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Mar 2023
30m 14s

Creating a clean water supply from the a...

FUEL, A MCKINSEY COMPANY
About this episode

On today’s episode of McKinsey on Startups, our guest is Dr. Cody Friesen, the founder and CEO of Source Global, a sustainability-focused startup that is working to help solve the planet’s drinking water scarcity issues. The company’s flagship product is the Source Hydropanel, a solar-powered, self-contained piece of technology that turns the plentiful water vapor in the atmosphere into a clean, renewable water supply. Source Global has done both commercial and residential projects in more than 50 countries worldwide, and expects to produce and sell tens of thousands of them this year, growing to a few hundred thousand in 2024. Friesen, an MIT-educated material scientist and professor at Arizona State University, has raised close to $300 million in funding since originally founding Source Global in 2015. The company is a Public Benefit Corporation (or PBC), making it focused on both shareholders and stakeholders broadly defined. Friesen sees no tension between “mission and money,” and hopes to help foster what he calls “conscious capitalism” as he pursues his company’s ambitious goal of making drinking water an unlimited resource.

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