
Adam Tank:What's your plan? She's kinda earlier on in her career. I'm like, oh, what are you planning to do? You know, was thinking maybe we could hire her in The UK. We're expanding there, whatever.
Adam Tank:And she's like, my dream job is to manage a schedule for a CEO. And I was like, damn. You couldn't pay me a million dollars a year to do that. There is no way. But you like, the way she talked about it, she was so passionate about it.
Adam Tank:I'm like, this is insane. I can't even fathom. So cup keep this in mind. Couple this with another book that I read, which actually a recommendation from my COO. And it's called who not how.
Adam Tank:And there's this you guys actually alluded to it earlier. Like, if you're feeling anxiety, right, run towards it, go towards the pain. And generally, I agree with that sentiment. Like, you definitely gotta go towards the pain. Have that conversation that might be scarier that you're not willing to have.
Adam Tank:Right? That's because that's where progress happens. That's where growth happens. It may also, though, be a time to reflect and think about, is this just something that you just don't wanna do? Like, you just either don't enjoy it or you're not good at it?
Adam Tank:Who can you find that does enjoy it or that is good at it? Because those people do exist. And so if you're procrastinating on something or you're feeling anxious about something, think about who you can bring into the fray that will help you get things done. And I'd say that's been the biggest transition from that sort of early stage, you know, seed series series a company to a b in in later stage growth is you got to bring in more people that do the things you either don't like to do or that you know can get you to scalability because that's the real key is the scalability piece. And it all comes down to people and processes, but people for sure.
Ilya Tabakh:One thing I'd sort of point out that kind of caught my ear when you were talking about it, I think that sort of deep dive around what water is and how it gets to people is like and being able to be in an environment where you have both deep expertise and a broad platform to sort of really appreciate what that means kind of end to end is actually like a really powerful narrative foundation to build from. And one of the things I love about being a startup founder in the times that I've done it is that you're much closer to the ground, much closer to the kind of customer, right? There's just less distance between you and the market and the technology and all these things. And having the ability to layer in sort of that view, what are we doing here? Where could it go?
Ilya Tabakh:Is actually like an amazing because as I think about, you know, kind of the entrepreneurial operating systems or the frameworks that you have to install in order to get from one to 60 to 200 to a thousand, right, Somebody still has to own the story. There's still, you know, can you be very sort of reactive and and be able to support the marketplace as it evolves. And can you sort of deliver on the things that you're saying you can deliver on? But I think that narrative, that foundation for kind of the vision of what are we trying to do here, right, and where does the world go for successful It is super interesting and important. And so you sort of You didn't exactly mention it in passing, but think folks that I know that have had a period of time to spend in an organization and on a topic that they really sort of fall in love with the area and the problem often become, you know, sort of probably some of the best able to motivate, you know, teams and build companies to really attack these problems.
Ilya Tabakh:I just wanted to kinda highlight that.
Adam Tank:Yeah. There's no question about it.
Ilya Tabakh:Ran through it quickly.
Adam Tank:I mean, it's you go through a lot of hard stuff as a founder. I mean, a lot. It's like it's like the world's craziest roller coaster ride where the highs are really, really high, And the lows, you're like, we're crashing and burning, and we're all done. Like, there's just right. There's no pulling back from this one.
Adam Tank:And so to be able to level that out, I found that like the, you know, that gap between the peaks and the troughs is really flattened when you have a strong mission and a strong purpose. And that's across the org. And so for us, in our case, everyone, sometimes we haven't talked about what we do. But every time some someone runs into a design or project using our software, we know that there is a percentage likelihood that someone in the world is going to get access to clean water renewable power because of it. That's it.
Adam Tank:And we've measured that since almost day one of the company. And so if you go to the front page of our website, you scroll maybe a third of the way down, you're gonna see we've impacted over 400 and, I don't know, probably ten, fifteen million people at this point around the world with our software. That's what keeps me going. Every day I you know, in my inbox, I get it I get a notification every time someone runs a design. And it's almost like you're in a height, like a you know, almost like like Wolf of Wall Street or some sort of high, like, high stakes sales environment where, like, they're ringing the bell every time an order comes in.
