Water Scarcity: A Looming Global Crisis in Need of Innovative Solutions
"Grand proclamations vanish in the shadows of inaction; simple, sustainable solutions hold the true power."
Water, the elixir of life, is becoming an increasingly scarce resource worldwide. With growing populations, urbanization, and climate change exacerbating water stress, finding sustainable solutions to address water scarcity has become a pressing global priority. In this insightful episode of the "Liquid Assets" podcast, host Ravi Kurani invites Ulf Leonhard, the visionary mind behind the Watertech funding firm WaterVent, to share his perspectives on confronting the water crisis through innovative technologies and strategies.
Ulf Leonhard candidly discusses the stark contrast between grand proclamations made at water conferences and the lack of tangible action on the ground, exposing harsh realities like ignorance, incompetence, and corruption. However, he also explores the promising world of decentralized water treatment technologies such as containerized solutions, nature-based systems like aquaponics, and innovative rainwater harvesting techniques - approaches with immense potential to provide localized water security.
Throughout the episode, Ulf Leonhard emphasizes the critical role of education and awareness in fostering responsible water usage and management practices. He advocates empowering communities and encouraging a shift towards a more water-conscious mindset as catalysts for lasting change in combating the global water crisis.
Whether you're an environmental advocate, water professional, or someone deeply concerned about our planet's future, this engaging conversation offers a wealth of knowledge and thought-provoking perspectives on one of the most pressing challenges of our time. Tune in and join the quest for innovative water scarcity solutions.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- 💧 Exposing the gap between water conference proclamations and real-world action 🎤
- 🌍 Insights on decentralized water treatment technologies and nature-based solutions 🏭
- ⛲ Innovative rainwater harvesting techniques from around the world
- 💡 The role of education and awareness in fostering water conservation
- 💰 Financing water tech innovations and the impact on water security
- 🌊 Ulf Leonhard's journey and passion for protecting natural assets like water and forests
- 🚰 Empowering local communities with accessible water management solutions
Listen On:
Watch the interview:
Meet Ulf
Hailing from Berlin, Germany, Ulf Leonhard dons multiple hats as the spiritual director and inventor of the renowned Watertech funding firm, WaterVent. With a deep-rooted passion for safeguarding natural assets, Leonhard's journey intertwines with his family's legacy – his father and grandfather served as forest guards, instilling in him an unwavering commitment to preserving the delicate balance between water, forests, and climate.
Leonhard's perspective is shaped by his extensive experiences attending numerous water conferences worldwide, where he witnessed a stark dichotomy between grand proclamations and tangible actions. Undeterred, he channeled his insights into founding WaterVent, a pioneering platform dedicated to matching water tech startups with investors, potential clients, and forward-thinking adopters. Leonhard's vision transcends mere technology; he champions accessible, nature-based solutions that empower communities and foster a water-conscious mindset, ensuring a sustainable future for generations to come.
Transcript
00:00
Ulf Leonhard
And everybody said, yes, we have to do, we have to act against. And practically nothing is happening. People are leaving the conference stage and claiming, yeah, it's like it's a mixture of proclaimed action, but then afterwards ignorance or incompetence or both, often coming along with some kind of corruption. This is a natural combination, this is a natural consequence, but they do not care about. And then they are asking Germany and the United States for a development aid and this is ridiculous. And we are sending big machines drilling holes, drilling wells and installing high tech pumps, sophisticated pumps, and they are working properly for half a year. And then somebody has to replace a cartridge in the filtration and nobody is able to. And they see what's happening. It's running two further months and then it's going to be rotten.
01:03
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to another episode of Liquid Assets, where we talk about the world of policy, management and technology all as it looks at the world of water. Today we have an amazing guest for you. We have Mister Ulf Leonhard.
01:17
Ulf Leonhard
Hi, my name is Ulf Leonhard, based out in Berlin in Germany and I am the spiritual director and the inventor of the Watertech funding firm Water rent.
01:27
Ravi Kurani
Well, if you were, were just talking about something super amazing where you've gone to all these conferences at the UNited nations and people go up on stage and they talk about how important water is and how they need to look at it. Everybody claps and applauses and then nobody does anything the next day. Let's jump back into that. That was super interesting.
