Bridging the Gap Between Founding and Investing in Startups

In this episode, Sadaf Abbas chats with Roger Conley Wood about the importance of specialization in the post-COVID world. Drawing from his experiences in southern Asia, Roger emphasizes valuing expertise over mere intelligence and being receptive to innovations from diverse sources. A must-listen for startups seeking insights on collaboration and the power of diverse thinking.

About Our Guest

Roger Colney Wood

pioneering innovator | AI Mastermind | Value Creator

Roger has carved an exceptional path from his early days in telecom software to mastering AI’s role in predicting human behavior, leaving an enduring impact on the global Technology, Media, and Telecom (TMT) sector. Renowned for launching Nextel’s iDEN smartphone and shaping today’s mobile internet, Roger’s innovative approach across executive stints and VC-backed startups has been a hallmark, amassing a notable contribution exceeding $50 billion in value. His expertise beautifully marries technology with foresight, redefining our everyday digital experience.

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What You’ll Learn:

• The importance of specialization over general intelligence in problem-solving.
• The value of seeking advice from experts with specific, real-world experience.
• Insights from Roger’s business experiences in southern Asia.
• The significance of being open to innovations and ideas, regardless of their origin.
• The reminder that great ideas and innovation can come from any individual or region.

Transcribe

Sadaf Abbas: Hi, everyone. and this is another podcast we are having. Roger is a chairperson and is on the Board of Directors at Grana Water. He has done his master’s at Harvard School of Business, and I have known him very well for the last five, I think, two or three years. We have done several projects together. So more information Roger will tell us about him. So, coming back to Roger, thank you, Roger, for coming to us and discussing the details.

Roger Conley Wood: Sadaf, thank you for having me. Sadaf and I have worked together for the last three years or so on a variety of projects, but the water industry, I think, represents an incredible opportunity for us to do something together that is universal. Everyone understands the critical nature of water and why it is the critical infrastructure upon which all other critical infrastructures rely. And I’m very, very happy that Oak Consulting is going to handle the vast majority of our administrative needs, from accounting to corporate administration to financial management. And I couldn’t be happier about that. So, Sadaf, thank you for having me on the podcast, and I hope that our conversation will prove useful to many of your other clients.

Sadaf AbbasThank you. So you have an impressive career spanning technology, telecom, and now the water treatment industry. Can you share the pivotal moment or inspiration that led you to venture into the world of water treatment and sustainability?

Roger Conley Wood: I’d love to. In the last five years, the climate change conversation, I think, has really become a separate conversation, and one of those conversations is about the impact on water. So, my previous career in telecom, media and technology is very much related to this new career in water systems in that both are critical infrastructure. However, all the critical infrastructures, including telecom, rely upon water. Water is very essential to that, and it all depends upon water. So, I want to make it very clear that this was not a pivot into a new industry; it was going deeper into my old industry. When I saw the flooding in Pakistan and the droughts in Germany, it all came together. I said, wow, telecom allowed me to impact the world from Israel to India. Water can also allow me to use my business endeavors to have a positive impact on everything. I want to say my first big success was being a part of the founding team of Nextel, privatizing the communication systems on which defense and first responders depend. You really need communications for a police force, a rescue squad, a fire squad, a government to work properly and privatizing those systems with Nextel really introduced me to the far-reaching impact that you can have on a critical system. And then, as a part of the team that created T-Mobile, we kind of transitioned the hardline phone systems to mobile phone systems. And really, although a lot of wealth was created, it’s more important that we understand that it empowered billions of people who had no access to communication prior to the invention of microsystems like T-Mobile that put a phone in the hands of people who were disconnected from the world. I think there’s a very clear message that their communications and access to information were inherently empowering. 

