Taoyuan A8 Deal Notes (2)｜EITH: Turning Wastewater Into Resources, and Making a Pitch Non-Experts Can Follow

In one sentence

Below 20% concentration, aqueous ammonia is waste you pay to dispose of. Above 20%, it is a resource you can sell. The concentration equipment EITH sells is essentially there to help customers cross that line. The technology is hard, but that day the pitch wandered, and it diluted the numbers that deserved to be remembered.

Core claims

The market is non-discretionary: regulation keeps tightening, and water use in high-tech industry nearly doubled between 2016 and 2024. Not treating it is not an option.
The business model is actually clear: engineering consulting and design is about 90% of revenue and carries the cash flow, while resource products (ammonium nitrate, PU board, around 50% margin) are the new growth engine.
Outsourcing waste disposal is not passing the buck: Article 30 of the Waste Disposal Act is explicit that liability traces back to the generator. That is the real reason listed-company customers pay.
The biggest takeaway from this session was not ammonia nitrogen electrolysis, it was a pitch lesson: the VC may not know your field, and if the plain-language part fails, the numbers behind it never land.

Why I am writing this one up

Following Taoyuan A8 deal notes (1), Ruomei, the second company of the same session, part two of four: EITH Technology Co., Ltd.

Ruomei was about materials and cooling. This one is wastewater treatment and resource circulation engineering. Honestly, there was a long stretch in the middle that I did not follow. I only pieced it together after going home and reading up, and that is when I realized the fact that I could not follow it is the most useful thing in this post.

What EITH does

In plain language: they help factories recover the ammonia and aqueous ammonia in wastewater and turn it into raw material that can be sold or reused, instead of paying to discharge it as garbage.

Cross-checked against their website and public sources, they position themselves as EPC consulting plus solution design. Core technologies include ammonia nitrogen electrolysis, rotating packed bed (RPB) deamination, and MVR distillation, aimed specifically at wastewater and waste gas problems involving ammonia and aqueous ammonia.

Customers and sites

They mentioned 8+ listed-company customers
Customers come from semiconductor, chemical, and electronics industries
What those customers share: heavy water use, complex wastewater composition, high regulatory pressure, and cost plus shutdown risk if it goes wrong

What gets recovered

The room and the website point the same direction. They move “waste” toward “resource”:

Ammonium nitrate
Regenerated liquid ammonia
PU board (resource recovery from waste PU)

Press coverage has also mentioned an ammonia recovery and liquid ammonia regeneration system, converting ammonia nitrogen wastewater into industrial-grade liquid ammonia at a claimed recovery rate above 95%.

There was one very memorable piece of commercial logic in the room: below 20% concentration, aqueous ammonia counts as waste and costs money to handle; above 20%, it can be sold as a resource. What EITH does is essentially concentrate and recover low-concentration wastewater across that line, turning a disposal cost into a sellable product. A threshold you can state in one sentence belongs on the main line of a pitch far more than a long chemical pathway.

Where does revenue come from? They laid out the structure concretely:

Item	Current state
Engineering consulting and design	About 90% of revenue (concentration units, EPC, consulting; the cash-flow backbone)
Resource reuse products	The main new growth engine (ammonium nitrate, PU board, and so on)
Product margin	They mentioned around 50%

In plain terms: today they eat by building concentration systems and doing engineering for plants; tomorrow they want to raise margin by turning recovered material into sellable products. The first revenue layer is EPC plus concentration equipment. The second is sales of resource products like ammonium nitrate and PU board.

Customers pay engineering fees so that in-plant wastewater goes from “can only be handled as waste” to “concentrated enough to be recovered or resold.” If EITH can also build out the downstream products, they are no longer just an engineering firm but a engineering-carries-product, product-lifts-margin model.