01:51
Ulf Leonhard
Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, there's so many reports, studies, conferences, summits with proclamations made. Yes, we have to take care about water. And water it scares and what is contaminated sea contamination by whatever pollution of rivers and ponds, pollution of the sea, microplastics and plastics, etc. Etcetera. And everybody said, yes, we have to do, we have to act against. And practically nothing is happening. People are leaving the conference stage and claiming, yeah, it's, it's like it's a mixture of proclaimed action, but then afterwards ignorance or incompetence or both, often coming along with some kind of corruption. I'm not really aware of what was happening there, but you know, but because many regions of the world, they have the natural assets like fauna, flora, they have the water, but the water and the fauna and the flora is spoiled. It's just contaminated.
02:57
Ulf Leonhard
The forests are cut off and if they cut off the forest, they're running into water scarcity. This is a natural combination, this is a natural consequence, but they do not care about. And then they're asking Germany and the United States for development aid. And this is ridiculous. And we are sending big machines drilling holes, drilling wells, and installing high tech pumps, sophisticated pumps, and they're working properly for half a year. And then somebody has to replace a cartridge in the filtration and nobody is able to. And they'll see what's happening. It's running two further months and then it's going to be rotten, and then the metal is stolen away and then finished, you know, and all the resources like the aquifer, fire aquifers, they are explored, explored, and pumped. The groundwater level is sinking the same even in Germany, which is happening actually.
03:55
Ulf Leonhard
And I say, okay, there are many smart startups. The startup development in the sector is enormous and water is turning up to be the new all or the new or whatever, but it's still done to less. There are a few incubators worldwide, really renown ones, mainly if say us and one in the Netherlands and one in UK with high utilities. They are very active in the space, but it's still a lot to do. And not necessarily in terms of high tech, but in terms of normal tech, which can help people on the road to explore water, to drill for water, to store water, really challenge rainwater catching systems, storing water and maintaining it, and harvesting water. And this is kind of not necessarily comes along with high technology.
04:50
Ravi Kurani
You had mentioned that a little while earlier, that you know, that we have all this high technology, like you just said in this example, we put this stuff out there, it breaks, you need an engineer to go out there, repair it, and then the metal gets stolen at the end of the day, and then we don't know what happened. You said we're kind of going back and you're helping what would be normal technology, right. That normal people could use that?
05:11
Ulf Leonhard
We use that, yeah, good question. Nice example, which I had recently was a founder, a founding team, a founder team in Canary and islands in contranaria. What they do, they are trapping water in the morning dust with nets like Fisher. Fisher nets, yeah, but they are trapping the humidity in the morning and they get nice water. One of it. It works. It works. No sophistication, it's just trapping with the water, the humidity in the water, the moisture in the morning fog, and getting water from it. So this works. And this could be, we are talking about this new technology, water generation technology, getting water from humidity of air. It's quite popular technology trend, but this works. There's no installation. There's no energy need, they just install the nets and collects the water and they have it, even bottle the water.
06:15
Ulf Leonhard
This is a nice example for simple, not a technology, it's an idea, it's an installation. And there are a lot of ideas stemming from thousand years ago, from the Middle Ages, have to be reinvented and reinstalled, saying like the famous canal systems, they have the canary and island little canals coming down from the mountains and spreading the, distributing the water and the fields for horticulture, for orchards, whatever. And it works. It's still working. They are centuries old. They still work. There's nothing better. You don't need pumps because the water runs down the mountain. They're using their benefiting of the natural decline of the mountain. And this kind of system often do more benefit to the population than highly sophisticated technology, which nobody can maneuver properly. Because you need an engineering exam for having it done. You need a lot of energy.
07:12
Ulf Leonhard
This is a disadvantage for pumping, for desalination. You need a lot of energy. If energy does not work, what should you do? Drink expensive imported bottled water. Bottled water, for instance, in Germany. This is joking on people. We don't need bottled water in Germany. Our tap water is delicious. It's fancy. Yeah. And drinking vichy water in USA. This is ridiculous.