Roger Conley Wood: Then lastly, with Singapore Telecom and the work that I did in Singapore with Sakun and the team there at SingTel, I think it’s important we understand it wasn’t just bringing funny movies to the masses who couldn’t afford cable television, who couldn’t afford laptops. It was that we were able to give them vital information and access to critical data that they needed to join the modern world. So I think it shouldn’t be understated that the SingTel system, which is one of the five largest communication systems on Earth, really has empowered many aspects of the developing world with information that they previously had no access to. And so I think those lessons from Nextel, T-Mobile and SingTel really gave me the backdrop and the momentum to understand what we could do if we brought that same innovation to the water system that is clearly broken around the world, clearly impacting the developing world, clearly being used inefficiently in the developed world. And we could really, really bring things together with AI and machine learning that we used in telecom but applied to water.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect. So tell us more about your vision of Grana Water and how it’s tackling today’s water challenges you just explained to me. So what is the vision, Roger, for that?

Roger Conley Wood: So let’s talk about the vision for Grana, aqua Grana, our company that will develop AI and machine learning systems to make water infrastructure smart. Its vision is the improvement of efficiency in the use of water. Today, most water systems, even the most sophisticated water systems in the most sophisticated countries, are known for managing water; in the Netherlands, for instance, one of the great water management hydrology water engineering cultures of the world, these systems are nonetheless relatively flat. There’s no use of computational technologies to make the way that they generate the water, process the water, distribute the water and price the water in a manner that’s anywhere near what we do with a typical PayPal payment. It’s just a flat system. It’s not very intelligent, it does not anticipate a need, it doesn’t anticipate demand-supply. And I think we can use these tools to be a little bit more anticipatory. So the vision for Aqua Grana and what this system will do is really the ability to understand and anticipate the type and amount of water needed for a specific use case and then the ability to generate that water. In the most sustainable method possible based on the use case and provide the person or the organization with real time data on the water with breathtaking detail. Let’s talk a little bit about that in plain-spoken language. Today, water system providers pretty much extract water from rivers, streams or from underground aquifers with little understanding of its final use, I hope absolutely understands.

Sadaf Abbas: I absolutely agree.

Roger Conley Wood: You’re taking water from the same place, processing it in the same way, distributing it to everybody in the same way and then pricing it for everyone in the same way. That makes absolutely no sense. In many countries. The result is that the waste is on an incredible level; the same and purified for use in a bathroom is also used to process food. Sadaf, just think about this. I take the water from the river; I process it for you to wash your hair. And then that same water is used to wash a window and an office tower in Kuala Lumpur. That makes no sense. A different kind of water is needed to wash your hair than obviously is needed to wash the windows of a tower in Kuala Lumpur. But we’re using it in the same fashion, and that’s why we’re using it in an irresponsible way. Shouldn’t there be different grades of water for agriculture?

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely, I agree with that, yeah.We have three types of water. Remember, we have already discussed this matter before that in Japan. Japan is a used case study over there. They’re using the water in a proper way. What kind of water they are having, then it is utilizing a proper way.So same thing they are doing. We have the case study, so it should be implemented in other countries as well. But again, somebody needs to start, and I think so. Roger, you are there. We are going to start that.

Roger Conley Wood: We don’t believe that you should use chemically treated water with chlorine made for ingestion in iced tea. Why should that be? Is the same water used for an apple orchard in Japan? Makes absolutely no sense. It’s wasting the water. It’s wasting electricity and other energy sources to process that water. Just think, the same water that’s used to grow bananas in Brazil is being used to manufacture a tire for hand-cooked truck tires in Brazil. Makes no sense.

Sadaf Abbas: Yeah

Roger Conley Wood: The Amazon River is contaminated and depleted at the same time. We think with AI, with machine learning, we actually can learn what kinds of water and how much water would be needed and where tire on any given day of any week, of any month of any year. Why shouldn’t we be able to predict that?

Sadaf Abbas: Because there’s no system, and you are providing that system. You are basically trying to fill the gap, especially since we are basically destroying the natural resources right now, and this is the main reason for climate change as well. This is a very good vision I’m having right now. Roger with you. Thank you. Now my third question is, being a Harvard Business School graduate, how was your education shaped the way you are going, Grana Water?

Roger Conley Wood: Great. So the cut in now I don’t really think that business schools 

Sadaf Abbas: yes, absolutely. I don’t want to say this, okay?