The part I could not follow, sorted out afterward

There was a long stretch of the deck I honestly did not get, with liquid ammonia, aqueous ammonia, ammonium sulfate, and adding sulfuric acid coming up over and over. After looking it up and cross-checking my notes, here is my attempt to string it together in plain language (corrections welcome if I have this wrong):

Term	What it means in plain language
Aqueous ammonia	Ammonia gas dissolved in water. Factory wastewater often contains a lot of “dilute ammonia” at low concentration.
Liquid ammonia	Liquid ammonia at higher concentration and purity, sellable as industrial or electronics process material. Think of it as the upgraded version of aqueous ammonia after concentration and purification.
Ammonium sulfate	What you get when ammonia meets sulfuric acid, a solid or solution form that can be recovered or sold.
Adding sulfuric acid	A common step in the process: add sulfuric acid to ammonia-bearing wastewater or waste gas to “catch” the ammonia as ammonium sulfate for recovery, instead of letting it escape.

Strung into a line, it looks roughly like this:

Ammonia-bearing wastewater (low concentration, below 20% = waste)
  → concentration unit (built by EITH, and their main revenue source)
  → aqueous ammonia (concentration raised; past 20% it has resource value)
  → from there, two roads:
       ├─ purification → liquid ammonia (sold as process material)
       └─ add sulfuric acid → ammonium sulfate (another recoverable product)

The parts about turning ammonium sulfate into aqueous ammonia, the Ministry of Environment program, and the sulfuric acid step all sit in the middle and back of this chain. For someone with a chemical engineering background this may be everyday language. For a non-expert like me, without drawing this simple diagram first, it is very easy to hear it as a swarm of flying terms.

This echoes what Howard said: a VC does not need the whole chemical pathway. They need to understand where in the chain you make money (the concentration unit) and why the customer has no choice but to pay (expensive to treat below 20%, sellable above). Details can go in backup. The main line only needs this much.

Academic collaboration

They mentioned active collaboration with many universities, and that the CDI-related technology with National Taiwan University has been commercialized. Public coverage has also mentioned collaboration with NTU and Fooyin, and a grant from the Ministry of Environment’s wastewater treatment technology innovation program. For an engineering-type startup, “commercialized” persuades far more than “published.”

Why this is a non-discretionary and growing market

They stressed two external forces:

Regulation keeps tightening: emission standards and environmental inspections keep getting stricter, and factories can no longer dilute their way out.
Water use has doubled: annual water consumption in high-tech industry nearly doubled from 2016 to 2024. The more water you use, the harder the demand for wastewater treatment and recovery becomes.

There is also a demand upgrade. Earlier, when plants looked for water treatment, the mindset was mostly as cheap as possible, just meet the standard and discharge. Now, beyond compliance, they also face ESG reporting, carbon reduction, and circular economy pressure.

From “treating waste” to “making a sellable product”: the clearest piece of commercial logic in the room

They mentioned that some plants approach EITH on their own, and not only to save disposal fees. The more fundamental reason:

If your wastewater or waste liquid is classified as waste, you have to contract out removal, file manifests, track its destination, and if something goes wrong it can be traced back to you;
If concentration and recovery turn it into a sellable product (aqueous ammonia, liquid ammonia, ammonium sulfate), its nature changes from “waste you pay to remove” to “a resource with value.”

This is the same story as the 20% threshold. Low enough concentration and you have waste. High enough concentration and adequate purification, and you have a shot at raw material. The concentration equipment EITH sells is essentially there to help customers cross that line.

How this ties to regulation (which I looked up afterward)

The claim in the room, that liability for contracted-out waste still traces back to the generator, points in the right direction. Under the Waste Disposal Act:

Article 30: an enterprise that contracts out waste clearance still bears joint clearance liability. If the contractor fails to handle it properly and you did not exercise due care (checking permits, signing contracts, filing flows, auditing), you may also bear joint environmental remediation liability.
Article 31: designated enterprises must also file waste flow reports online, and clearance vehicles must carry GPS tracking.
Article 52: poor filing or management can draw fines of NT$6,000 to 3 million (general industrial waste) or NT$60,000 to 10 million (hazardous industrial waste), with possible consecutive penalties.

In plain terms: hiring someone to clear your waste is not passing the buck. You still have to manage it, track it, and keep records. If the hauler dumps it illegally, the bill can still land on you.

