Advisory Board Members - Sorbent Materials, IP Licensing, Data Center Cooling

About SkySpigot

SkySpigot is a deep-tech IP licensing company based in Durango, Colorado. We’re building a sorption-based architecture that does two things. It makes heat go where it’s told, so data centers and other heat-intensive facilities can be cooled without water. And it makes water show up where it’s wanted, pulled from the air with no pipe, no plant and no truck. Fourteen patent applications are on file. Everything so far is analytical work at technology readiness level 3 - no hardware has been built yet, and the prototype that proves it is the next step.

• We don’t manufacture. We license the technology to companies that build and operate, so the company rests on two things: a prototype that works and a licensing business that runs. The advisory board exists to make both more likely, and every seat on it has a job.
• About the people. SkySpigot was founded in 2024 by Mark Molinaro, who came out of retirement to start it after a mid-eight-figure exit from his last company. You’d join twelve advisors, among them four PhDs, thirty years of R&D leadership, the president of three specialty chemicals companies, a Fortune 500 associate general counsel, a founder who raised $140 million and scaled his company to $40 million in revenue, and a former senior US intelligence official. Senior people join boards where other senior people already sit, and this is one.

A word on how we work. SkySpigot operates on what I call a centaur model. I am founder and sole human decision-maker; technical execution runs through me in partnership with AI agents. Advisors are the human judgment we add where it’s required, which is why we’re careful about who sits in these seats.

• We’re adding three seats. Each one below has a first-ninety-day assignment and three questions. Read all three, pick the one that’s yours, and apply for that one.
• Seat 1: Sorbent Materials
• The seat. The working material at the center of our architecture is a sorbent. Selecting it, modifying it, forming it into the structure the system needs and getting all of that made at volume is the largest single technical risk in the prototype, and we want someone in the room who has done that work for a living, not just specified a material from a catalog.
• Your first ninety days. Review how we’re selecting and qualifying the working material for the prototype and tell us where the program will go wrong before we’ve spent the money. The specifics of the material and the process come under NDA once you’re in the seat.
• What we’re looking for. Ten or more years developing, characterizing or manufacturing porous adsorbent materials at a materials producer or in an industrial R&D group, including taking at least one material from the lab to production volume. That includes post-synthesis modification and forming the material into engineered structures rather than loose beads or powder, and knowing where each of those steps degrades what you started with. Hands-on familiarity with the failure modes that decide whether a sorption system runs for years or for months: capacity loss over thousands of cycles, contamination, attrition and the gap between a datasheet and a working bed. Experience qualifying suppliers.
• Your three questions. (1) Describe a material selection or qualification program you ran. What did you get wrong early, and how did you find out? (2) How would you go about qualifying a working material for a system that has to run for years without degrading, and where do programs like that usually fail? (3) Where do you work now, and where have you worked, invested or consulted in the last five years that touches adsorbents, cooling or water? We ask up front because we’ll share things under NDA that you can’t unlearn, and we’d rather both of us know where the lines are before that happens.
• Seat 2: Licensing
• The seat. We’re a licensing company before we’re anything else. Our model is paid-up, bounded licenses - defined by field of use, territory, capacity and term - rather than per-unit royalties. Reviewing a license and transferring technology out of a lab are both real skills, and neither is the job this seat does. We want someone who has run out-licensing as the business itself: built the program, negotiated the grants and lived with them afterward.

• Your first ninety days. Pressure-test how we’ve structured our licenses before the first one is negotiated: where the boundaries will be contested, where two grants could cannibalize each other, what a licensee’s counsel will attack first, and what we’ve left out.
• What we’re looking for. You’ve run an out-licensing program at a technology, process or materials company: structured the grants, negotiated with licensees, and administered the portfolio afterward, including the audits and the disputes. You’ve qualified and enabled manufacturers or OEMs to build under license and know what they need from a licensor to succeed. You’ve sat on the licensee’s side of the table at least once. Experience with paid-up or field-limited structures counts for more than experience with running royalties.
• Your three questions. (1) Describe a license where the field-of-use, territory or capacity boundary made or broke the deal. What would you do differently now? (2) You’re advising a company whose model is paid-up, bounded grants rather than running royalties. What’s the first thing you’d want to see, and what’s the failure you’d be watching for? (3) Where do you work now, and where have you worked, invested or consulted in the last five years that touches licensing, cooling or water? We ask up front because we’ll share things under NDA that you can’t unlearn, and we’d rather both of us know where the lines are before that happens.
• Seat 3: Data Center Infrastructure
• The seat. Our first market is data center cooling. Whether a licensee is an operator adopting the technology in its own facilities or a manufacturer selling to one, the same decision gets made inside the data center, and we want someone who has sat on the buyer’s side of it and knows what it takes to get a new cooling approach from a first conversation to a signed commitment.
• Your first ninety days. Show us how a hyperscaler or colocation operator actually decides to adopt a new cooling approach - who signs, what they need to see, how long it takes, and who can kill it - and tell us where our assumptions are wrong.
• What we’re looking for. You’ve owned or approved thermal or cooling infrastructure decisions at a hyperscaler, a colocation operator or a large enterprise data center, in a facilities, mechanical engineering or critical environments leadership role. You’ve taken a new cooling technology from evaluation through to deployment, or killed one and can say why. You know the vendors, the consulting engineers and the procurement path, and you know what a first-of-its-kind deployment has to look like for an operator to say yes.
• Your three questions. (1) Walk me through the last decision you were part of to buy or approve cooling infrastructure. Who signed, and what did they need to see? (2) A vendor shows up with a cooling approach that uses no water, and no hardware has been built yet. What would it take for you to say yes to a first installation, and what would kill it? (3) Where do you work now, and where have you worked, invested or consulted in the last five years that touches data center infrastructure, cooling or water? We ask up front because we’ll share things under NDA that you can’t unlearn, and we’d rather both of us know where the lines are before that happens.
• Time commitment and expectations

• A weekly status call of about an hour, a quarterly advisory board meeting, the first-ninety-day assignment described above, and being reachable between them. The first ninety days are the heavy part; after the assignment is delivered the cadence settles to the calls and the meetings. Attendance is expected, not hoped for. The role is remote, and you must be located in the United States. This is an advisory board seat, not an employment or consulting engagement.
• What you get

A seat at the table before the prototype exists, direct access to the founder and to the decisions rather than a summary of them afterward, and the terms of the seat, which we discuss in the second conversation.

How to apply

Email your resume and your answers to the three questions for your seat to [email protected], with the seat name in the subject line. Applications that arrive without the answers aren’t considered. Please answer from your own experience and judgment without disclosing confidential information of any current or former employer.