Roger Conley Wood: You learn business by doing business. Harvard Business School is exceptional in its ability to help people think about problems. I learned a great deal about how to think, how to understand complexity, and how to structure solutions at scale. What Harvard is very good at is teaching people logic, critical thinking, and analytical approaches to a subject. When I think about water I think that I should source price, and store water differently for a truck tire by hand cook than a banana by dole banana; that’s the kind of thinking that I learned at Harvard Business School. How to structure complexity, understand complexity, and communicate solutions with clarity. I think it’s the same for Harvard Medical School Harvard Law School. They are all very good at that. But let’s be very clear. I didn’t learn much about business there. I consider business vocational. The greatest business minds the world’s ever known had no formal schooling at all. 

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely. Doing business by doing it.

Roger Conley Wood: You learn critical thinking at places like Harvard Business School. There are many other fine institutions around the world that do an equally good job of creating structured thinkers who are able to run institutions at scale.

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely. And now, in this era, we have an AI.

Roger Conley Wood: And in this AI, we know that this knowledge is vast. We have the knowledge in our hands how to use it. This is the method, and this is the thing that we need to understand in our professional and personal life as well. That is how to use logic, have the critical thinking, how to be helpful to others and for ourselves.This is a thing.

Sadaf Abbas: What do you think about tech and water treatment, Roger? And how do you see them teaming up in the future?

Roger Conley Wood: Computational technology has traditionally only been used for metering purposes in the water industry. It’s an embarrassing underutilization of computational power that we have at our fingertips today. Let me give you an example. Today, we use advanced computational methods in meteorological systems to predict the weather with incredible accuracy.It’s extraordinary. We can see hurricanes a month in advance. We can track their path. We can use advanced physics to understand the path of a hurricane. Yet the water systems don’t talk to the weather systems. 

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely.

Roger Conley Wood: That makes no sense, Sadaf. We believe today, when severe weather strikes, the water systems continue to function or malfunction in the same exact way before the weather event, during the weather event, and after the weather event. Why are the water pumps still running when the hurricane is right above the water pump? That makes no sense. Why did we not produce and store water in advance when we knew

Sadaf Abbas, in a proper way

Roger Conley Wood, that the hurricane was coming three weeks ago? That is a dislocation of the computational power in meteorological systems and the core mechanical functions of the water system. We’re going to marry those because of the Aqua Grana system that we are developing with support from Oak; that system will effectively be like Iron Man’s Jarvis,, but for water, it would effectively tell a corporation, a government or a person. Weather will become more severe in the next three weeks. We advise that you store this much water for personal use and personal hygiene, this much water for our manufacturing needs, this much water for our cooling needs, and you’re able to generate, store, distribute and price that water in advance with perfect accuracy.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect.

Roger Conley Wood: That is the power of using AI. Machine learning, obviously, is that after a certain number of cycles, our system will become so intelligent that it will pretty much know what you need before you know what you need. So it will know there are three people in the home, they use this many liters of water in a typical week. Therefore, it will suggest to you that it generate and store X number of leaders for Y time frame, based on all of the historical precedent, relatively within our grasp to build these artificial intelligence systems today. But we want to bring that to the surface a little faster than would normally be the case. But the flooding and the drought should not have an impact on the water supply in the world, and we aim to change that.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect. Looking ahead, what’s the big picture of your startup impact? Roger, especially for the grana water, I know that this is a huge impact right now. This has a huge impact on society, not just for the country or region it is, but on a global scale. It will have a huge effect. So I just need to know more about the grana water. What will be the big picture? Do you think it will have upcoming years?

