Fresh water

Silicon Valley Wants to Solve Our Water Problems

Gary Kremen—the founder of Match[-dot-]com, former owner of Sex[-dot-]com, and serial investor—is into water. The entrepreneur started investing in water tech startups a few years ago. Today he’s an elected member of Silicon Valley’s water district, an agency that manages water and flood control for 2 million people.

Earlier this year, he helped craft a proposal to build a tunnel under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that could improve drinking water reliability for cities from San Jose to San Diego. Following several years of investing in energy and solar startups, Kremen became attracted to water problems, he says, because it’s an issue that’s yet to be solved.

“Water is so, so, so, so hard,” he says. “We need to focus on the hard things.”

A small fraction of venture capital dollars currently goes into tech to manage or clean water. Analysis from research company Cleantech Group finds that total dollars and deal volume for water tech startups in 2016 were down 70 percent and 65 percent, respectively, from a peak in 2013. Many water investments are now coming from family offices, corporate investors, and philanthropy.

But despite the investing challenges, there’s still healthy interest from entrepreneurs, who are […]

More about investing in water:

Water Asset Management: Hunting Liquid Assets

Preparing for climate change: California’s huge investment in water storage

The water industry should be taken into public ownership

Water funds help to provide fresh water today and into the future.

Recent Posts

Scathing report released detailing Navy’s handling of Red Hill fuel spill

The Inspector General of the Department of Defense released some scathing reports Thursday over the…

5 days ago

Growing Food Instead of Grass Lawns in California Front Yards

Photo: Morgan Boone, a volunteer with Crop Swap LA, harvested lettuce at the La Salle…

2 weeks ago

LA River restoration connects us back to ‘the life force of our city’

Los Angeles residents at a section of the Los Angeles River cleanup in Los Angeles,…

3 weeks ago

LAist: New study raises questions about heavy metals in fire retardants

Over the past decade, about 67 million gallons of fire retardant have been dropped on…

3 weeks ago

Meadow and watershed restoration in the Golden Trout Wilderness

Photo: Golden Trout Wilderness Seeking blue, seeing gold The Kern Plateau features a chain of…

3 weeks ago

First sighting of salmon in 100 years marks key milestone for California dam removal

For the first time in more than a century, a salmon was observed swimming through Klamath…

4 weeks ago