So EITH’s value is not just “environmental bonus points”:

Traditional route	The EITH route
Ammonia-bearing wastewater = waste	After concentration = sellable aqueous ammonia, liquid ammonia, ammonium sulfate
Pay for outsourced clearance plus manifest tracking	Recover in-plant, reducing the volume entering the waste management process
Compliance cost plus joint liability risk	Resource recovery plus an ESG story plus a chance at byproduct revenue

That also explains why listed-company customers care: they want more than compliant discharge. They want a solution that is reportable, traceable, and can go into the sustainability report. Going from “cheapest thing that passes” to “cheap, low-carbon, and lowers waste liability” adds reasons to pay.

This is not an option you buy if you happen to care about the environment. It is a necessary cost pushed up by compliance cost plus water cost plus ESG pressure plus joint waste liability, all at once.

How they make money (four resource lines)

They described the business model as four categories of resource recovery:

Resource line	In plain language
Waste PU	Resource recovery from waste PU materials; recovered output such as PU board, around 50% margin per the room
Waste sulfuric acid	Recovering and reusing process waste acid, lowering raw material and hazardous waste costs
Ammonia energy	Recovery from ammonia nitrogen wastewater and waste gas into liquid ammonia or extended hydrogen energy; on the engineering side, the concentration unit
Waste nitrate	Recovery from nitrate-bearing waste; reusable outputs such as ammonium nitrate, around 50% margin per the room

For customers the value is usually double: spend less on wastewater treatment, and earn or save on raw material. For EITH, 90% engineering consulting and design holds the base while resource products (ammonium nitrate, PU board) are the higher-margin new revenue line worth scaling.

Company status (checked against public records)

Legal name: EITH Technology Co., Ltd.
Tax ID 42789850, founded 2018 (registration data also shows a 2017 founding record)
Representative: Tsai Tsung-yi
Capital: about NT$50 million (paid-in about NT$31.6 million)
Base: Toufen, Miaoli
Website: eith.com.tw
Academia: active collaboration with multiple universities; NTU CDI commercialized (per the room); public coverage also mentions NTU, Fooyin, and Ministry of Environment funding

The 8+ listed-company customers came from the room. Names can be added later if any become publicly citable.

The pitch lesson this session gave me: the VC may not know your field

My biggest takeaway from EITH was not the details of ammonia nitrogen electrolysis. It was how to explain something specialized to non-experts.

VCs are not necessarily experts in your field. Semiconductor wastewater, rotating packed bed deamination, MVR distillation: for many people in the room these are unfamiliar words. If the deck assumes everyone already knows, the audience drops off fast, and the business model later has nothing to land on.

I think an effective structure can be fixed at four segments, and the technology segment absolutely has to be in plain language:

Who we are
One sentence of positioning. For example: we are an engineering company that helps high-tech factories recover the ammonia in their wastewater into reusable raw material.
What pain point exists
In the customer’s language: regulation is tightening, water use has doubled, disposal fees are rising, production lines are at risk. Do not open with a pile of equipment names.
How you solve it (technology in plain words)
For example: we pull the ammonia out of wastewater, purify it, and turn it into liquid ammonia or raw material, instead of discharging it into the river. Details can go in backup, but the main line has to be followable by an outsider.
So how the money is made
The four resource lines (waste PU, waste sulfuric acid, ammonia energy, waste nitrate) are the answer to this question. Investors want to hear who pays, for what, and why they have to pay now.

Howard’s reminder in the room: less divergence, more numbers

During Q&A, NTUTEC’s Howard was blunt: do not go into too many divergent topics and leave the time for three core questions:

What is the product, exactly (what is deliverable, producible, and chargeable)
How much has been sold (revenue, orders, customer count, growth rate)
How much profit (gross margin, cash flow, payback per project)

This is the second half of the same logic as “LPs and VCs are not necessarily experts in your field.”
Plain language makes you followable, but the VC still has to decide whether to invest. However deep the technology is, if nobody knows how much you sell and how much you earn after listening, the next step is hard.
I noted Howard’s line as: numbers do not lie.

For founders, rather than spending ten minutes on five possible extended applications, spend five minutes making the main product, delivered amount, and margin structure clear. Divergent material can wait until someone asks.