Roger Conley Wood: Look, if we’re successful, much like Zoom email, we think that in the future, every group of people, government organizations, businesses, we think that they will believe it’s perfectly natural to have a granular sense, a detailed sense of the types of water, the amount of water, the price of water. We hope to create a new reality with our understanding of water. It should be noted the total volume of water in the air is replaced every ten days. The amount of energy it takes to take ocean water and make it usable water for people, governments and organizations is nuclear at its level. It takes nuclear power and an incredible amount of energy to convert ocean water to water that’s usable in any context. So if we replace the total of water in the air every ten days with natural, ev,aporation rain and water systems, we should understand that’s a much easier path, a more energy efficient path than the decades it takes to replenish major river sources once they’re depleted or contaminated the centuries it takes to replace the water in deep underground aquifers. And I think that’s the big impact. We will soften the blunt force trauma to the earth that we are now experiencing due to the depletion of our rivers and streams. The extraction of water from deep underground, in underground caves and cavities that took centuries to form, is now causing landslides, the collapsing of roads and the destabilization of bridges. That’s all occurring because we’re drilling hundreds of meters below the earth to extract water from those sources.

Roger Conley Wood: So I think our biggest impact will be that we will use data, of all things, we will use data to bring a sensitivity to water utilization to the masses. And we’ll suddenly think about water very differently, the same way we think about everything related to innovation, once innovation is widespread. 

Sadaf Abbas: My next question is, water treatment is a critical field, but it can be challenging for a startup. What unique approach does your grana water bring to the table?

Roger Conley Wood: One of the things that I learned from critical infrastructures and communications is what I call a modular approach, the reason why mobile conquered the world of communication. Think about it, Sadaf. We used to send air mail across the ocean.

Sadaf Abbas: Incredible.

Roger Conley Wood: We used to send tins, of metal, and tins of film from one country to another to show someone something in a visual method. The communication systems that I’ve been involved with allow us to see images in real-time, allow us to communicate verbally in real-time.

Sadaf Abbas: Incredible.

Roger Conley Wood: Efficiencies were brought to the table, but it all happened in a modular way. That means that you innovate in small instances and then link those small instances together. So an office tower, our fictitious office tower in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore, would have its own self-enclosed water system. They would have their own atmospheric water generators on the roof. They would have their own data about the water being collected. They would access and be able to see in real-time that water collected, some of it being quarantined for personal hygiene, some of it being used for cleaning, and some of it being used for cooling in real-time. You’re able to see one liter of water and how it’s divided for different uses and stored in different uses on the actual property itself. Now, that’s modular because that’s only for that office tower. Data allows us to have that office tower see the data of another office tower. It allows a hospital to understand that. So now, by doing it in a modular fashion, having ten atmospheric water generators generate water storage tanks, store their data, and understand them for that building, then we can scale that to millions and millions of other locations.

Roger Conley Wood: The dream of all dreams, Sadaf, would be for a company like Hankook Tire, which we discussed earlier. As an example. What if Hankook Tire’s headquarters in South Korea could see the water utilization of its factory in Brazil, and could see the water utilization of its retail sales office in Germany? Then Hankook could have a global view of its water generation, water storage, water usage, and water costs in one beautiful display.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect. So, basically, what I see, what I envision for Grana water, is that we will have a whole dashboard with proper data analysis, with the demand and supply of the water treatment. Right, Roger?

Roger Conley Wood: Yes, we call it, you know, interesting. when we talked about Harvard Business School, probably another signature educational experience, was the many, many courses I took over 20 years with Professor Tufty of Princeton and Yale. He taught me the importance of beautiful evidence of the gorgeous visual display of quantitative information. His philosophies gave us the world we live in today with companies like Palantir Splunk. We believe that the ethos by which those companies run hasn’t quite made it to the critical infrastructure world. The biggest compliment if someone said, yeah, aqua Grana, it’s kind of like Palantir for water, that’d be a compliment. If someone said it’s kind of like a Splunk-like display of water information, that would be a compliment. We hope to bring beautiful evidence, and gorgeous displays of information about something very few people thought about every day, which is the water that sustains them and allows society to work. We would love it if people were to compliment us with those kinds of comparisons. I hope that’s helpful because we obviously have a podcast. We don’t have a visual of our product. We will now display that clearly. We believe that, from my experience, Sadaf is a genius after they see a product that they didn’t think of.

Sadaf Abbas: The vision, basically, and you are having a vision,

Roger Conley Wood: ….told my books on a cell phone will never work. I was there when we did the…

Sadaf Abbas: Now we have a Kindle.

