1854 cholera was the killer cholera is a
disease that kills within days so there
was this guy John Snow who walked around
the Soho district of London knocking
from door to door to door and he asked
has there been a death in the family and
he got an answer why yes my mother died
yesterday he went to the next house and
he asked ma’am has there been a death in
the family and he got an answer no not
here
but up the street at 64 Lexington a
little girl died two days ago he took
all these deaths and he put them up on a
map these little black lines here show
us what he actually saw I’ve exaggerated
this data so you can actually see it a
little better on this screen John snow
had a sneaking suspicion that the water
pump was the reason for the transport of
cholera do you guys notice anything
particular about this data when I layer
over where the pumps were in the city it
becomes very obvious at the corner of
broad and Lexington this pump was to
blame John snow figured this out and
they call him the father of modern day
epidemiology the study of how health and
disease moves throughout a city now what
John snow did is great I think it’s
awesome however it is not scalable right
think about how many pumps there are
around the world how many wells there
are and how many people are affected by
disease and illness from this water you
need to hire millions if not billions of
John snows and they would need to knock
on all of these doors every single day
he would need to ask is there a disease
is there an illness
has there been a death water testing
today is reactive we need to make it
proactive we’re trying to find solutions
for water but we don’t understand what
the problem actually is how can you find
a solution if you don’t understand the
problem space I’ve made it my life’s
goal to figure out what this problem is
let’s have a conversation about how we
can hack water and what the future of
water is about how we can build millions
of John snows and put them around the
world I used to work at a venture
capital fund in India think like Shark
Tank but India without the Mark Cuban
and the really cool thing about this
venture capital fund is we only gave
money to companies who were building
products that focused on people our
populations that earned less than $2 a
day and one really cool thing that I saw
about this company was we saw a ton of
business plans that came through the
door there was one in particular that
sticks out it was this company in South
India that was actually developing a
water filter something that purifies our
water however the only issue is is it
was way too expensive it was not
accessible to the population it was
targeting and what’s even worse is when
we went down to this geography that they
were looking to do their first
deployment in turns out there is a
simple five cent solution that was a
chlorine pill now I want to get one
thing straight I am NOT for simple
solutions I do believe in long-term
Social Development and let’s figure out
progress on how we can actually
implement it properly however if your
goal is to get people out of hospital
beds let’s do the short term solution
first figure out what the problem is and
then build a solution around that this
got me really interested in water and so
I started doing a ton of research and I
figured out here in the u.s. about 70%
of our water is primarily used for
energy generation and agriculture the
rest of it is used for stuff that we’re
used to like taking a shower wash
our hands and drinking water but one
really interesting thing that I learned
is that water is different for each
application you use it for and what I
mean by this is for agriculture or for
drinking water or for your swimming pool
right let’s take a swimming pool for
example if you were to go to your
swimming pool you would need to measure
the water now you go to your backyard
and you’d say the chlorine is low this
is how you understand what the data is
and after you understand that the
chlorine is low let’s say it needs to be
up to five parts per million or ppm and
you’re down to one you add chlorine you
fix the water this loop is different for
everything right so you wouldn’t take
the swimming pool water and put it into
your tap to drink you wouldn’t take the
swimming pool water and let’s say for
example you’re brewing beer right water
is a really big part of brewing beer you
don’t want your swimming pool water to
brew that beer and the really cool thing
that I figured out is that there’s a
bunch of these little little small loops
everywhere you go and after looking at
it there’s one thing that I really want
to get across is that water is different
it comes in different shapes and
different flavors and different sizes
you can think about it as like a big
control board right you have all these
levers triggers and switches and if you
have a swimming pool you’re going to
increase the chlorine if you have an
agriculture you’re going to increase the
nitrates you may add levers you may
subtract levers
there’s picture over years of the
Olympics in Rio the green pool on the
side it doesn’t look so good right it
was a loop it was a measure understand
fixed loop that was not managed properly
the chlorine was low which ended up
causing algae to grow thus causing a
green pool all this talk about pools by