07:41
Ravi Kurani
Well, let's jump to WaterVent really quick. I think this is a great tie into that. Can you kind of explain what WaterVent is? What are you trying to do with it?
07:51
Ulf Leonhard
Well, water went. Yeah, WaterVent stands for water event, WaterVenture. It's an abbreviation of this. I introduced WaterVent to the market in 2010, starting in. It's a format, a matching format which is dedicated to mets water tech related startups, including adyassian sectors like ag, like aquaculture, blue and green, biotech, algae, of course, all the modern ag methods like indoor farming, rooftop gardening, facade greening, even smart cities, if you try to plant again trees, to get to improve your climate within the city, to reduce heat waves in the city, etc. Etcetera.
08:43
Ulf Leonhard
And matching these startups with funders, with investors, of course, but which is of equal importance is to match these kind of startups with potential clients and users who have the guts to try out, simply to try out, simply in their installation, in their assets, in their facility, in their building, for instance, to try out the new technology, saying, hey, if it works, we buy more of it, we have to try it. If somebody who is a tenant of who is the owner of a big building with 500 tenants, they start to think about decentralized technology, say decentralized treatment of brown and black water in their caves treats the water and give it back to the tenants. It's the same principle like in fancy. So modern new York, we still have this big water storage installation on the roof of the skyscrapers.
09:43
Ulf Leonhard
This looks like out of this time, it's still obligatory, as far as I know. We have to store the water up for the time. The water getting scarce, the sea. So modern. One of my favorite sayings is, hey guys, about talking about virtuality and virtual and AI and whatever, 3d saying, hey guys, you cannot suck water from the Internet. You need water physically in front of you unless you're going into trouble. Hands on technology, this is the demand.
10:17
Ravi Kurani
So if you were to kind of look through all of the companies that had come through WaterVent, what are your three? If you can find three of the most disparate examples, what would you say? What are those companies or ideas that they're working on?
10:31
Ulf Leonhard
Well, the first of all is decentralized water treatment technologies. So say containerized solutions like containerized water treatment. Because the majority of areas or cities of this world, they do not have pipe system infrastructure at all. So what you have to install, you cannot dig around there and getting pipes in the earth, you have to install containers with the water treatment system, get the wastewater in and get the cleaned up water out. So this is a huge trend, which can be even used in civilized countries like Germany. If you are someone, a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, this makes no sense to get access to a pipe system where you have to dig the pipe for 10 miles along. Decentralized technology. Decentralized water treatment like how carse decentralized. So the wells you find, you get the water from and you treat it decentralized.
11:33
Ulf Leonhard
So you don't waste the water in the soil, whatever, you can use it for irrigation or for nice pool, you treat it naturally. Second trend is back to nature and water treatment. So the setup of water treatment like done on with water grass or with algae, et cetera. This is a huge trend combined with horticulture, so co called eudroponics, aquaponics, huge trend. We get some fishes in, some carbs or trouts or whatever, and you can harvest the fish and you can harvest the algae. And the beside effect is your water get treated. So this is something really nice and any kind of say water saving technologies, especially in ag concerning irrigation, there's a lot to do because a normal irrigation is just swimming water on the plants. Hopefully they grow and 70% percent of the water is going to be vaporized.
12:38
Ulf Leonhard
So it's just going away. So this is kind off. Pity. If you have very expensive and force. Water is far too cheap. Far too cheap. If it's that expensive, like petrol or gases, people would care about it more. Water is still a neglected commodity. That is the mixture of pricing and say, putting more awareness, education with people saying, hey, you do not need to irrigate your lawn daily. And we are running into water scarcity. Nice model is Las Vegas. How they deal with their scarce water resources? They do it quite well because they are middle of nothing. There's only desert that they have, I guess, 90% water usage quota on their water. They have like the Australians and. But there's still many regions in the world that do not treat the water, just get it out. Like the.
13:38
Ulf Leonhard
In Saudi Arabia, the majority of water they get from desalination, they use it's swamped in the desert. So, you know, this is kind of. So it can be so simple. But it's also a question of education of what water users getting more awareness that you don't have to wash your cars even each Saturday. Well, you know, and getting somehow more awareness for the water as a resource. As such.