Roger Conley Wood: on a cell phone, Audible published their first books on the Nextel Iden system. And then, after that happened, everyone’s a genius. Then everyone wants to hear a book spoken aloud through their phone. While we were creating that system, no one thought it could work. The same with text messaging and the same with watching movies on the phone. Very soon, your granddaughters, the grandsons of many of our skeptics, ‘ll think it’s natural to get a display of their water utilization. It is very important to have the data. The AI will follow them, much like Jarvis and Iron Man. It will constantly remind you of your water security, water stability, water availability, and water pricing. We believe this will be the controlling dynamic for the world in the future if we continue along the path that I see us taking for climate change.

Sadaf Abbas: So, as someone who has both a client and an entrepreneur, how do you see the role of a consulting firm like Oak? How do you think they are evolving in today’s business world?

Roger Conley Wood: I have experienced a number of administrative support infrastructures for businesses of massive scale. Obviously, we’ve discussed this before. If we had the technology infrastructure like this, as Oak provides, and many of your competitors provide if we had that in the past, it would allow people like me to focus on product service innovation. You really need to respect what Oak and others do in corporate administration, accounting, financial management, and the entire, what I call general administrative apparatus that really needs to be in the hands of experts.

Sadaf Abbas: So you can basically have other tasks which is more important to your business operations, and your administration operations tasks will be handled by any consulting firm. So it will be a very… peaceful believe that

Roger Conley Wood: It’s critical. Large-scale infrastructure systems are capital-intensive and require a lot of complex supply chain elements. And Oak, for us, Oak will act as sort of an all-in-one solution for CFO functions, financial controller functions, and accounting functions. It allows infinite scaling because Oak will do that for us, for the world. And so when we’re dealing with an issue in Hawai, in Germany, Pakistan, Netherlands, you know, it allows us to be everywhere at once with a proper administrative infrastructure. If we were to hire all of the people who represent the functions that Oak will provide to us and put them in one little office in Texas, it wouldn’t scale.They have to go home. They have to have families. They have to have lives. They may not be familiar with issues in Southern Europe. Issues in Northern Asia might be foreign to them. Whereas with Oak, we can deploy resources in the country, in the environments, and use them in a flexible way that ensures competence, understanding and context in all of our corporate controller functions. And so that’s the way we intend to use Oak. We intend to use Oak as a global CFO financial controller team without the missteps of trying to hire each individual person for each country in which we might do business. It’s a very modular, elegant approach to use an organization like Oak for that reason.

Sadaf Abbas: So my next question, Roger, for you, is that from Nextel to T-Mobile, what lessons have you carried forward for your future clients, for your customers?

Roger Conley Wood: I would say probably the biggest thing that we’re learning is when you solve big problems.

Sadaf Abbas: like you are having the,.. vision like Grana water, Yeah

Roger Conley Wood: You want to solve big problems. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for what I call mommy tech. Having technology replace a small activity that one needs to undertake on a daily basis, I think there’s a world for that. I think there’s a world for things of nature. But I think the lessons that I’ve learned are that if you solve big problems, you have a big impact on the world. And so that’s number one. Probably the second thing is that systems deployment is something that allows you in an entrepreneurial life to look back on your own work and see what you built. It’s a wonderful thing. When I take a plane and I land in Peru, at the airport in Peru, and I hear the next telephones chirping in the background as they’re managing the airport, I feel as though I know what I did with my life. And so large scale systems deployment work, critical infrastructure work, there’s nothing like seeing a food truck pull up and having them unload the meat products or the snack products for sale at the grocery store, you feel as though I know what I did. I helped feed the world. When you see a light switch turn on, you realize the electrical system exists because of my work. Critical infrastructure, and systems deployments, I think, give people a sense of purpose. That’s just my philosophy, and that’s why I love those kinds of things. 