Adam Tank:That's how I feel when I see someone run a designer software because I'm like, that's what it's all about. That's why we do the work that we do.
Terrance Orr:Man, that's because you're tying that impact back to not just profits. It's just here's the impact that happens when you use our software. If you use it, I know, right, somebody has gotten some impact and some value out of using it. Back up a little bit, Adam. Tell people exactly, like, what is the company that you run today that you started, you know, and and get make it real for them.
Terrance Orr:Give them a use case or a scenario in which in a way that somebody would be using, you know, your your software.
Adam Tank:So the we'll keep it to water for now. Right? The platform is is much broader than water, but I think it's it'll be instructive for folks listening to this. So generally speaking, if you live in any sort of major metro, your water is treated at a central treatment plant. And when you flush your toilets or turn on your tap or the water goes down your shower drain, it also goes to a central treatment plant.
Adam Tank:Those are two distinct entities. You have a drinking water treatment plant and you have a wastewater treatment plant. Those are very different, certainly in terms of how they smell, but also in terms of how they operate and the type of technology. And quite frankly, whether or not someone wants to live close to one. You don't mind living near a drinking water plant, you don't want to live anywhere near a wastewater treatment plant.
Adam Tank:So our company was built on this foundation of we want to build better infrastructure. In most cases, our water wastewater infrastructure is in horrible shape. The American Society of Civil Engineers rates it, I think it got a D this year. It's been like c plus at best for like the last decade. So we're spending billions, if not trillions of dollars a year pumping it into our water infrastructure, and we're still getting horrible, horrible ratings and reviews.
Adam Tank:And so there's clearly something wrong there. And we believe that the reason is, is that we're not spending enough time when we plan this infrastructure in the first place to build the right stuff from the beginning. So if you know, like I said, if you're in a town where your water wastewater is being treated centrally, some point that had to be built and constructed. And chances are, if you're somewhere where there's a growing population, another one of those is going to have to be built. But how big should it be?
Adam Tank:How many people are going to move into the area? What if a big battery manufacturer, which is happening in Kansas City decides to move in in five years after it's constructed? What does that do to the wastewater? Right? Can it handle that amount of wastewater?
Adam Tank:What if the population doesn't grow as expected? What if the climate changes in twenty years, and we get a bunch of rainfall that we didn't expect, and that impacts all the water going into the treatment plants, right? People aren't taking the time to assess all the variables, because we just don't have the time and money to do it. So the people using our software are the ones who are responsible for planning and designing and constructing these systems. And we're basically giving them a crystal ball.
Adam Tank:What we're telling them is, hey, here are the things that you're thinking about now when you want to plan to design this infrastructure, and here are the things that you're going to be thinking about in twenty or twenty five years. Let's figure out the sweet spot in what you should be building and make sure you're making the most capital efficient decisions, operational efficient decisions, use of land, right? All these different variables you got to consider. Let's make sure you have the data upfront to be able to do that. So effectively, what our software does is give all of the stuff that engineers do today manually, it does it automatically at a conceptual level and pumps out a complete data package so that the folks that are looking at making these decisions have all the data they need with all the variables they want to account for and all the different technologies and innovations that are in the sector to be able to say, Hey, this is the one we want to choose.
Adam Tank:And it's this because, right, it's the lowest cost or it's going to last the longest or it's going to be the one least likely to break down in twenty years or whatever that might be. That's what we're doing for people.
Ilya Tabakh:And maybe just to add because, you know, that seems pretty kind of a cool thing. But normally, people are looking at one design or maybe two designs. I would say three, but that's just not reality, right? And so instead of looking at one or two based on sort of a lot of filtering and professional experience, you know, maybe you can look at 30 or 300 or 3,000. Right?
Ilya Tabakh:And then that starts to say, hey, the biggest sort of degrees of freedom and risk are, more volume flowing into this thing or more whatever, like as Adam was talking about. And so that sort of allows you to potentially even iterate and explore, hey, this is kind of the biggest risk or the biggest opportunity. Maybe if we can design this with extra overflow, we can accommodate additional industry. Right? And these decisions just traditionally have been more of a professional judgment.