14:08
Ravi Kurani
I want to jump really quick to your talk. You gave on the impact entrepreneur. It's called finance and water security. A question that really popped up was, how do we take these technologies and make them mainstream to ensure that water security? And what role does finance play in this? I think it's an interesting point, kind of, to what you're just saying right now.
14:29
Ulf Leonhard
Well, for instance, take me an example. We in Germany, we are living in a really luxury position, like Switzerland, Austria or Belgium, Luxembourg. You can rely, you go to the tap, turn up the tap and you can just drink far away the water, wherever it is hot. In summer or in winter, you have water available and this is. Well, in the meantime, we have 90% water security. There are still regions with water scarcity, so they are forbidding get water from ponds or lakes, so called surface water. That's forbidden, but it's still an exception. So we are living in a water paradise. And yeah, I don't have to treat the water. It's the best vigilated resource you have. It's water. It's better than bottled water here.
15:16
Ulf Leonhard
And funding is relevant, but there are so many ideas which are not in need of huge funding, but of courageous clients. So if I say, okay, somebody has developed a method to treat water or to store water, if it's like storage of rainwater, harvesting rainwater into storage, it's always a challenge, especially in region where it seldom rains. So the storage and to maintain it portable, this is a real challenge. And this is a technology state of the art. It's not a question of money, but a question of what of will, whether I want to do it and then sell it instead of doing something else. Of course, there are high tech water solutions, like generation water from the air, or development of alternative diesel water technologies.
16:12
Ulf Leonhard
There is an alternative to the reverse osmosis, which consumes a lot of energy and is really bad for the environment because the brine. So this salt dirt mixer is put back to the sea. And of course there's a big need, but this is in hand of the big corporates. So I see, of course funding is relevant, very relevant. It's getting better and better, because many private investors, many clean tech venture capitalists, many foundation, which is a quite important source for money, and many corporates are doing corporate venturing, like Xylem. It's a nice example with Xylem Labs, they're going in the water, other like ag, they're going cargo, they're going into water, etc. Etcetera. The fertilizer producer.
17:04
Ulf Leonhard
So my recommendation for every Watertech startup talk to food industry, beverage industry, real estate owners, talk to your country club and saying, hey, I maintain your log green for 50% of the cost you actually have. So you are in, you get a nice reference. And when the golf club members see this technology, they are asking, okay, are you looking for investment? This is the way you get it. So there's still only say it's increasing, especially in us, but there are still only somehow 15 water tech only investors like we see in this world. Don't count how many are it investors. Yeah, this is 1500 results.
17:47
Ravi Kurani
And I think that probably goes back to what you said earlier of the fourth trend of water being too cheap, right? Like I think there is this, there's this disincentive around it being cheap and then also financing something that is so readily available.
18:02
Ulf Leonhard
That's it. The second issue is water is very political, like the discussions around water as a human right here, as a human right, this is theoretically nice to hear practically, it cannot be realized. And because without water, you're surviving maybe two days, without food you can do two weeks, but without water you're running into problems. So this is something which is a mixture of awareness and water price to urge people to manage their resource. If this is available, practicable and back to my then decentralized technology. So better giving a promotion to household owners, to house owners saying, hey, if it's raining, we are giving you a special loan or a subsidy that you install a rainwater catching system together with your solar installation.
19:01
Ulf Leonhard
You can do it because when it's raining, it's dropping from solar to the rain culture system, and then it's well stored. And together with your neighbors, you can set up a huge water storage, a water tank somewhere together. So not everybody on its own, but together in the street, in the neighborhood. So you get more and more independent from water availability, from utility. And this would be something meaningful, put back more responsibility, like it's done with energy production, like the law, installation, the heat pumps, etcetera, geothermal installations, etc. Etcetera. This is then decentralized. The heat pumps are decentralized technology on household bay. So doing the same with water, especially for those people who have a big house or villa, they can reasonably do it.
