change:WATER Labs—iThrone Evaporative Toilet

Globally, 1Bn people in cities lack sanitation plumbing and can’t flush—in these areas, things get messy fast and removing sewage is very costly. change:WATER Labs is developing an elegant alternative to flushing waste: we VAPORIZE it! Our “iThrone” is a portable, space-saving, waste-shrinking toilet, that eliminates 90-95% of daily waste onsite, for dwellings and communities without power or plumbing. Using a breathable membrane to soak up and evaporate (or “flush away”) the liquid content of daily waste, not only does the iThrone NOT consume or pollute water, but it actually converts waste INTO clean water (vapor). By containing and eliminating unflushed waste, the iThrone will help clean up communities. The iThrone is an ideal drop-in solution to provide immediately safe sanitation at low-cost to more people—in slums, camps and transitional communities. By shrinking sewage, the iThrone drastically cuts waste management/collection costs while increasing toilet-access and servicing capacity. 

Globally, 1Bn urban people lack access to safe, clean toilets, largely because they live in homes with no sewage plumbing. When people don’t have safe, private toilets in or near home, many practice open defecation. Poor sanitation perpetuates poor health, poverty and pollution. It causes 80% of all infectious disease, 4% of all deaths, 5.5Bn days/yr in lost productivity (translating to $260Bn/yr in economic losses). Lack of conveniently-accessible, private toilets in or near home exposes women & girls to daily risk of sexual assault and violence. When flushing isn’t an option, getting rid of sewage becomes very messy and hugely costly. But, current options to deal with human waste in cities—flushing or frequent sewage collection—aren’t scalable or sustainable, and are bad for the planet, consuming excessive water and/or fuel; and not getting rid of it pollutes communities, poisons their environments and local water resources, and contributes to climate change (4% of man-made methane emissions). Even rich countries like Dubai & the US face such challenges, with >20% living in areas with failing or no sewerage infrastructure. Clearly, we need a new way to “flush”—a clean, low-cost, low-carbon, sustainable solution that requires no pipes, power or plumbing. 

Our solution targets the growing need to safe, clean, low-cost, drop-in sanitation in crowded/urban areas, targeting end-users living in under-resourced and informal communities--specifically urban slums and transitional situations. We have developed a solution that is compact, can be installed anywhere without needing hookups to infrastructure, is easy to use, and drastically reduces servicing and maintenance costs and frequencies. 

Our solution benefits every actor along the sanitation value chain: end-users, WASH advocates, local servicers, local governments, NGOs, construction contractors, health officials, etc.

For end-users, our solution makes safe, clean toilets more immediately and conveniently accessible. 

For servicers, our solution greatly reduces waste-collection costs and frequencies while also increasing their ability to scale their servicing coverage.

For governments and NGOs, our toilets provide an immediately-effective, safe, clean, low-cost drop-in solution.

For construction-contractors, our solution solves the issue of installing toilets where no supporting infrastructure pre-exists. 

This fall, we will conduct our first pilot deployment in a low-resource urban area in Uganda (which also hosts a significant refugee population), to provide improved sanitation at the district school and hospital. We are working with the local District government, local fecal-sludge management (FSM) servicer, WASH-advocacy group, the hospital and school administrators, and multinational donors.

To address relentless, rapid accumulation of sewage-waste in un-sewered urban areas, change:WATER is developing a quick, clean, low-cost way to get rid of it when flushing isn’t an option—we SHRINK it! The “iThrone”, a portable, non-flush toilet that evaporates the liquid content of daily sewage-waste onsite, essentially “flushing away” 90-95% of it as pure water vapor, thus extending safe, clean sanitation into homes and communities with no power or plumbing. Our no-flush evaporative toilet leverages two breakthrough technologies: 

--a low-cost evaporative membrane (essentially, a “shrink-wrap for crap”) that aggressively dehydrates human-waste without need for external power or heat (demo: http://bit.ly/cwldemosplit); 

--a “pee-powered” bio-battery that converts urine into electricity, to power ventilation in the toilet to dispel gasses and odors. 