Ilya Tabakh:And so just to kind of introduce, know, so what, which is a good question that gets asked in infrastructure a lot.
Terrance Orr:And I want to underscore this because I think a lot of the things that I get to talk to my family and friends and people about on a day to day basis is basically things that people can't see. Basically what Adam said, right? I've built a whole career and in around things that people can't see and touch basically, right? You can go touch a data center, sure. You know, but on a day to day basis, can't walk into a store and see it, right?
Terrance Orr:For example, you know, and same thing is true with Adam. Same thing is true with you Ilya and critical infrastructure. We've sort of built a career around infrastructure, things that people can't see, but runs the world in many, many ways. And I think that's an important point. There's things that there's riches and niches is what I like to tell people.
Terrance Orr:Right? One. Two, there's a lot of things that people have not touched in a very long time that are waiting for somebody with the with the grit and the know how to come in and, like, really do something there where you can make tons of money doing it, but also also have direct impact. Right? Like like Adam has happened.
Terrance Orr:I I don't think you have to make a trade off and do one or the other. I think you can make money and do well at the same time. And anybody who tells you that's not possible, I I don't know if I believe them. Okay. So so and because we are talking to a guy who's done it and has raised a series b off the back of it and I'd argue he's gonna raise a series c as well going forward.
Terrance Orr:Right? So I I think that's an important point for our audience because we usually see the sexy things, the things that people talk about in the articles and the but we don't get to see infrastructure that much. And I think it's an important point for people to know that our lives depend on it, you know, every single day. So it's an important point that I just wanna underscore.
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. Just jumping in real quickly. You know, over the past hundred, hundred twenty years, when you look at power availability, water availability, I mean, generally, just what we understood around the world, you know, around how the world works. We like, society generally has developed and delivered a lot of both stable and reliable infrastructure. There's also been a lot of things that maybe we didn't realize we were doing, you know, whether it's creating chemicals that are almost impossible to destroy, although we're kind of figuring it out, or, you know, kind of burning things or introducing emissions into the world.
Ilya Tabakh:You know, we we started the beginning of the twentieth and late nineteenth century in a world of abundance. Right? Whereas kind of human ingenuity can overcome any anything. Right? And and in many cases, you know, losing 30% of water was not that big of an issue if you assumed water was a, you know, sort of a resource that can never be exhausted.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? And power, similarly, like the distribution system in electricity, you know, is leaky. It's just the way that it's described. And in many cases, these utility poles are sixty, eighty, 100 plus. You know, in some of the California fires, the metal members that failed were 80 or 100 years old.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? The actual metal had been stressed so much that it just failed. Right? If you take a paper clip and bend it enough, it snaps. Well, that happens to bigger metal too.
Ilya Tabakh:So timing in entrepreneurship is everything. What's interesting about sort of and I'll get off my infrastructure tirade here in a second. But a lot of these very bedrock of the things that when you flip the switch, you expect it to be on have worked for eighty, one hundred years. Right? And and we need them to evolve and and sort of go to a completely different level of capability that in for The US, at least, we haven't had to do since World War two.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? And for the water system that we haven't had to do since, you know, the roaring essentially the New Deal, right, because of property tax and other ways that these things are financed. And so, you know, it it's a lot of opportunity, but it's also a lot of sort of reimagining with with a different view of what's possible. And so I just wanted to especially when you talk about power, water, telecommunications is a little newer, but we're asking telecommunications to do completely new things. But a lot of these things have been on 99.999% of the time for a century.
Ilya Tabakh:And we need them to be that and sustainable and adaptive in two way, and we gotta figure it out in, you know, ten years. Right? And, like, we just have to do a lot of things differently to achieve that. I just you know? Alright.
Ilya Tabakh:I'm done with my tirade, but I just I think that's, like, an important frame when we've talked to about kind of utility level things.
Terrance Orr:We've talked about a a lot of the good stuff, Adam. And before we let you go and as we move into the next part of this, wanna know if there's any war wounds, right, or stories that you can share with our audience. So on this path to doing all the great things that you're doing now. Is there one or two stories that that you could share with our audience that that really like drives home sort of like you need to have resiliency, you need to have grit, you need to keep going, right, Despite these things in front of you, despite these other things. Any things that you anything that you would share that you'd be open to sharing with our audience.