19:55
Ravi Kurani
I want to jump a little bit into why you do what you do. I think it's always interesting to kind of unpack the journey of why you got to where you were. Why are you focused on all this? What kind of drove you to building this?
20:11
Ulf Leonhard
First of all, it's concerning my family genes, I guess, because my father, my grandfather were both forest guards. Because I'm running as well, a forest and wood innovation forum, because it's closely related, where has no forests, no wood. You're running into water scarcity. This is. And all the forest fires taking place will lead to enormous water scarcity, because it's nothing. Everything is burning. So. And this is the one of the first reasons. And the second reason. When I founded Waterwent in 2010, I was aware that there's nothing going on like a matching firm, besides some exception. Like imagine h two o, which is pretty old in existence in San Francisco. But there's nothing focusing on water, nothing. Because water is taken as a natural resource. It just, it's just there, it's commodity. What can you earn with water technology?
21:14
Ulf Leonhard
But this in the meantime, changed dramatically. And everybody is talking about water scarcity, availability, even in Germany. So this water technology will have a bright future in my eyes. So this because I'm in the matching firm business for 25 years now, so. And I detected water. It's a neglected area, neglected sector, with very few firms. If you see the general clean take forms taking place, it's 80% energy production, distribution, storage, saving, whatever. Then it's 5% new materials, recycling and all. All along, but dominated by energy. And maybe you find one or two water tech related startups in this general clean tech firm. When you're nowadays talking about clean tech, you mean energy. And when I talk about clean tech, I mean water and forests as a natural resource to take care of.
22:19
Ulf Leonhard
Because if you mean climate, all the climate summits, climate means forest and water, nothing else. Climate is water and forests. And if these two columns and these two assets are not available, we have a terrible climate. I'm not a scientist and not an engineer, but it's just switch on your brain saying, hey, climate is dominated. Where you have woods, you have a nice climate and water. And what is the reason why people are building their houses close to water, close to the seafront, close to lakes, close to ponds, close to livers, because their love of water is life. If you don't have water, life is not fancy and not feasible.
23:04
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, yeah.
23:07
Ulf Leonhard
And this is where all my ideas. I'm not a philanthropic world saver, let's put it this way, I'm earning my money with it, but in the meantime, I'm so deep. And water went as a format is so well known and acknowledged in the global water community. And the most relevant countries like us, like Canada, Israel, all over Europe, especially UK, Scandinavia, which is quite active, bit in South Africa, bit india, as Australia, New Zealand jump in, the rest of the world is. I call them water tech, ignore it. And there is no relationship between the degree of water stress in the countries and the degree intensity of development. New water technology, except California and Israel, the only two exceptions, when you see Scandinavia and Denmark, are really interesting sources for new water tech, but they don't have water stress.
24:07
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
24:08
Ulf Leonhard
So it's interesting to see this. And those countries who have water stress, like Brazil, South Africa, like India, like China, there's no big water taking place. The incubators we have, why do you.
24:27
Ravi Kurani
Think that is? If there is a water stress issue, you'd think that they would be more incented to build water psychology.
24:36
Ulf Leonhard
Yeah, I'm reverting back to what I see at the beginning of our talk. It's simply ignorance and incompetence of those who are running so called politics. You know, they're just incompetent because they are not. Water is not a fancy topic, you know, water is not attractive, water is not glamorous, water is just there or not. So they're focusing on AI summit or smart city summit or whatever summit, because they are fancy topics. Water is not very fancy to think.
25:13
Ravi Kurani
About your kenobi initiative a little bit, right? If you have this intergenerational link between older folks and younger folks, shine some light on that. What exactly can you explain to the audience what is the Kenobi initiative and.
25:27
Ulf Leonhard
Kind of what's kenobi stands for cannot beat experience. This wording is program saying hey, matching, meeting professional and life experienced people who have that connection. The asset, the alumni networks, the folks they know matching those folks with ideas and it's often again the relevant this is no business angel matching platform. But often a startup can be supported with quite a few calls to saying hey I met a startup and making an introduction to the board of a corporate or to a regional advisor whatever saying hey please give this startup a chance to pitch. And this is what a startup cannot do on their own. They're applying in the purchase department and saying hey you're a startup. Come back when you have 50 happy clients in your list and then the famous cat bites in its tail.
