Sivan Zamir - The Model of Corporate Startup Engagement

In 2015, all of the startup founders who were part of Imagine H2O's Accelerator had to bear with me as I had no idea what I was doing. One of those founders was Sivan Zamir. Four years later she was and remains the only person to go through the program twice, and mercifully, her feedback then was rather better. Now she's VP of Enterprise, Innovation and Venture at Xylem, Burnt Island Ventures’ anchor investor and a true partner. And Sivan has become a serious force in early stage water, taking on the enormous challenge of making a very large company very good at working with very small ones. She and her team not only set a new standard for corporate engagement with the startup community, we think they reinvented it. It has been fascinating to see how the ideas and principles of entrepreneurship are flowing into the wider Xylem organization as a result. She is a force of nature, an unyielding advocate for water and an astonishingly generous friend. Please enjoy my conversation with Sivan Zamir.

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For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fundamental-molecule/id1714287205

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Sivan Zamir, VP of Enterprise Innovation and Venture at Xylem, shares her journey from two-time founder to corporate innovator. She discusses the systemic challenges large companies face when working with startups and her strategy to overcome them. Key topics include the criticality of team culture and "voice of customer," using agile sprints to drive change, and a unique "partnerships-first" corporate venture capital model. She also advocates for bringing enabling technologies from other industries into the water sector and advises all entrepreneurs to "be kind."

00:00 - Introduction

02:24 - Why Big Companies Struggle to Work With Startups

05:53 - Breaking the Certification Roadblock for Pilots

08:06 - Startup Lessons: Team Culture and Customer Feedback

16:40 - First 90 Days: Research, Business Plan, and Execution

20:32 - Running Sprints and Scaling Innovation Culture

25:18 - Building Partnerships Before Launching Venture Capital

29:49 - How the Accelerator Program Drives Go-To-Market

35:25 - The State of Water Tech: Adjacent Innovation and Low Funding

40:53 - Final Advice: Always Lead With Kindness

Links:

Burnt Island Ventures: https://www.burntislandventures.com/

Sivan Zamir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivan-sidney-zamir/

Xylem: https://www.xylem.com/en-us/

SM Material

Key Takeaways:

"Team culture is everything. You can teach skills, but you can't teach culture. It's the backbone of resilience and innovation."

"Voice of the customer is critical. Without it, you're building on a hypothesis without market validation."

"In large companies, innovation must be baked into governance, metrics, and incentives."

"The water sector needs to look beyond itself. Adopt existing tech from other industries."

"Accelerators simplify complex processes. They coordinate efforts and focus on clear...