Adam Tank:That's Yeah. I mean, man, there it I could go on forever about this. I just had, like, literally three, four things hit me at once, and I'm trying to figure out which one I want to talk about. But the one I do want to mention, and this is instructive, sort of both, like, from a mental model point of view, and how you deal with challenge in entrepreneurship, and also tactically. So when we sold our robotics company in '20 would have been 2018.
Adam Tank:Yeah, twenty eighteen twenty nineteen. Right, everything got sold off all kosher, no issues, right, like clean packaged up, all good, whatever. I get a call from the state of California, two years after the fact, maybe three years after the fact, claiming that I owe employment taxes for one of my early employees from a company that no longer exists, because I misclassified that person as a contractor instead of an FTE. This is for a business that had been closed for three years at this point. There's literally no bank account.
Adam Tank:There's no money to pay anything. There's no nothing. And the state of California is chasing me for something that, by the way, was complete nonsense. I did not misclassify this person. That ended up being proven.
Adam Tank:So it was like it ended up okay. But just think you you closed literally, like, closed this chapter, closed this part, like, this book, of your life. Right? Expecting it all to be gone. You're focused on your next big thing.
Adam Tank:And all of a sudden, the state is coming after you because of some crap that is just absurd. That's the kind of stuff you get hit with all the time. All the time. The things that you think you need to worry about inevitably never come to fruition, and the stuff that you're not worried about does. And you're like, what?
Adam Tank:Like, what is going on? So you just gotta be ready to to to fight, quite frankly, and be ready to just sort of take the lumps as they come because you know they're coming. Right? Nothing can ever just you know, you don't just ride off onto a pony into the rainbow and get your pot of gold at the end. That's just not the way it works.
Adam Tank:So I would just I would just say for people, like, you're gonna deal with tough shit. A lot of it is gonna be stuff that you couldn't have anticipated happening. Keep your mission front of mind. Keep your purpose front of mind. Keep your why front of mind.
Adam Tank:Know that it's this is again, this is not a bug. These are features of the journey. This is how it works. You want to do anything good, you got to take risks, you got to deal with the crap. That's just how it is.
Adam Tank:And enjoy for what it is, right? Even though it's a pain to deal with, I still learned a ton from the process. And I advise a lot of people now that are thinking about setting up shop, especially if it's in California, to think maybe, right, 10 times over why you want to do that in that state as opposed to somewhere else. Because it can be very challenging in many ways. That's just one example.
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. You know, one thing I'd like to ask, you spent quite a bit of time at large companies. You've obviously done startups. You know, what's kind of a misconception that one has against the other and vice versa? Because it's always I've done a little bit of the same, and I've You know, they think they know, but they have no idea as per some of the reasons we talked to them.
Ilya Tabakh:I'm curious on your perspective here.
Adam Tank:Yeah. I would think from the entrepreneur perspective, right? The big company, no one there is innovative. They're all bureaucrats. Right?
Adam Tank:They don't want to change the way things are done. They're just comfortable sitting in their, you know, their ivory tower, right? You know, working an hour a day and, you know, taking these elaborate vacations and all this other stuff. Part of me is like, you know what? That's kinda true.
Adam Tank:But the other part of me knows that there are a lot of good people inside those companies, and they are innovative, and they are willing to change things up. It just might take a little bit longer than what you're used to as an entrepreneur. So as long as you're willing to sort of put up with that stuff, you find the right champions, you find the people that do believe in your mission and what you're doing, and you can really deliver value to them, you'll get your deal over the line or your pilot or whatever it is you're trying to do. You'll get it over the line. Just may not happen as fast as you would like.
Adam Tank:Because, again, when you're that size of company, there's layers of approval, there's a lot of red tape. They're sort of in more of a like cover your ass than they are a take risk situation. So a lot of their decision making is based off of how much risk does this expose us to. So that's why you gotta deal with lawyers and you gotta deal with procurement and you gotta deal right? That's just that's just the way that that's just the way the beast works.