The iThrone collects sewage-waste in evaporative pouches made of our membrane. These pouches dehydrate both liquid and solid waste daily, such that only a few grams of dried solids remain inside, hygienically contained. These pouches are designed to process a household’s-worth of waste every day for a full month. Unlike most container-based toilets (which fill up fast and need to be emptied every 1-2 days), the iThrone only needs to be emptied 1-2x/month. After a month, used pouches would be swapped for clean pouches. Collected waste would then be processed at existing centralized facilities or converted to value (bioenergy, biofertilizer, etc). Not only does the iThrone NOT consume or pollute water, it actually reclaims pure water from waste. Not only does the iThrone NOT consume external energy, it generates its own energy. And, by rapidly dehydrating waste, the iThrone cuts off methane that normally off-gasses from wet raw sewage. Our toilet is compact, simple to use, keeps things clean, reduces odor and, with no need for external power or plumbing hookups, can install anywhere—uniquely suited to address the growing need for drop-in sanitation in crowded slums, refugee camps and crisis situations. By shrinking sewage, the iThrone cuts costs while increasing toilet access and servicing efficiency. The cost to install and service one communal toilet could instead fund FOUR of our household toilets. For waste collectors, our solution reduces collection costs (by >50%) and frequencies (by 15-30x). Instead of repeatedly servicing a small number of container toilets daily, they could service 20x more of our iThrones monthly—allowing these businesses to be much more scalable and profitable, paving the way to more sustainable, scalable sanitation in the future.

No other sanitation solution can achieve rapid, clean, low-cost onsite waste-elimination without flushing. The iThrone is the only non-flush/container-based toilet that leverages evaporation. Our technology is hugely disruptive, enabling safe, clean, easily-deployable sanitation anywhere—increasing access while reducing costs. CONTAINER-BASED toilets fill up fast and require frequent, costly waste removal. COMPOSTING TOILETS are very slow to convert waste, hard to maintain and often can spread disease—not suitable for in- home use. “Re-INVENTED TOILETS” use complex technologies to rapidly process onsite waste, but are too expensive to be scalable. SEWAGE COLLECTION SERVICERS (so-called “fecal sludge management” or “FSM” servicers) would in fact be our partners and customers, as they focus on service delivery and we could provide more cost-effective, lower-maintenance toilet hardware. Our toilet would enable their waste collection operations to be much more profitable and scalable. Our toilet keeps things clean, reduces odor and can install anywhere--ideal for domestic sanitation in crowded urban slums and refugee camps. And it’s the only toilet that can drop into an emergency to provide immediately safe sanitation. The iThrone will get safe sanitation to more people—in slums, refugee camps and crisis situations. By shrinking sewage, the iThrone cuts costs while increasing toilet access and servicing efficiency. The cost to install and maintain one communal toilet could instead fund FOUR of our household toilets. For waste collectors, instead of repeatedly servicing a small number of container toilets daily, they could service up to 20x more of our iThrones monthly. 

Our core technology in the toilet is an innovative composite elastomer membrane that quickly soaks up and evaporates the water in human waste, thus shrinking daily onsite sewage outputs by ~95% (essentially, a “shrink-wrap for crap”). It does so without needing any external power or heat.

Our second breakthrough technology is a microbial fuel cell that runs on human waste; in other words, a "pee-powered" bio-battery. This means that the waste input from simply using the toilet can be converted to power for ventilation and odor reduction. This self-contained system may evolve in the future to be an off-grid waste-powered generator.

Our no-flush evaporative toilet leverages two breakthrough technologies: 

(1) Shrink-wrap for crap”: a novel, low-cost evaporative membrane that aggressively soaks up and evaporates (or “flushes” away) the water content of human waste, without need for added energy or heat (demo: http://bit.ly/cwldemosplit); 

(2) Pee-powered” bio-battery: a small-scale, high-efficiency microbial fuel cell (MFC) that converts pee to power used for ventilating the toilet to reduce any odors (in future, with this bio-battery, the iThrone may evolve beyond portable toilet, to also become an off-grid “pee-power” generator).

Not only does the iThrone NOT use or pollute water, it converts waste INTO pure water. Not only does the iThrone NOT need external energy, it converts poo INTO clean power. And, by rapidly dehydrating waste, the iThrone cuts off methane off-gassing from wet raw sewage. 

Our iThrone solution does 2 important things:

--It provides a low-cost, stand-alone, space-saving, rapid waste-reducing solution decoupled from power or plumbing infrastructure;

--It transforms sanitation-servicing economics. 

