Shownotes

(1:06)  Introducing BlueInGreen

(1:52) Tyler’s career background

(6:47) BlueInGreen’s significant growth in a conservative market

(12:51) BlueInGreen’s plans to scale internationally

(15:50) COVID’s effects on scaling for BlueInGreen

(20:38) How teaming up with a strategic partner could benefit BlueInGreen

(28:20) Tyler shares advice to other people looking to team up with a startup

(36:02) Wrapping up

Links

Caleb Talley

Jeff Amerine

Tyler Elm

BlueInGreen

Quotes

“What we’ve been trying to do is scale certain technologies and certain markets based on high value opportunities for the customer.  So the drive of strong ROI and applications that really leverage our core competencies of being able to treat more water with less energy and have a smaller footprint.” (10:12)

“I would say that we’re giving the customer the opportunity to either tap a capital budget or an operational budget.  In some applications, the operation, the operational savings cover more than the capital costs very quickly.”  (23:34)

The Strategy and Tactics of Better Water

The Startup Junkies got the opportunity to talk with Tyler Elm, Chief Marketing and Business Sustainability Officer at BlueInGreen. BlueInGreen is a water solutions company that takes an efficient approach to aeration, pH adjustment, oxidation, and odor control. Started in 2004 by two university professors, the company has scaled rapidly, bringing Tyler on board in 2018. 

BlueInGreen focuses on dissolving gasses into liquids, predominantly for drinking water treatment and wastewater treatment. This spans across multiple markets and applications, and is done through the process of delivering dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, and ozone into water. 

The water treatment market is not a simple market to break into. It runs on long-standing relationships, and it is slow to adopt new technology. For example, it took over a hundred years for UV disinfection, a popular form of water treatment, to reach a hundred installations.  

While the market is a difficult one to crack, BlueInGreen has deciphered a way to scale quickly. It recently sold its one-hundredth installation in slightly more than fifteen years. With somewhere around seventy facilities up and running, Tyler estimates that BlueInGreen treats somewhere near two billion gallons of water each day. This number is impressive, but it continues to grow. BlueInGreen has another twenty-five units in production.

With the conservative market that BlueInGreen operates within, it is nothing short of astonishing that they have a cumulative annual growth rate of 45% over the last few years.   

One way that BlueInGreen is through treatment services. It offers potential clients a lower perceived risk by using performance contracts to sell the product. The client can then see how the operating costs, energy costs, and chemical costs drop over six months or a year. Tyler says that in some applications, the operational savings cover more than the capital costs quite quickly.

As BlueInGreen has seen great success scaling in the United States, it hopes to grow internationally as well. Currently, the company is eyeing Brazil as its next target, as only 80% of the population has access to clean drinking water. Along with this, only 50% of the population has access to sanitation.

There is a presidential election in Brazil next year that has the potential to determine BlueInGreen’s fate in the country. One candidate is running on a platform based on clean water and sanitation for people.  

The current pandemic also affects BlueInGreen’s potential for global scaling in Brazil. As the virus can transport via the digestive tract, domestic wastewater becomes a startling transporter for viral loads. This puts wastewater workers at enormous risk, as well as average citizens. It is believed that the virus is capable of living in an environment for twelve days, which means that rivers, streams, and reservoirs can quickly become hotbeds of infection. Thus, water treatment becomes even more vital to the population’s health and wellbeing. 

As the company has already proved its ability to scale rapidly, there is no telling what the future could hold for BlueInGreen.

For more information regarding BlueInGreen, click here.