A monthly letter that goes deeper on each episode — the research behind it, the startup trying to scale it, and what the rest of the market is getting wrong.
Goes deeper on each episode — the research, the startup, and what the market is missing. Monthly, free, no fluff.
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Our inaugural issue is built around SF Climate Week and our first live podcast taping — Water / MOF at the Yaghi Lab. This issue maps the water-climate research landscape, the founders trying to scale it, and the gap between what the science can do and what the market is actually funding.
Each issue is built around one episode — the research behind it, the company trying to scale it, and an honest read on what the rest of the field is getting right or wrong. It's the context that doesn't fit in 25 minutes of audio.
Plain English coverage of one or two research findings relevant to the episode — what was actually found, what it means for anyone building in that space, and what the paper doesn't say. We go to the primary source, flag the gap between lab results and real-world deployment, and skip the press release version entirely.
MOF-303 harvested 285g of water per kilogram of material per day in Death Valley at 7% humidity. That's the science working. The gap is that nobody's figured out how to manufacture it cheaply enough to matter at scale.
The newsletter goes behind the episode conversation — more context on the research, more on the company, and the tensions the 25-minute format doesn't have room for. What did they actually disagree on, what does the founder really think about the science, and what question opened something up rather than closed it down.
What Prof. Yaghi and the WaHa team agreed on in the room — and where they genuinely disagreed about the timeline to commercial viability. Plus the three questions the SF Climate Week audience asked that didn't get answered.
A map of the sector at the moment the episode drops — early-stage companies, university spinouts, and research labs that aren't getting written about yet. Who's working on it, where they came from, how far along they are, and what's sitting unfunded that probably shouldn't be.
There are three early-stage companies working on atmospheric water harvesting right now. Here's what each is actually doing, how they differ, and which one has a go-to-market that makes sense.
One thing that's getting more attention than the science warrants, one thing that's getting less. Short and opinionated — not contrarian for its own sake, but honest about the gap between what the research actually says and what the pitch deck says, which are often not the same thing.
Overhyped: large-scale desalination as the answer to water scarcity. It works great if you're near an ocean with cheap energy. Most of the 2 billion people who need water are not. Underlooked: atmospheric harvesting, which works anywhere there's air.