Ep.43: Allan Adams - The Science is the Easy Bit
It's always worth listening to someone's ‘why’ for doing something. What is their core motivation? Are they a tourist, or are they here for the long haul? When you combine a compelling ‘why’ with the right mix of technical brilliance, charisma, kindness, and energy, you get someone who looks and sounds a lot like Allan Adams. He is the founder and CEO of Aquatic Labs, who have made amazing strides in bringing lab chemistry into real time, eradicating one of the core monitoring problems that is profoundly bad in both water operations and ocean science. This is also the only conversation where the guest's idea of a misspent youth is teaching particle physics at MIT. He is genuinely amazing. Please enjoy my conversation with Allan Adams.
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Allan Adams joins Tom today to discuss how witnessing dying coral reefs after the birth of his son inspired him to leave physics and found Aquatic Labs. He critiques the inefficiency of slow, lab-based water analysis and details his mission to create real-time, scalable sensors. By first optimizing industrial processes, Aquatic Labs aims to commoditize its technology, making it affordable for vital future applications like verifying ocean carbon sequestration and tracking the true impact of climate change on our most fundamental resource.
00:00 - Introduction to Water Innovation and Entrepreneurship
00:49 - Allan Adams’ Journey from Physics to Ocean Science
02:29 - Fiji Expedition and Life-Changing Career Shift
05:25 - Passing Ocean Stewardship to the Next Generation
07:29 - Global Climate and Human Impacts on Oceans
11:12 - Founding Aquatic Labs to Scale Real-Time Ocean Sensors
15:43 - Industrial Use Cases and Aligning Profit with Conservation
19:42 - Lessons from Academia and Startup Realities
22:50 - Breaking Lab Bottlenecks with Real-Time Water Sensing
26:43 - Commercialization Journey and Market Pivot Post-Election
32:05 - Hard Lessons in Sales and Building a Mission-Driven Team
37:41 - The Big Vision: Aquatic Labs’ Role in Water and Carbon Markets
43:29 - Allan’s Advice for Water Entrepreneurs
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