Roger Conley Wood: The last thing that I think I learned is the way global businesses work. And that’s one of the reasons why we’re making the know. We are going to be a company whose activities are centered in Texas, which is one of the largest and most powerful economies in the world; separate from Texas being a part of the United States as a country, Texas would be one of the top ten countries in terms of global domestic product. And so although we’re centering the company in Texas, having Oak be centered in Asia, it kind of communicates to the world. My lessons learned are that being a global company means living in a global company. And so distributing your resources around the world ensures that, as they say in the Vedas noble thoughts come from all. So, you know, Oak’s contribution to what we’re doing will be natural and organic, even though it’s coming from a different geography. I think the people in Texas Florida Germany and our other locations will work more seamlessly as a global team because the company is being born with a global mentality. Those are the lessons I took away from my previous work, from places like Palantir, like Splunk, which I admire in our quest to be the Palantir of water. Well, Palantir was born the same way it was born with the globe in mind. To begin, the mindset should be the global mindset. Then, you can gather the whole problem in one place and provide the solution as well. If you are putting yourself in one region or one country, it will not solve the whole problem again, the problem will be in the society. So need to think like a global scale all the time to solve the problem. 

Sadaf Abbas: So perfect. So my last question, Roger, with you that what advice do you have for startups seeking seed investment?

Roger Conley Wood: You know, I’ve not been the most successful seed investment entrepreneur. I think different entrepreneurs excel in different stages.

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely.

Roger Conley Wood: Others are very good at acceleration rounds, others are good at globalization rounds, where you need large amounts of capital to extend yourself across the world. I think for startups seeking seed investment, it’s important to keep it simple, to focus on test cases and test environments.I think it’s very important not to speak to everyone. In my experiences, I found in seed investment, it’s much more efficient for you to speak to early-stage investors who express an interest in your category as opposed to speaking to every capital source. It may seem like it’s a slower path but…

Sadaf Abbas: very slow; believe me, you have to be in a patient situation, and your mindset needs to be very calm because we need to take very baby small steps when we are having a startup.

Roger Conley Wood: I’ve seen entrepreneurs spend days explaining concepts to disinterested investors who had no intrinsic interest in the sector subject matter, they weren’t really interested and an entrepreneur can spend days and weeks engaging an investor in an innovation. So I think the advice that I would give to startups seeking seed investment, not being a professional seed investment level entrepreneur, being more of an expansion round entrepreneur, is to choose your targets wisely, use your time judiciously and make quality relationships based on stage.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect.

Roger Conley Wood: Those are some thoughts. The COVID Global Pandemic taught us

Sadaf Abbas: so many things.

Roger Conley Wood: It also taught us that specialization counts, intelligence fell at the sword of specialization and so in all things, work with specialists and you’ll have an easier time of it. And never believe in your own legend or myth that because you are intellectually gifted you can understand everything and anything. It’s much safer to go with experts who have experience in that area and that goes all the way to seed investment, much better to work with people who are comfortable with seed investment or comfortable with the subject matter in which you are hoping to succeed. Much better to go with people who have real-world experience than talk to the smartest people in the room and experience the frustration that their intelligence can’t overcome their lack of interest or lack of knowledge in a specific area.

Sadaf Abbas: Perfect. Thank you, Roger.

Roger Conley Wood: And since I’m coming off of a bit of

Sadaf Abbas: no, the reason for this podcast is basically to give advice to my startups and the audience. So the more you share your advice, the suggestions, it is more, you can say, beneficial for both all around the world who are basically having this podcast. So the reason you’re having over here is to share your experiences because your experience I believe that if we learn from the experience, from other persons, it helps us much more than we experience it all. We save our time, we save our energy.

Sadaf Abbas: So thank you, Roger, for sharing all your insights and we will talk to you in the next podcast, which will be your investor side. So we will discuss that area as well with you. So thank you and we are happy that the grana water will soon will be in an MVP stage. And anything else Roger you want to.

Roger Conley Wood: You know, my business experiences in southern Asia, especially Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, you know, it just really taught me that great ideas come from all places, great ideas come from all to entrepreneur, it means that you need to accept that noble thoughts, incredible innovation from any direction, from any kind of person, and you need to be open to that. I think our partnership is just like that.

Sadaf Abbas: Absolutely! Perfect. Thank you,  Roger.

Roger Conley Wood: Thank you. Signing off here.