A key health challenge for fast-growing cities is the rapidly-expanding sanitation infrastructure void, coupled with ageing/failing existing infrastructure. With more people living with no connection to sewerage in their homes, sanitation is increasingly going “off-line”. At worst, this means urban-dwellers will increasingly have to live WITH their sewage, and won’t have access to toilets in their own homes . At BEST, sewage-waste will need to be treated like garbage—collected instead of flushed. The only way to allow everyone to have a toilet in their home is to have a compact toilet that shrinks waste fast and keeps it cleanly contained. The only way to keep collection costs manageable is to reduce the collection frequency—for sewage waste, the only way to do that is to shrink the volume on a daily basis and make sure to prevent it from smelling. Our fast, off-grid, waste-dehydrating solution is the ONLY solution the meets all these requirements. Also, the iThrone enables sanitation providers to deliver better sanitation to more users at lower cost. For collectors, our toilet reduces the high costs and collection frequencies needed for other container-based toilets. Reduced servicing (1-2x/mo vs every 1-2 days), the iThrone cuts OPEX costs by 50% and allows servicers to cover 3-20x more toilets (yielding 3-20x revenues). So, our toilets render these businesses more profitable and scalable.

With our Uganda field pilot, we will deploy 5-6 toilets to the Kiboga District Hospital and school—providing improved sanitation to ~500-1000 people (whose best alternative currently are unsanitary pit latrines). In 1yr, we expect to have 10-15 toilets deployed for our beta-trial, providing improved sanitation to 1000-3000 people. Soon thereafter, we will launch the the market, and fulfill our LOI first orders for 6000-units, improving the lives of 0.6MM urban people. In 5yrs, we expect to have 150K toilets deployed, improving sanitation access and health conditions for 7.5MM people in urban areas. In terms of direct impacts, our toilets allow safe, clean sanitation to be much for widely and conveniently accessible in un-sewered urban areas at lower cost, and it also enables sewage-removal servicing to be much more scalable and sustainable (lower-cost and higher servicing efficiency). From the perspective of urban health, safety and environment, our innovation allows:

--women and girls to potentially have closer access to safe, clean, private toilets, thereby reducing their daily risks of sanitation-related sexual assault;

--reduced sewage-waste discharge into the local environment and water resources (which helps clean up communities and reduce diarrheal disease);

--reduced exposure for people in a 0.25-0.5km radius to vector-borne disease (potentially 500-1000 people in an urban setting).

Environmentally, one iThrone could conserve ~20K-130K gal/household/yr of water versus flush-toilets. By shrinking sewage, we could conserve 9-45 MM gal gasoline/toilet/year from reduced collection/haulage. One iThrone could avoid 5-10Tg/household/yr of methane emissions from raw sewage (equivalent to driving 1500-3000mi/yr).

We will be launched to market by early 2021 and expect to have sold/deployed 12K toilets (including 6-8K units for which we already have LOIs from 3 contractors)—generating $4-7MM in revenue (from hardware + consumable sales) and improving the lives of up to 0.6MM people. We will likely be selling to construction contractors working with government, sanitation service providers, NGOs and equipment manufacturers. We will still be developing our marketing & distribution channels, but given the pent-up demand we’ve seen for our product & the aggressive procurement by the Chinese & India governments of >100MM portable toilets, we expect to be able to be actively growing our sales & achieve profitability in 2022 (having sold 50K-60K units, generating $15MM revenues & $9MM profits). We expect to sell 150K of our toilets by 2024, capturing cumulative revenues of $65MM, and improving the lives of 7.5MM people. In addition to selling our first toilet product, we will be likely working with some of our early adopters to improve our product, the servicing model, & exploring options to improve our materials & convert the collected waste from our toilets to monetizable value. 

Our biggest challenges in the next year involve:

• Raising sufficient funding to scale our operations and ready ourselves for market launch—especially given that we are taking a risk to develop novel technology hardware for low-income markets (most investors don’t want to combine technology risk with market risk);
• Tackling the cultural sensitivities in many of our target markets around sanitation in order to render a product that end-users would want to use

In the next 5yrs, we will be challenged:

• To grow our sales and marketing efforts (given that it is global and fragmented);
• To evolve our product away from dependence on local servicing partners (not unique to our venture, but still, a challenge, since servicing is not always established in many markets, and where it is, it is very localized and variable);
• To improve our materials to be more sustainable.