Adam Tank:So for the entrepreneurs out there, don't think that every person that works for big companies, you know, sucks because they don't. There are a lot of really good people. On the flip side, I think a lot of big companies are thinking like, these are just like, you know, like a guy and a girl in a garage, you know, flipping stuff together. They're just they're just talking out of their ass. They don't know what they're doing.
Adam Tank:Right? They're like, selling us on this big vision. They can't really execute. All these things inevitably go wrong, and I'm going to get fired if I procure from this little rinky dink startup and all of that. There are startups out there that are like They are flying by the seat of their pants.
Adam Tank:They don't really have a product. They don't have a team. Right? You will expose yourself to risk. But there are a lot of people out there that are repeat founders or that really have their act together.
Adam Tank:They may have come from a company like yours, have spent time in your shoes that get it. And they've solved the problem, and they have a real technology that's solving that pain point. And you got to take some time to listen to them. Right? Just take the time to listen to them.
Terrance Orr:Such a good summary of these two worlds. You know, as somebody sort of worked for a firm, you know, as a partner at a firm who used to help large companies innovate literally, you know, we used to do this all the time. There's always somebody innovative inside these larger organizations, right? And at, and at one point the large organization was a startup that that grew up to be a massive company. It's just that over time, they they lose their entrepreneurial DNA.
Terrance Orr:Right? Because large companies optimize for efficiency. Right? Not not just speed. And this is where the systems, the processes, the red takes because when you don't have those things, bad things happen and then they end up in the news.
Terrance Orr:And a lot of people who are making a lot of money are very upset, which is why all startups have to grow up eventually like Adam talked about and put systems and processes in place because it is the gates that you need to have in place to make sure bad things don't happen, you know, and that things stay efficient as possible. And I just think it was well said to to say that there are innovative people on the side of large companies. I see it all the time, you know, all the time. And we're going to have future people on this show and others that are in the pipeline who have spun companies out of very large companies who have gone on to raise a lot of capital, right? And to do very important things.
Terrance Orr:People forget that Expedia spun out of Microsoft technically in the early days, right? And a bunch of other companies actually. So there's I can go through a laundry list of companies who spun out of bigger companies. So talented people are are there. And startup folks, they need big companies and big companies need startups.
Terrance Orr:You know? And and that's why we both exist in different worlds, but at some point, you know, they just don't speak the same language. So and, and you need to be bilingual. You need to speak startups and corporate. And Adam, you've spent time in corporations and you spent time in the startup world.
Terrance Orr:And I think, I think that's a skill that a lot of people underestimate. Because if you've only done startups, you don't really have a clue how corporations function and how they work. And once you've been inside one, you know, oh, it's a lot of red tape to do this thing. It's a lot of red tape to become a vendor. You have to go through procurement hell.
Terrance Orr:Right? I mean, it's just, it's a lot of pain and you have to get that to, I think, build a generational and lifetime company, to scale yourself. But there's very few people in the world who've been founders to scale themselves to be CEOs. Very, very few. Because at some point people realize it's beyond them to to scale the company and they had to go hire somebody else to do it and you know who, not how.
Terrance Orr:Right? And how do we scale it to be the thing that I've always envisioned it being? And that might mean that I'm not at the top, but I've carried it as far as I can to help it grow up to what it is today. And I think that's a mature conversation that every great founder or CEO have to have with themselves and their board and everybody else. And, yeah, man, I think you've underscored a lot of that today for sure.
Terrance Orr:You've played two x EIR, you know, all already. Right? And you've done it well. Anything else that that's not on the LinkedIn that you would share with people that you just won't get it get it from looking at your LinkedIn? Things that you like to to do in your spare time.
Terrance Orr:Long winded way to get to this question, but yeah.
Adam Tank:Yeah. Yeah. There's there, the thing I would say is that I don't think this is becoming as much of a myth anymore or like a talking point, but people always talked about work life balance. And I think it's bullshit. You have one life, you have the same twenty four hours a day as everyone else.
Adam Tank:There you are fooling yourself if you don't think that work and life aren't inextricably intertwined. Because time is time. Right? It's not like, well, this time is reserved for work, and this is for life, and this is for eating, and this is for whatever. It's like, No, this all it's all part of the same pot.
