Welcome to LaunchVT’s new content series where we’ll be shining the spotlight on some past participants, coaches, and community partners from the LaunchVT family! This month, we heard from our friends from the 2022 accelerator cohort, Wasted*. “Here to reimagine human waste,” the innovative portable sanitation startup took home last year’s grand prize at Demo Night. We asked the founders to answer some questions about their experience with LaunchVT and where their business is heading now. LaunchVT Coach Jim Feinson also weighed in on what it was like working with the Wasted* team last year.
How did you come up with the idea for your business?
In August 2020, Thor bought a ticket to the Rich Earth Summit - hosted by the Rich Earth Institute - an event that brings together the global leaders in resource recovery from urine streams.
During this summit, researchers showcased their urine alchemy work. Through various treatment trains, these scientists were successfully producing NPK fertilizers, building materials, struvite salts, and even systems to charge hydrogen fuel cells. It was during these presentations that he realized the true potential of a separated urine stream.
The combination of (1) a napkin sketch to invent a new source separation toilet and (2) the understanding that urine is a liquid gold with untapped potential, Wasted* was incorporated to source raw urine streams to upcycle the nutrients in a productive manner. The best way to do so was to integrate the technology into the portable sanitation industry.
The market opportunity that garnered investment was based on the foundation of building an economically viable company on the rental & servicing of portable toilets. With the revenue generation coming from the portable toilet rentals, Wasted* solved one of the largest scaling problems facing the circular sanitation economy: not being dependent on the sales of fertilizer to support the company.
What year did you participate in LaunchVT and how has your business changed since then?
2022 - A lot has changed since LaunchVT, yet we see this adaptation to what the market is saying as one of our founding team’s strengths as entrepreneurs. After piloting a dozen beta units equipped with the Wasted* source separation mechanism, it became clear that there was too large of a risk of mechanism failure to scale with that technology. We were forced to reconsider our product-market fit.
The result is we now have a more streamlined product offering where we source urine from standing users versus using the mechanism to source urine from all users. This small but significant shift has enabled us to reduce the costs of product development, refine our retro-fitting capacity, and look towards more off-the-shelf solutions that will get us into the market faster.
Wasted* is now on track to have nearly 200 portable restrooms - what we call Wasted*Stations - in the market by summer 2023.
What’s the most important thing you learned from LaunchVT?
Community is key.
Ever since the founding of Wasted* our team has faced society’s critical commentary around taboos, especially given the fact that we are in the sanitation industry. Yet, thanks to LaunchVT, we not only found massive support for our idea, we also converted that support into tangible traction (like sales) for further proving our idea.
When your customers are some of your biggest supporters, you know that you are on the right track. LaunchVT validated Wasted* here in Vermont, and on those tough days, having a community of people that care is what will ensure success in the future.
What advice would you give to anyone who wants to launch or has recently launched their own start up?
It is not easy, and that adversity is your friend, not your enemy.
Write down your ‘Why’s’ (Why do I want this idea to come to life? Why should I put my lifeforce into this idea?) so you can overcome the inevitable doubt that will stare at you. Share these ‘Why’s’ with the people around you, so they can support you in the highest of highs and lowest of lows.
Consider how your idea would sound in the form of a story. At the end of the day, people are story-driven creatures, so how can your idea become the story of change people will tell themselves?
Please give an update of where your business is now and what’s next.
We are preparing for a scaled deployment of our portable sanitation offerings into the Greater Burlington region on April 1, 2023. After this year, we will analyze the market data and prepare our plans for scaling beyond this first market.
We are actively hiring for various roles looking to expand our passionate team.
“When your customers are some of your biggest supporters, you know that you are on the right track. LaunchVT validated Wasted* here in Vermont, and on those tough days, having a community of people that care is what will ensure success in the future.”
And what did coach Jim Feinson have to say about WaSTED*’s time in the LaunchVT accelerator?
LaunchVT was a great experience all around. Beyond just working on their pitch, the coaching and mentoring sessions got the team better aligned, helped them “battle test” their business plan, and gave them strong momentum for (successful!) fundraising. As a coach, I got an energy boost from working with this innovative, conquer-the-world team. The amazing collective creativity and ambition of the LaunchVT cohort makes me optimistic about the economic future of Vermont.