Fundraising: We have started to look at some innovative partnership to help generate earlier revenues—sponsored deployments, strategic investments, integration WASH consulting services. Also, as we begin to generate data from our field trial and demonstrate the potential of our innovation, we should be able to have more advanced discussions with investors.

Cultural fit: We do our best to engage a host of local stakeholders to educate us on how to best address these issues. As we spend more time on the ground, our ability to address cultural sensitivities will hopefully improve. Also, working with trusted local partners helps us get up the learning curve quickly! 

Sales & Marketing: We are talking to large corporations who can serve as potential distributors of our solution (construction contractors, equipment and hardware distributors, etc). However, we will need to build out a dedicated marketing team internally.

Product independence: Eventually, we will upgrade our toilets to be serviceable by the users themselves. This will require advancements to ensure that the toilets quickly neutralize the waste onsite. 

Materials innovation: Right now the focus is to get our first product out to people who need safe sanitation now, but we are already looking at more sustainable materials to replace our current materials. We are working with our expert supply-chain partners to identify candidate materials. 

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change:WATER Labs was founded in 2015 by Diana Yousef and Huda Elasaad. Currently, we have 6.5 FTEs and 4 PT volunteers, including:

--2 full-time founders (unpaid)

--4.5 full-time engineers (paid)

--1 volunteer PhD researcher (unpaid)

--3 part-time marketing consultants (unpaid)

Our diverse and expert group of Advisors, include:

Lisa Henthorne (International Desalination Association; CH2MHill); Mitch Tyson (serial cleantech entrepreneur/investor); Tom Tilas (AECOM); Jon Shepard (Ernst & Young, Toilet Board Coalition); James Casey (FLEXcon); Ling-Ling Phung (UNILEVER’s Sanitation for All initiative); Michael Murphy (MassCEC); Daniel Frey, PhD (Professor, MIT); Francis de los Reyes III (Professor, NC State).

Our team has been working on this vision since 2015, bringing together 50yrs of proven track record of successful technology innovation, commercialization and scale market deployment--leveraging complementary experiences from venture finance, business strategy, water-systems engineering, hardware and military equipment development, cleantech innovation and international development. Our breakthrough technologies evolve from NASA- & DOE-funded research efforts. Our founder/CEO, Dr. Diana Yousef, PhD, MBA, who initially conceived of evaporative sanitation, has 15+ yrs experience commercializing scientific/technology innovations for social impact. Previously, Diana was a serial cleantech & social entrepreneur, venture investor, McKinsey consultant, and international development innovator at UNDP & the WorldBank/IFC. She a former biochemist (BA, Harvard; PhD, Cornell), & holds an MBA & MA in International Development (Columbia). Huda Elasaad, MS, MS (CTO, co-Founder) brings 10+ yrs of expertise designing, engineering and deploying municipal-scale water- and sewage-treatment systems in MENA and South America, and years of applied academic training at MIT & U.Michigan. As a serial water-tech entrepreneur, she expertly leads our engineering team, product development efforts and manages key strategic partnerships. Kare Finstadsveen brings 30yrs expertise in designing and manufacturing military equipment & vehicles with the Norwegian Military. Our committed engineering team includes: Yongji Wang, MS (civil engineering); Yashik Gabbaladka (industrial engineering/fabrication); Hayley Walker (mechanical engineering); Andrew Ollerhead (chemical engineering); Ricci LaCentra (applied materials engineering); and Aman Sharma (electrical engineering). Our approach has been called out for recognition by USAID Administrator Mark Green at the 2018 UN General Assembly and by Fast Company’s 2019 Listing of World Changing Ideas. 