Adam Tank:And so for me, it's I constantly reminding myself how I choose to spend my time is how I choose to spend my life. And so if I'm not sitting in front of my computer working, right, very intentional about spending it with my wife and with my daughter. We're also foster parents. So we spend time fostering children. We are also philanthropists, so spend a lot of time volunteering with various organizations, like to spend time outdoors if I can, big outdoors guy.
Adam Tank:And just again, the reminder that like, tomorrow's never guaranteed. All we have is right now. And so enjoy the moment while you can. And whether that's at work or whether that's with my daughter, if she's freaking out and stuff is going wrong in the house, right? Just it's just this is part of the journey, and you just got to enjoy it.
Adam Tank:So that's what I would say.
Terrance Orr:Man, I have to ask this follow-up question because I told you I did some digging. You know? Do you think your love for the outdoors come from sort of you being an Eagle Scout?
Adam Tank:It's funny. In some ways, yes. It's I love I love you did that digging. Thank you for that. In some ways, yes.
Adam Tank:I definitely gained an appreciation for, yeah, for, like, living off the land in a sense. Right? And appreciation for mother nature and everything she can provide. On the other hand, there was a there was a probably the worst experience I've ever had in my life was when I was 14, 15 years old, on a scout trip, and just hellish experience. I won't get into it now.
Adam Tank:And so I've also learned I hate hiking. That is one thing I will not do or would prefer not to do if I don't have to. So in that sense, I like I also sort of, like, just can't stand doing some stuff like that. So it's funny. It's a double edged sword.
Ilya Tabakh:Amazing. So so maybe to kinda bring us home here, you're sort of at this intersection of, you know, AI infrastructure and and maybe, you know, following on my tirade, a once in a lifetime infrastructure transition. Can you talk us a little bit through kind of where your work in Transcend leads us? And then also maybe ways that kind of the EIR Live community can help and kind of connect with that work. And I think that would be sort of a good way As always, we can always keep digging, but I think that's a really good way to kind of bring us in and kind of connect the network to support your efforts here.
Adam Tank:My vision is that our software could be used to design an entire city from scratch. So if we end up colonizing Mars or name your next planet, exoplanet, the water systems, the power systems, the housing, the telco, the hospitals, the everything a society needs to function, our software would be able to design at a conceptual level. You literally could just put in, here's how many people I think are gonna live here. Here's the land that we have available to us. Here's some of the levers we wanna pull from how we want the society to look or function or feel.
Adam Tank:Press a button and bang. Like, everything would be spit out. Your costs, your three d renderings, your all of your engineering data and documentation. Everything is right there. So that's what I see a future.
Adam Tank:I see a future where our software is being used to design more resilient infrastructure, more sustainable infrastructure, more cost effective infrastructure. You're going to pay less in taxes because we're doing more work upfront to prevent all the catastrophic failures that are happening later on down the road. I think you're going to see a lot of people in utilities and engineering firms that are enjoying their lives a lot more because they're not worried about you know, dragging a picture around on a Word document for the seventeenth time, which is we all know is like the seventh layer of hell, never works well. Let computers do that stuff so you can focus on the fun stuff. So that's that's the future I see.
Adam Tank:As far as this community goes, if you or someone you know works in a water power utility or is an engineer for these systems or sells equipment into these projects that could be breakers, transformers, pumps, pipes, I wanna talk to them Because chances are we can significantly help you either grow your business, cut costs, build better infrastructure. There's a whole lot there, but we sit right at the intersection of every major player in an infrastructure project. And I know that we can drive value. So I'd love to talk to you.
Ilya Tabakh:Amazing. And then just final, how can people connect and kind of follow your work?
Adam Tank:LinkedIn is probably the best way. So Adam Tank on LinkedIn. You can go to AdamTank dot com for sort of the more personal side of things if you want. Either way, I I try to respond to everyone, usually within twenty four hours if I'm if I'm good about it. So please send a note.
Adam Tank:You'll you'll be surprised how many times people offer this, and it's crickets. And it's crazy because most of the folks I know that, you you think, oh, that person would never want to talk to me or, you know, oh, they'll never respond. They'll respond in an instant. They love giving back. They love helping out.