Equity at 51:49? VCs prefer 7:3

Another cap-table reminder came up at A8: VCs rather dislike a founder split of 51:49, a near even divide, and adjusting to 7:3 is more appealing.

It is not that VCs want to exploit anyone. It is an investment and governance view:

51:49 looks fair, but decision rights are blurry. Major matters stall easily, and investors will ask “who actually decides?”
7:3 usually signals a clear lead founder, with strategy, fundraising, and external negotiation having a single subject. The other person is still a core co-founder, but the division of roles is cleaner

The real ratio should of course follow contribution, timing, technology, and capital, and cannot be cut mechanically. But if a team is still hovering near 51:49, the signal from A8 is: settling who leads early serves you better with VCs than claiming perfect equality.

VCs give more than capital: an introduction is also a product

Later in the same A8 session, during (4) AWAREK’s pitch, Howard mentioned he knows people at a fire protection company and could make an introduction. For a team working on thermal imaging and fire scenarios, that is far more concrete than a vague “we have lots of resources.”

When founders choose a VC, beyond valuation and terms, they are often also asking: who can connect me to the next customer, the next tender, the next industry window. Capital is the necessary condition. Introductions are often the differentiator.

My own reaction in the room: too much technology story diluted the signal the VC wanted

Honestly, by the second half of the EITH session my head started to lag. Not because the company is weak, but because the narrative kept diverging.

The deck kept extending: how ammonium sulfate becomes aqueous ammonia, which Ministry of Environment program they fit, more process detail and academic background. For people with an engineering background this may be great. But for many VCs in the room, this is not the core information for deciding whether to invest right now.

What a VC usually cares about:

What you mainly sell today
How much you have already sold (revenue, orders, customer count)
Whether you make money (margin, cash flow, payback period)

The Ministry program and the chemistry of ammonium sulfate to aqueous ammonia can prove technical depth, but on the main line of a pitch they make people remember “lots of technology” rather than “the business is already running.” That is why Howard warned against divergence. Not that this content is unimportant, but that order and weighting have to be right: first let a non-expert understand what you sell and how much of it, then open the technical details and policy resources in Q&A or backup. That matches the VC’s decision rhythm better.

Old advice, but still common in the room

These echo the NTUTEC notes, and got reinforced again here:

1. If you are not covering it now, do not promise “I will get to that later”

If a section is not in the time box for this pitch, do not say “I will talk about this later.”
The audience remembers the promise, and if you never get to it, trust drops instead. Either say it now, or leave it for Q&A.

2. Filler sounds need conscious reduction

Too many of them and fluency drops visibly.
It sounds like nerves, like waiting for a reaction, like not having decided the next sentence. Better half a second of silence than filling the sentence with noise.

3. Silence does not mean you should speed up

When the room is quiet, some people talk faster and faster, trying to finish.
You should actually loosen and slow down: pause, let one key point land, then move on. With a steady rhythm, non-experts can keep up.

What this one left me with

The market is non-discretionary: regulation plus water volume, both pushing. Not an optional extra.
Customer tier is persuasive: 8+ listed-company customers, if accurate, means they have cleared the large-customer threshold.
The model is clear: about 90% of revenue from engineering consulting and design, with new growth from resource products (ammonium nitrate, PU board, around 50% margin). Engineering carries product, product lifts margin, and that structure holds up.
Academia has landed: multiple university collaborations, NTU CDI commercialized, not technology on paper.
The pitch still has room: these numbers are hard enough, but the main line in the room leaned toward technical divergence. Opening with “90% engineering, 50% product margin, 8+ listed customers” would fit the rhythm Howard was asking for far better.

Taoyuan A8 deal notes (four companies)

(1) Ruomei Technology: AI cooling burns cash, so start from radiation on the materials side
(2) EITH: turning wastewater into resources, and making a pitch non-experts can follow
(3) Chenlu Technology: AI dual-lens endoscope, SaMD first, then single-use scopes
(4) AWAREK: sensor fusion thermal imaging, partnering with tender-bidding SIs