Human Connections Driving Progress: A Conversation with Trudi Schifter of TheWaterNetwork.com

Behind every breakthrough in technology lies something even more powerful than the science: human connection. At Tech Tour Water Tech 2025 in Copenhagen, leaders from across industries came together not only to share solutions, but to build relationships that can shape the future of water.

Few embody this spirit better than Trudi Schifter, Founder & Chairman of AquaSPE which operates TheWaterNetwork.com. With over three decades of experience as an investor, entrepreneur, and community-builder, Trudi has dedicated her career to connecting people, ideas, and opportunities. Through The Water Network — the world’s largest knowledge-sharing platform for water professionals — she has helped experts around the globe support each other in tackling some of the sector’s most pressing challenges.

In our interview, Trudi discusses how empathy and collaboration drive innovation, what she looks for in founders beyond technology, and how her own journey with Tech Tour began with a life-changing human connection more than 25 years ago.

TT: You lead The Water Network, a huge platform for global water professionals. How is digital tech like AI helping people in the water sector share knowledge and solve problems faster?

TS: We deal with the human side, meaning: sharing from experts to experts. Although we integrate with AI, the real value of what we provide is a platform for the experts to work remotely with each other and to help each other. We connect experts to other experts when they’re needed in a particular area, as well as to content. Content may be information, a research paper, a product, a company. Helping people discover information and linking content to content in a contextual way – for example, if I find some information or a product or a technology that’s interesting, the platform automatically identifies those things that are relevant to that. So we’re linking people to people, people to content, and content to content, in a smart automated way. And the ultimate objective of that is to provide a resource to everyone because it’s Open Access, it’s free for everyone and it’s global. We have members of every country in the world and what I find very positive and enlightening, motivational if you will, is that I’ve never met a water professional who isn’t passionate about the industry, about what they do and about helping other people. And I think that’s really great and maybe even unique about this whole space.

TT: With over 128,000 members, The Water Network is a go-to resource. What are the biggest challenges water experts talk about — and how is your platform helping solve them?

TS: It is certainly more than 128,000, those are just the registered members – I think more impactful are all the people who we provide information and access to. The Water Network is an Open Access platform, so our members share the content across all digital platforms that they’re members of, whether it’s LinkedIn or other private ones, or discussion groups in other websites – so our reach is actually 2.5 million page views a month.

Our platform connects people from all over the world who are not necessarily working on any individual project, initiative or product with each other – they are strangers. So how do they interact at that level? They are reading and sharing information. The interactive dimension is our smart help desk, where people ask questions when they need help, they’re looking for insight on something, and we have several thousand questions that have been asked and answered over the last 14 years, where the answers to those questions have been viewed over a million times. So we are driving knowledge sharing. If you look at specific impact, it’s thousands and thousands of instances of helping each other, connecting, and doing business over the past 14 years. And all of that is done from member to member. That is the whole idea of the network – it’s not going through any one person.

So the ultimate impact is to go to the next step, our revamped platform, which we launch this summer – and that is, providing a secure messaging service with presence for all the members of the water sector. We will be offering our own secure private messaging solution hosted by The Water Network, following European GDPR rules, no advertising – and that comes with new native mobile apps for iOS and Android. We have invested significantly in this platform, and it is very complete, highly robust and modern. It includes document management, collaboration and business exchange tools. There is a job board, full-featured functional collaboration, remote work and knowledge sharing solution here, and so when we launch the mobile apps, we’ll also be allowing anyone to create their own private community using our platform, hosted inside The Water Network. This means that if a company, a city, a region, or an initiative needs to have a knowledge sharing and remote work platform, they can set it up within our platform in two minutes.

TT: You’ve backed and mentored a lot of startups. What do you look for in a strong water tech founder- and what’s your advice for water tech startups, such as the ones pitching at Tech Tour Water Tech 2025?

TS:Number one is that they are coachable, meaning flexible and not stuck with their ways. It’s a very tough market and you need to be able to assess feedback from the industry, make changes when they’re required and maybe even pivot your business model, right? So I always look for a team player who is coachable. Second, no company is one person. They should be able to build a really well-functioning team that has a good corporate atmosphere, and this has to do with personal attributes like honesty, integrity, empathy. They also have to be very well-versed in the sector, passionate about what they’re doing, and have tenacity to not give up. I’ve never seen a company go bankrupt because they ran out of money, and I’ve seen a lot of companies that have run out of money – but the CEOs have figured out a way to get beyond that bad space. The ones that give up… maybe they gave up because they really are questioning their premise, their original value proposition or where the market has moved.. but more often they just give up, as they don’t have the skillset or the team to support them to get beyond that challenge, whatever that challenge is. So you need to have the resources inside yourself and your team to get through challenges.

My advice for founders is: focus on the problem that you’re solving, and who you’re solving it for. Not on your technology. I see so many business plans that just start off with the technology, but – who are you serving with this technology? What are you replacing? Why is it better? What is the value proposition, and your unique ability to deliver that? And then you find that one client, define it in a compelling way, and determine how many of those Personas or clients there are, where they are, and what’s your go-to-market plan to reach them.

TT: To end this conversation on a personal note – you met your husband at a Tech Tour event over 25 years ago – share with us the story?

TS:Well, first of all I have to mention two people who are responsible for it all, Sven Lingjaerde [Tech Tour’s co-founder] and Patrick Scherrer. When you go back 25-27 years ago in Europe, from a technology investment perspective, Venture Capital was hardly existent in Europe at that time. And hardly any Silicon Valley big funds or international investors were coming here to invest in startups or technology companies. So the whole idea of the Tech Tour was to bring international investors to Europe’s best start-ups and tech companies, region by region. The concept was taking a high-level group of 30-40 investors and having a selection committee that’s made up of local people who know the local market, who understand the people, the technology, the resources. It was a boot camp, looking at these companies, reviewing them, the whole review process and then – the Tour itself… it was not an event – it was a happening! It was a deep dive into each local economy, and we would meet with the institutions, the governments, the players, the spin-outs… all those organizations who were driving technology. Whether it was CERN in Switzerland, or the research centers, or the large multinationals and the big players, as well as the spin-outs. The Tech Tour has never been only about technology – it’s been about culture and people, and bringing them all together.

And so in that context, the very first Tech Tour was the Swiss Tech Tour in 1998. At the time, Patrick Scherrer helped Sven Lingjaerde recruit my husband’s company to be one of the presenting companies at the first Swiss event, and I was there as an investor – this is how my husband and I first met. So our family joke is that he’s now 27 years in due diligence… I invested in him, but never in his company.

TT: That is truly sweet… and obviously, today more than ever, live events help us remain human in a world that is shifting more toward a digital, remote, AI-driven reality.

TS: Yes, indeed, the human aspect is everything. And empathy is the differentiator of human beings. Through Tech Tour a lot of friendships were forged and deals done, and – you know, it changed my life. And it has changed a lot of people’s lives. This isn’t just about making money for investors. It’s about creating social value.

As Trudi reminds us, technology may evolve, but it’s people who make progress possible. Whether through global platforms like The Water Network or the in-person exchanges at Tech Tour, it is empathy, openness, and resilience that turn great ideas into lasting impact.

At Tech Tour, we are proud to foster these connections — because at the heart of every deal, every pitch, and every breakthrough lies what truly matters: the human connection.

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