26:26
Ulf Leonhard
You know, you have to have a kind of good father relationship to an idea, to a startup saying hey I am helping you out, maybe with money. Yes, I take you out and introducing you to my wealthy friends or to my alumni friends from consultant, from KPMG or from Harvard University, whatever. But the best support you can render to a startup is introduce them to potential clients saying hey I know somebody who's running a vineyard with 60 hectare and he's really suffering because of water scarcity. Think hey I have a solution for your friends, introduce me.
27:08
Ulf Leonhard
And this helps the startup more than anything else and this is not really water focused but it's a general platform where experienced people if they, my slogan is fine and forced and if they are open minded to detect, find something new around them saying hey this has nothing to do with my job or my former job, whatever. But it's really, it brings fun. It's nice and nice team. I help those guys to develop the business and that's all up to have some bring some fun to the table. So beyond Rotary and beyond country club and beyond whatever and saying hey I meet people who are half my age, third my age saying but that just keeps my brain young and my body as well. So this is, you know, this is the philosophy behind, that makes complete sense.
28:01
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
28:02
Ulf Leonhard
Yeah. And this idea is very well received especially in United states. It's a term of mentality. The Germans are, they see are always looking for their butts. It looks interesting but nine buts. The Americans say okay this looks nice. We can sign in. This is the mentality to try out new stuff. Just trying without knowing what the outcome is. But I like the idea, let join. And this is the difference, which is.
28:33
Ravi Kurani
Kind of an interesting point that you make, because I remember you saying that earlier of a lot of these technologies can enter the market if somebody's just willing to try it, just put their foot forward and say, bring in a pilot, bring in a few units. Let's go ahead and see how this works versus, like you just said, the nine butts.
28:51
Ulf Leonhard
Right?
28:52
Ravi Kurani
We want, we're going to figure out every way to not do it versus just doing it really quickly.
28:57
Ulf Leonhard
That's it. Try out all the big corporates we are so proud of in Germany, like Siemens, like Mercedes, like Porsche. When, when Porsche first introduced the first car after the world war, nobody, everybody said, what should we do with it? With a racing car, we need cars which are stable, which do their job. What's a fancy racing car? And the same was with Barta Benz. She invented the first motor car going for Stuttgart, but she founded her sponsors. She found her sponsors to help her out, you know.
29:35
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
29:35
Ulf Leonhard
And it's the same nowadays, the same principle nowadays, saying, hey, finding somebody, saying, hey, this looks extremely nice. We give it a trial. Simply, we give it a trial, whatever it means in our manufacturing side, in the manufacturing process, or we install your filter, we see how it works, whatever it is. Finding somebody in corporate, in a utility, a private person, saying, hey, I have a 500 square foot Willa in Miami. I have a problem with this and this. I'm keen to try out your technology. If you say it should work, we try it. And if it works, I recommend to you all, my friends, you are done. Yeah. And this kind of finding this kind of people with orders without consideration were open minded to try out new stuff without knowing whether it really works.
30:33
Ulf Leonhard
And well, you know, and this is the remedy. This is the recommendation for water, which is a trial process. We have a natural resource. We have to try out how it works or not. If you don't try it, you can never get out on the lab stage into real life and to real life applications. The same with all other technologies. Product, whatever. You see, if a product is successful, the first actor is going, oh, it's a nice product. Everyone wants it, you know, entirely.
31:13
Ravi Kurani
You said earlier that your brother is actually a famous futurist as well. It would be super interesting to be a fly on the wall during your holiday conversations or something like that. What does he think about water. And what do you guys talk about from a water perspective?
