SUEZ

If you're Saudi Arabia, I can't go down the Red Sea anymore, down through the Bab al-Mandab because the Houthi are there in more force than before.

It's difficult to go through the Suez because I can't load fully loaded tankers through the Suez.

So it takes time to load them, unload them.

And then I got to sail around Africa.

How long have you been doing this

for? Five years.

So it started whenever given when, when in the Suez.

Now you're, you're really, you're really good at explaining things.

Today our topic is business development and the role that relationships and processes play in building business in the federal market.

Kevin interviews Bill Naughton, a director of federal markets at Suez Water and a longtime member of the Society of American Military Engineers.

Bill shares his insight on business development through 25 years working interesting projects like superfund cleanups and utility privatization with 8a small businesses, small businesses, and in large businesses.

This episode is brought to you by Skyway Acquisition.

If your organization is interested in training from a team of former contracting officers, go to askskyway.com and learn more about how Skyway helps both industry and government teams with the acquisition and contract execution process.

Okay, let's get started with Kevin's conversation with Bill Naughton from Suez Water.

How did you get into, how did you decide to be in the government side of this industry as opposed to state and local and lots of other places that you could be doing these kind of services?

Well, what's funny, I actually started my career as a cartographer working for the Defense Mapping Agency.

The cost of this expedition from west to east and back again, which occupied several years, must have been great, however abundant the hospitality was which she met with.

In the return from Mount Sinai to Clisma, Suez, she mentions the animals she used.

These were apparently not camels, for she immediately speaks of them by name as used by the natives of Paran.

But for the first part of the ascent of Mount Nebo, east of Jordan, she was able to use asellus, an ass or mule, whereas she had to walk all the way up Mount Sinai, not even asella, litter, being possible, because of its great steepness.

Introduction, resume of her journeyings.

The narrative, as we now possess it, opens in the middle of a sentence at the point where the pilgrim had already reached the megalithic remains at Kibroth-Attava, in sight of the mountain range of Sinai.

It may reasonably be assumed that the missing part contained the account of her journey from her western home to Constantinople, from thence through what is now Asia Minor to Antioch and on to Jerusalem, the events of her stay there, apart from the description of the services which she gives later on at page 45 and following, and her journey from thence towards Mount Sinai by way of Clisma, now Suez, and Faran, or Paran.

She had just before probably ascended the mountain of Faran, where the hands of Moses were uplifted during the battle with Amalek at Exodus 17, 10 following, and came down again into the plain.

And that's why I started Regeneration VC, not because we wanted to fight business, but we wanted to reinvent it.

Starting to ask questions like, what if waste became a feedstock? Our company Gray Parrot works with Suez, Bifa, Veolia, scanning tens of billions of items a year right now of waste streams.

What if a product remembered how it was used? This is our company, Tulu.

It works with Dyson and Karcher and Bosch.

She left to build the company that proves it, a device that clips onto a water meter already in the ground in under a minute and turns it into a connected device, No rip and replace, no network to build or maintain.

Global water giant Suez backed her, and so did Amazon.

As an investor, a customer, and a network, her whole company runs.

And with that, everyone meet my guest today, Anne Mouchot, the CEO of Sebeka.

Yeah.

So for us, we have to be creative.

We are very lucky that we have big partners that you've highlighted in Suez.

So deep and institutional knowledge for decades with a partner like that.

So on one side, we have a lot of private operators who become our customers.

So for example, there are companies like Suez, it's a French company, there's a company like Veolia.

L&T is emerging as one of the major players in this segment.

And a lot of other industries are also setting up water businesses who are taking interest in running these operations.