WBL Internship: Geyser Systems

Interview Q&A 

Q1: What’s your name 

A1: Jonathan Ballasteros 

Q2: Where do you live 

A2: In montrose on oak grove road 

Q3: Where is a place you would like to travel 

A3: I would always like to travel anywhere on a sailboat 

Q4: Where’s your favorite place 

A4: Wherever my wife and i are hanging out 

Q5: Did you go to college 

A5: I did i did 

Q6: What are the positives and negatives of college 

A6: The positives is that it gave me opportunities and has opened doors for me to pursue opportunities that most people don’t get an opportunity to do. So if it wasn’t for lets say an engineering degree i would not have had the opportunity to do crazy things with my life like run a portion of a Dell computers factory or you know something really strange happens when somebody says oh this is the engineer for the company and then all of a sudden a surgeon is interacting with me as if like i know everything and he really can’t wait to nerd out with me even though i know very little. But it's just always that distinction in title has always allowed me to open doors and allowed me access and in things that not a lot of people at that age and time in my life I don't think a lot of people would have been able to do i’ve been able to afford really cool and shiny objects because of the salary that it came with. But the masters degree i don’t think i really benefited from any of it and there was the increased cost. 

Q7: What do you like most about your job 

A7: Oh gosh I love the people that work here and I love the people aspect of my job and I love the wide variety of situations that we as a team have to overcome. They’re pretty complex problems and those problems they make for a really exciting day and a stressful day but it always turns into like a heroic journey and story and I think if you look at the kind of experiences that i get to have in a startup you can’t have these experiences anywhere else. Oh yeah and this is my house so i get to make the rules. 

Q8: What are the negatives of your job 

A8: It’s stressful like i don’t know if we’re getting paid next week, next month. There's just so many surprises. It’s so up and down and like the mountain of activity can cause you to not sleep at night. The lack of activity can cause you to not sleep at night. I wake up at like 4:00 in the morning. I can’t shut off my brain. I won’t be able to shut it off until 10PM normally 11. It’s a lifestyle this is not a joke, this is not for the weak. It’s a total complete lifestyle like it’ll consume parts of you and that’s really the hard part is to put boundaries against this lifestyle because it has an impact on things like your health. Like i skipped my workout today you know like over time my health has degraded because like i’ve not been keeping up with taking care of my body. I also don’t know if im going to be able to put food on my table 

Q9: What idea popped into your head to make you start this company

A9: I was living in the back of a van in Australia and I was always running out of water and I always had to use my water for drinking, cooking food, and then cleaning my dishes. But when it came to taking a shower there was never enough water and i smelt like a burning dumpster all the time and it was a really big problem when my friend set me up on a blind date and i had no water to get ready for this date and i smelt horrible and i felt horrible and it was just gross. So that’s when I was like there’s gotta be a better way to make the most of every drop of water. That’s when i was like oh this is pretty cool so that’s where the company started. 8 years ago shit it’s been a long time. 

Q10: Any questions you have for me 

A10: Are you going to engineering school? I am going to go to school for engineering. I'm just trying to decide between CSU or Utah State. Did you feel like you got what you were looking for by doing your internship here? I feel like I did. I feel like I got a glimpse into what it’s like to actually design a product and actually see it go out into the real world where people can buy it and like what goes into a product. What would you say would be the thing that you learned the most about? The amount of time and effort that goes into something so small and the amount of conversations and even when somethings gone out to the public you still need to have multiple different conversations on like when you want to change it and there's a lot that goes into a product even one that’s as small as i designed. 

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