We have initial pilot funding from the Humanitarian Grand Challenges partners (USAID, governments of UK, Netherlands, and Canada). We are partnered with MIT D-Lab and our supply-chain partners. For our field pilot, we are deploying our first toilets to Kiboga District (Uganda), trialing at the District Hospital and local school. Our NGO-partner, “Israeli Medicine on the Equator” (IME), which supports the local health systems and the Hospital, is our key on-the-ground partner. They will host our toilets on the Hospital campus, and will help us to hire field-staff to manage the day-to-day monitoring of the pilot. They have made key introductions to all the local stakeholders and decisionmakers in Kiboga. Another local WASH-focused NGO, Door-to-Door will help facilitate workshops to educate users on the benefits of improved sanitation practices and use of our toilets. They will also help us to develop servicing protocols. cWL relies on IME & D2D to provide key usage/design specifications, installation locations, user/servicer training and monthly maintenance/waste-removal. We also are partnering with the Kiboga District Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and the local Department of Agriculture to explore potential to integrate waste-collection from our toilets and waste-to-fertilizer applications to generate revenues to support sanitation. 

Globally, markets for portable sanitation span both developing and developed economies. We will initially target 2 segments: the $73Bn/yr government/humanitarian-funded sanitation market; and the $50Bn/yr (est) market for sewage removal services (so-called “fecal sludge management”/FSM). Both segments participate in purchasing the $18.2Bn/yr in portable toilets. Initially, we will sell B2B to the BUSINESSES along the sanitation value-chain: (a) construction contractors; and (b) the sewage-removal (FSM) servicers. (Eventually, we hope to sell to governments/NGOs directly.) For governments, NGOs & their contractors, they currently have NO GOOD options to implement sanitation in areas where infrastructure doesn't exist; they need low-cost, low-maintenance, drop-in sanitation solutions. For servicers, they need to replace their container-based toilets with "smarter" toilets that reduce collection frequencies and costs, while also increasing their collection capacity (leveraging small fleets to cover more toilets) and thus revenues.Our B2B customers would serve as initial distribution channels, buying toilets in bulk to install, deploy and service them. To launch lean, we plan to outsource production of our toilet hardware, & possibly even license it to various regional/market channel partners. However, to maintain control over our key IP, as well as monitoring critical QA/QC standards, we will maintain in-house production of our evaporative membrane pouches, which will, over time, become our more significant revenue stream. We will sell hardware+consumables (toilets + recurring replacement pouches) to existing providers of sanitation services and infrastructure. Our razor/razor-blade revenue model means the growing install-base of our toilets will continue to generate recurring revenues from sales of replacements.

Demand for off-grid/portable-toilets is strong and growing. Governments and humanitarian organizations spend $73Bn/yr on sanitation and deploy ~0.5MM toilets/yr for post-crisis sanitation. India and China are purchasing >100MM portable-toilets to upgrade their sanitation infrastructure. Sewage removal/management services is a potentially $50Bn/yr market—by 2030, 5Bn people will rely on decentralized forms of sanitation. 

Our toilets would deliver significant benefits to every player along the sanitation value-chain:

--unprecedented accessibility for end-users;

--4x-reduced purchase/maintenance costs for funders/buyers (governments, NGOs, contractors);

--50%-reduced collection/OPEX costs and 20x-increased scalability (and profit-potential) for sewage-removal servicers.

For initial market-uptake, we will sell to BUSINESS-customers: construction contractors, sewage-removal servicers. Later, we will target direct-sales governments and large NGOs to achieve significant market-scale. Demonstrating pent-up demand, we already have in-bound LOIs from 3 construction-contractors for 6000+ toilets post-pilot. We’ve also received funding from the US, UK, and Dutch governments (giving us direct visibility with these 3 large government-buyers of portable sanitation solutions).

We will sell hardware+consumables (toilets+monthly replacement pouches). Given significant cost-savings and improved sanitation delivery conferred by our toilets, we will price them in line with comparables, and expect to capture sales-margins of $70-170/toilet, and recurring margins of $20-300/toilet/yr.  

We’ve been incredibly lean, going from concept to prototype on investment of only $200K. We plan to launch to the market by 2021, selling 12K toilets. Given aggressive demand, we expect to be profitable and self-funding by Yr3 of sales, and to have sold 150K toilets by Yr4, generating revenues of $41MM and profits of $17MM.

