Mike Reardon’s Insights on the Microbiome in the Water Industry

I’m Mike Reardon and I’ve been in the water business for about 25 years. I’m a CPA by training and I’ve had the good fortune of pulling together and helping build one of the great names in the industry, U.S. Filter. We took it from a very small company, to five and a half billion in revenues by doing 300 acquisitions over nine years. I ran Culligan for a few years, and have helped a lot of private equity and venture capital guys acquire, lead, and build a variety of other water businesses.

At first glance, I’m kind of excited about what I’m learning, what I’m seeing in the marketplace. This information was out there, but people weren’t aware of it. I think is going to enable us to do some interesting things. I think of it kind of like looking out up in the sky in the days before the Hubble telescope. You would see a lot less stars than you can see today. We now can see all these stars, and it opens up possibilities beyond your imagination. I think this microbiome area is going to be similar. We’re going to see information, and we’re going to be aware of information that will teach us about cause and effects, that we could never imagine before.