AquaReg is looking for a CTO/technical co-founder

Across the world, environmental protection agencies are making vast amounts of data about wastewater from industry available. This data is of high commercial value for companies with wastewater solutions – if they know how much each factory pollutes, it’s much easier to identify the relevant factories for their environmental solution.

The issue is that while the data is valuable, it is scattered across many different websites and platforms, making it impractical to use.

This is where AquaReg comes in. AquaReg maps wastewater data for 120,000+ industrial sites (in Europe and North America) and uses this to provide market intelligence to wastewater solution providers. We map industrial polluters, their discharge data, their water and wastewater fees, their permits and more, and use this to provide our clients with a list of relevant customers. In sum, our value proposition is that we do the messy data work so our clients can focus on sales to help addressing wastewater challenges around the globe.

We estimate that there are several thousand customers for this in Europe, and upwards of 10,000 globally – but wastewater data is only the beginning of our mission to make valuable environmental data actionable and easily accessible. So far, we have sold our services on an ad hoc basis, but we envision moving onto a subscription-based model in the future.

We have sold 4 commercial pilots so far, which have been delivered in a somewhat manual fashion – i.e., with a limited backend. Now that we have commercial validation, we are ready to build the actual platform – and here we need you, the CTO or technical co-founder.

We need someone can help formulate a vision for a world-class wastewater market intelligence platform – and then drive the development of this platform.

About AquaReg

AquaReg was founded in 2021 by founder Søren Schou, who comes from a background in in management consulting. The core team at AquaReg consists of Søren and data scientist Matheus Valentim. We are supported by our senior developer Jacob Gudbjerg and our senior advisors Erik Østergaard Madsen (IT and business development) and Kjær Andreasen (water and wastewater).

We are currently based in the NIRAS Green Tech Hub in Allerød near Copenhagen. We have attracted 50,000 EUR in soft funding and generated around 13,000 EUR in pilot sales. We are in the process of applying for InnoFounder.

Check out our (very basic) website here: https://www.aquareg.net/, where you can also see our introductory presentation.

Who we are looking for

We are looking for someone who can work with Søren and the team for formulate a vision for a world-class wastewater market intelligence platform – and then drive the development of this platform.

The role would be as CTO/Technical co-founder and partner with Søren.

The ideal candidate has some of the following qualities

• Deep experience in scraping and acquiring data from many different sources and in many different formats

• Experience in combining data from different sources and exhibiting it to clients

• Ability do drive the development of a data platform, including both back-end and front-end

• Knowledge about own strengths and weaknesses and ability to know what to delegate/outsource.

• Strong personal drive and can-do attitude

• Ability to lead a team and co-lead the company

• Desire to be an integral part of a dynamic startup

• Location close to Copenhagen

We are looking for someone willing to commit and invest in exchange for equity.

About the platform

The core of the data we make available is data on industrial polluters from so-called “pollution release and transfer registries” or PRTRs. All EU countries, USA, Canada (and many other countries) have such a registry, that lists all industrial polluters above a certain pollution threshold. The data on these PRTRs is publicly available, including facility location, information about discharges and site-specific permits. We add magic to this data by supplementing with water and wastewater prices from local utilities, other information about the companies, local water scarcity information and so on.

We then turn this data into a list of customers for our clients, including information that makes it much easier to identify the most relevant customers. See the figure below for an illustration of the platform.

In the testing phase, we have been selling this as stand-alone lists, but want to move to a subscription model, where clients pay for access to the platform.

Possible future extensions to platform

We have a long list of ideas for new features on the platform, including

• Integrating platform output with client CRM systems so they can get the intelligence from the platform directly where they need it

• Using satellite imagery to provide more information about each industrial site

• Using algorithms to automatically read through the site-specific permits, so we can know more about the constraints for each site

• Expanding beyond wastewater to other types of pollution, such as air pollution

• We look forward to discuss these and other ideas with you.

AquaReg principles

We are trying to create a culture of truthfulness and transparency – so we expect everyone to speak up and let us know when they think an idea is terrible. We care deeply about professional development and about being explicit about our personality types as well as our respective strengths, weaknesses and development areas. We have six principles that we adhere to in our work – we’d love your thoughts on these and help us develop them further.

1. We are truthful with each other

2. We are as transparent as possible

3. We help each other become better version of ourselves

4. We have respect for the individual

5. We act with integrity

6. If we meet a challenge, we try to address it as soon as possible

About Søren

Søren comes from a background in management consulting (Accenture Strategy & Monitor-Deloitte) and has deep experience in working with the target client segment. Søren is 37 years old and lives in Copenhagen.