This SOLVE challenge is exactly aligned with our goals for our toilet. We hope to leverage the SOLVER community to garner feedback on our planned vision and hopefully attracted key partnerships and resources. The award would greatly help us advance our work by allowing us the complete the Beta phase of our field pilot, so we can achieve a market ready version of our toilet to launch by 2021. We are applying specifically to the Healthy Cities Challenge because our mission aligns with what the Challenge aims to address. Firstly, we aim to reduce and prevent infectious disease caused by poor sanitation conditions by containing biological waste and providing an alternative to open defecation. Secondly, will promote physical safety and reduce incidences of violence, especially to women and girls, that occur when they must use dangerous communal toilets or practice open defecation at night. Lastly, we aim to enable effective health services by testing and implementing our solution at a district hospital, addressing peripheral conduits of disease around the hospital to reduce disease exposure to the most vulnerable members of the community at the hospital, and thus allowing doctors to better focus on the needs of each individual and patient.

Government and on-the-ground partners in our target deployment countries

This year, we need to raise significant funding to scale manufacturing, marketing & deployment of our product. We hope to leverage the SOLVE ecosystem to find funders and investors aligned with our impact goals. We also need connections to governments & donors who procure & deploy sanitation systems at large scale. We hope to gain visibility with sewage collection (“fecal sludge management” or “FSM”) service providers globally, as these servicers could be potential customers and distributors. We would also like to work with NGOs that facilitate sanitation enhancement programs or focus on public health initiatives in dense urban areas. Lastly, we would like to help and benefit from any partnerships from organizations that procure technology for disaster or humanitarian relief as part of government or UN bids. We also hope to partner with other SOLVE teams to establish synergies and collaborations to amplify all our efforts to deliver better services to vulnerable communities. 

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This Prize will allow us to complete our field pilot and achieve a market-ready product to launch by 2021. Specifically, this funding would support the following phases of product completion: (1) Redesign of our alpha unit post initial field pilot (to precede the SOLVE award), incorporating field learnings into an improved beta toilet; (2) Construction & field deployment of units of our beta prototype; (3) 3-4 months data gathering on performance, usage & maintenance requirements through multiple servicing cycles. Results of the beta trial will ready us for market launch, yielding a completed product ready for scaled manufacturing and production, servicing and maintenance protocols, user & operator training materials, marketing materials, and a preliminary network of partners and distributors. This grant will primarily fund our team salaries, fabrication space and equipment access, travel to site, shipping, materials and field support. 

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This Prize will allow us to complete our field pilot and achieve a market-ready product to launch by 2021. Specifically, this funding would support the following phases of product completion: (1) Redesign of our alpha unit post initial field pilot (to precede the SOLVE award), incorporating field learnings into an improved beta toilet; (2) Construction & field deployment of units of our beta prototype; (3) 3-4 months data gathering on performance, usage & maintenance requirements through multiple servicing cycles. Results of the beta trial will ready us for market launch, yielding a completed product ready for scaled manufacturing and production, servicing and maintenance protocols, user & operator training materials, marketing materials, and a preliminary network of partners and distributors. This grant will primarily fund our team salaries, fabrication space and equipment access, travel to site, shipping, materials and field support. 

This Prize will allow us to complete our field pilot and achieve a market-ready product to launch by 2021. Specifically, this funding would support the following phases of product completion: (1) Redesign of our alpha unit post initial field pilot (to precede the SOLVE award), incorporating field learnings into an improved beta toilet; (2) Construction & field deployment of units of our beta prototype; (3) 3-4 months data gathering on performance, usage & maintenance requirements through multiple servicing cycles. Results of the beta trial will ready us for market launch, yielding a completed product ready for scaled manufacturing and production, servicing and maintenance protocols, user & operator training materials, marketing materials, and a preliminary network of partners and distributors. This grant will primarily fund our team salaries, fabrication space and equipment access, travel to site, shipping, materials and field support. 

This Prize will allow us to complete our field pilot and achieve a market-ready product to launch by 2021. Specifically, this funding would support the following phases of product completion: (1) Redesign of our alpha unit post initial field pilot (to precede the SOLVE award), incorporating field learnings into an improved beta toilet; (2) Construction & field deployment of units of our beta prototype; (3) 3-4 months data gathering on performance, usage & maintenance requirements through multiple servicing cycles. Results of the beta trial will ready us for market launch, yielding a completed product ready for scaled manufacturing and production, servicing and maintenance protocols, user & operator training materials, marketing materials, and a preliminary network of partners and distributors. This grant will primarily fund our team salaries, fabrication space and equipment access, travel to site, shipping, materials and field support.