31:30
Ulf Leonhard
Well, we seldom talk about business or what he does, but he had, he did a really nice movie two years ago on behalf of one of the Canary and Islands administration and about natural assets, including water and greening, etc. Etcetera. So he is the one who, he is not somebody who predicts the future. He wants to predict the future, but they're saying, okay, use technology wisely, even AI, for management of water distribution, for instance. There's a huge potential, there are so many called smart grids, water distribution, leakage management, et cetera, et cetera, to wisely manage water distribution because there's so many data gathered, like consumption, like quality, like temperature. Yeah. Big businesses, for instance, the regaining of energy from warm water. Big, big it, because the other shower water, dishwater water, whatever, it's just deploying in the canal.
32:39
Ulf Leonhard
You see, in winter, all the pipes are with the steam whippers. So. And this is, and I'm proud. I want to get, I want to involve my brother more in my activities because we're pretty close together.
32:58
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
32:59
Ulf Leonhard
He called Gartz a futurist and based out in Zurich. And he does a good job if he presents. He attracts so many people globally. And because he is not Langman, theoretical guy with all theses on a very hands-on on, understandable. The recent one was about AI. What could be the threats? What are the opportunities coming along with AI? Very interesting. So the Leonhard brother, I ask everybody.
33:32
Ravi Kurani
This question towards the end of the do you have a favorite book or tv show or movie that has kind of changed your outlook on life that you can recommend to the audience?
33:46
Ulf Leonhard
Well, there are many, but one of the most fascinating movie was the contract of the painter, which was illuminating the 16th century british noble where noble guy hired somebody to make paintings of his castle of the family. It's gone by Peter Greenaway. This is awesome. You learn a lot, though. It's 16th century, it can be adopted to modern times as well. The same logic. The same logic where he finally said, okay, besides the money, I want to have sex with your daughter and your wife. He got it, but he was killed by the friends of the Duke. It's so fantastic movie and books. I have to confess, this is more my wife's face and I'm not really a big book reader. And, and I liked, I liked very much, as I'm saying, not sounding too cruel. I like very, the first part of rumble.
34:58
Ulf Leonhard
The very first. The very first I have to pinpoint that the first one, when he came back from the war and he was so much rejected by everybody because he was a soldier in war and came back and everybody died and everybody refused him. And even this sheriff treated him so badly, he gets berserk and about that and finally gets to jail. And this was a very, is again, a nice symbol what's happening if people are not accepted.
35:32
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
35:33
Ulf Leonhard
And not acknowledging and saying, hey, I want to just have a job. And being quiet, but people don't let him. So it's a bit. I was very impressed. Everybody knows Rambo won. I guess the first one was the best.
35:51
Ravi Kurani
The first one. The first Rambo. Perfect.
35:53
Ulf Leonhard
Yeah. He came back from the war and everything started and he tried to look his way and all his camera where I were killed and were dead because of the war, and he tried to find his way and there's some kind of similarity to some startups finding the way and saying, hey, we're getting rejected. Does not work. None. Does not work. No, no. And therefore coming back platform where you have some. Yeah, let's put it. Good fathers, finding good fathers, saying, hey, guys. Hey, ladies, I'm supporting you together with my friends. What do you need? This kind of informal business development. Very personal, very informal. But this is the way it works. And also in the water space, of course.
36:44
Ravi Kurani
Yeah.
36:44
Ulf Leonhard
If you want to get into, you need to know whatever. I'm running a manufacturing site for almond cakes. I have some serious water supply problem. Could you solve it? Or. I know somebody who has a helmet cake factory, and he's always complaining about the water supply, that the utility does not work properly and they had to cut down their production and could you help this guy? I make you an introduction. And this is a world. This is a world beyond exhibitions and fairs and conferences and summits.
37:19
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, yeah. I love it. Which ties back very clearly to the opening of this episode. What can you do after you step off that stage? And that makes a complete amount of sense. Thank you so much for coming on.
37:34
Ulf Leonhard
Yeah, Ravi was a pleasure. I hope my terrible German accent, is not the red line in the conversation.
37:44
Ravi Kurani
Not at all. I think the audience will very much appreciate this. And so, for all of those of you out there who want to find us, you can listen to Liquid Assets wherever you get your podcasts that can be on Spotify, on Google or on Apple. Ulf, thank you so much.
37:58
Ulf Leonhard
Brilliant, Ravi, thank you very much. Welcome. Appreciate it.