the way I actually used to be a pool boy
down down in Southern California my
parents used to own a chain of pool and
spa supply stores and by the way I
looked absolutely amazing and semuc
little short you know lifeguard red
shorts
I still remember riding around the
pickup truck we would go from house to
house like a pool boy does and they
would take a test of the water take the
little four drops if any of you have
ever tested a pool before you look at
the pH you look at the chlorine I would
figure out this is what it needs and you
would put the chlorine in to give a safe
environment for these homeowners to
swimmin fast forward a few years my
company up in San Francisco we had this
idea why don’t we automate this process
why don’t we build a robot in a sense of
John snow that can automatically measure
the pool chemistry tell you what your
chemicals are and then you go ahead and
put it in and we built just that we have
a little floating robot Wi-Fi connected
have your app tells you what chemicals
to put in and if you don’t have them we
use your Hamazon primer credit card get
it delivered to your house the next day
and we looked at and we said there is
more to water than just pools right
these loops exist everywhere how do we
take this this robot that we built and
deployed around the world so we don’t
have problems like Jon Snow did in
London right how do we how do we get
when we started looking at this we
realized that because of these little
measure understand fixed loops you need
to have a library of understanding of if
this water is going to be used for a
swimming pool you need to put chlorine
here’s the equations that go with that
if you need to use this water for
agriculture you need to put more
nitrates here’s the equation that goes
with that what you end up building is
this library or this instruction book of
all these little mini instructions of
how you’re going to use the water that’s
coming in for the purpose you need to
use it for just like the human genome
what if we had built the water genome
and when we ask this question we started
looking at where water is a problem
around the world is it just John snow is
it this isolated incident in London or
does it happen around the world and so
there’s three stories I want to talk
about today of how this genome and this
robotics platform can change the way
that we look at water the first let’s go
to Flint Michigan in Flint they move the
water source to the Flint River
and this chemical cocktail inside of
this new water source was slightly
different than what they were actually
getting their water from as this water
percolated through the piping and ended
up into the houses turn on your tap pour
yourself a glass of water what ended up
happening is this cocktail activated
lead in the pipes in a particular area
you now have lead in your water
thousands of children have unsafe levels
of lead in them right now by the way
this is in 2012 not in 1854 second place
I want to take you to is Kenya the World
Health Organisation says that water and
water related diseases are the largest
killer in the world outside of wars
outside of terrorism waterborne
illnesses are a serious thing and people
travel miles to go get their water right
what if we could take this robotics
platform with the water genome and
deploy them at a well in say Kenya or in
Nigeria or in India or heck hey here in
Flint what if the thing measured the
chemistry at the well and we sent a text
message to the to the village head we
said hey well number 364 has an issue do
not drink from that well better yet we
sent the message to a nonprofit that is
maybe managing that well this well needs
more chemicals now I take you here close
to home in the Salinas Valley
water is a lifeblood for people here in
the valley and for any agrarian
community I was actually talking to a
daughter of a farmer the other day and I
want for one second all of us to
abstract ourselves of what we think
water is take yourself away from the
shower from the tap from the swimming
pool water pays this girl is ballerina
classes it pays for her college tuition
now imagine what the drought did to the
Parma’s here and as this drought
affected the farmers in the valley they
had to dig deeper and deeper and deeper
underground in search for water
to grow so need to feed the us and as
the water came out they had to over
fertilize right they have to make up for
the nutrients in the well and as they
over fertilize they planted the crops
this water ended up going into runoff
and now they’ve over fertilized this
water that’s going back into the
groundwater they’re polluting these
ground wells what if we could take this
robotics platform coupled with the
genome project put it at the input water
source we know what the water chemistry
is coming out hey mr. and mrs. farmer
add this particular fertilizer and after
it comes out for the runoff
let’s take a look at it if it’s too
polluted to go into the ground we’ll
stop it and put it somewhere else
everything I said just touches the tip
of the iceberg we need a better
understanding of water because we cannot
live without it the next time you open
up your tap just understand when you
look at that glass of water being filled
up water is more than just water join
the revolution there’s plenty of room
for all of us thank you [Applause]