Adam Tank:They love building that community. So please reach out.
Ilya Tabakh:We've come full circle. I think we we leave it at that. I really appreciate the time and so happy to to have you on the show and get to dig into, you know, some of my favorite topics here.
Terrance Orr:Adam, I wish I could keep you for another hour, but I'm gonna let you go. It's been an absolute privilege, my friend. Thank you for for joining the podcast. I can't wait for this one to drop.
Adam Tank:Likewise, guys. Thank you.
Terrance Orr:Man, I gotta tell you another incredible episode with Adam. So many, so many gems. My head is gonna be 10 times bigger after I record all these episodes with all the people. But two things that really stuck out to me about Adam's episode. One thing that I wanna call out first because I think is very, the sort of noble of of Adam.
Terrance Orr:One, you can do well and do good at the same time. You don't need to sacrifice one for the other. Right? And he's shown that throughout his entire career thus far from the time he was in college, from the time to where he's at right now being the CEO of a series b and growing, company. So, you know, you don't have to sacrifice one for the other.
Terrance Orr:And and I think that's an important lesson for our founders and people listening to the episode to understand. Even now he's building a company that's basically helping, you know, help with water, right, you know, around the world and that's infrastructure for our lives, you know, and still putting that in the fabric of everything that he's working on. The second thing, is really around storytelling and strategic narrative. Right? He's clearly very, very good at strategic narrative and getting that to resonate with different audiences.
Terrance Orr:And there's a lot of evidence of that throughout the episode that he shared with us. And I'll save it for our audience to actually hear it. But I mean, the guy is clearly a boring storyteller. And I won't say a boring storyteller. I'm sure that's a gift that he learned through debate and other things that he engaged with.
Terrance Orr:But, you know, what are the things that stuck out to you?
Ilya Tabakh:Yeah. No, absolutely. I think picking up on the natural part is interesting. What was interesting to me specifically about it is the people around Adam noticed that, you know, he's the guy that can help him out. Before he was able to recognize it himself, people around him identified and sort of went out of their way to get his input, get his participation.
Ilya Tabakh:And so he's like, Oh yeah, was just something I can do. Right? It was something I was natural at, but obviously people around him knew it and connected with him. And so I think that's Saying that he's a natural is kind of a clear and easy thing to do. And I don't think it's probably a surprise to anybody that knew Adam when he was, younger.
Ilya Tabakh:I think the other thing is, like, when when we asked Adam at the end of the day, you know, where do you see all this going? He was pretty ambitious. He's like, let's design the whole city, the entire thing, you know, you know, kind of bottom up, all the systems. You know, it could be that much better. And definitely no no lack of, ambition.
Ilya Tabakh:Right? Because the tools that he's building, you can very clearly tell he's excited about them. And we geeked out more than a little on infrastructure to the point where Adam even got me to, you know, get on the infrastructure soapbox for a bit. But it was really interesting to sort of see that level of ambition and him get really excited about where that takes us. And I think finally, in all these episodes taken together, I love the sort of frameworks and concepts that we're kind of bringing up and putting forth.
Ilya Tabakh:I think this idea of collecting the dots and then connecting the dots, which in the original quote is, know, you read to collect, you write to connect, applied to sort of a career trajectory and really thinking about how do you even know what dots to collect. That was a really interesting sort of way to frame it and think about it. And so I think folks will enjoy the conversation. But there's a lot of gems in this episode. We had to kind of wrap it up a little faster than probably would have naturally been the case if we were in person having the conversation.
Ilya Tabakh:But you know, it's amazing how much experience, depth, muscle memory is packed in such a short hour. So I'm really excited for folks to have a chance to take a listen for themselves.
Terrance Orr:Thanks for joining us on EIR Live. We hope today's episode offer you valuable insights into the entrepreneurial journey. Remember to subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes and check out the description for more details. Do you have questions or suggestions? Please reach out to us.
Terrance Orr:Connect with us on social media. We really value your input. Catch us next time for more inspiring stories and strategies. Keep pushing boundaries and making your mark on the world. I'm Terrance Orr with my goals, Ilya Tabakh, signing off.
Terrance Orr:Let's keep building.
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