The ocean is Earth's battery. An El Niño is coming to discharge it. Rainmaker is one of the few teams on Earth with the hard-tech to answer.
I'm David T Phung. I want to be Augustus's right hand in the years that decide whether we feed the next generation.
David Friedberg laid out the math on All-In. The numbers aren't speculation, they're thermodynamics. What follows is the case for why Rainmaker is one of the most important companies of this decade.
"There are approximately 11 million terawatt-hours of excess thermal energy stored in the ocean. That is roughly 500 years of total human energy consumption, already absorbed, just sitting there, waiting for the right El Niño cycle to dump it back into the atmosphere."
"When that energy comes out, you get record atmospheric heat, crop failures across Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, and the highest-probability tail risk is a monsoon failure in India. That's 1.5 billion people whose calorie supply depends on one rainy season. A meaningful monsoon failure is, candidly, one of the most under-priced catastrophic risks on the planet right now."
No single technology saves us. The wedge that wins is the stack: atmospheric water augmentation, ocean-to-freshwater conversion, and ocean-thermal power, operating as one civil infrastructure layer.
The stack creates a closed water-energy loop: the same ocean that threatens monsoon failure becomes the engine of food and freshwater abundance. Rainmaker is the precipitation layer. The part nobody else is building.
Four lines in the posting. Here is the résumé evidence behind each one, so you don't have to take it on faith.
"Travel to far away lands, prep and shadow me in smoky-room negotiations."
Negotiated $1.1M in contracts and prepped rooms across city, county, and federal tables. Evaluated $340K in change orders and defended $155K in rejections with documented justification. Resume says it plainly: ability to travel.
"Manage my schedule and run extremely inconvenient errands to the DMV."
Founding-team operator: I built a food-production facility from the ground up, ran the ops handoff, and did whatever the day required. No errand beneath me, no detail below the line. The DMV doesn't scare a man who's pulled permits through three agencies in one cycle.
"Intimately see how Rainmaker built the team and tech to terraform Earth."
My whole career is building the physical world, architecture, infrastructure, civic, F&B. I don't want to watch you terraform Earth from a desk. I want to carry the bags, hold the calendar, and learn the company from the inside out. That's the point.
"Must be maniacally focused, tactful."
Maniacal: an RFI triage system at 1.8-day average turnaround vs. 7–14 days industry. Tactful: zero litigation across $25M+ of concurrent projects, 95% on-time, and a change-order rate of 3% vs. 8–12%. Focus and tact aren't adjectives for me. They're the track record.
The EA who thrives at Rainmaker has to move between rooms most people never enter. I've spent eight years training in all four, $125M+ delivered across luxury retail, civic, F&B, and government.
Drafting policy briefs, walking permits through agencies, building reviewer relationships. Cloud seeding lives or dies on public trust and clean legislation.
Federal + state permitting playbooks for UAS cloud seeding. Agency relationships that compound. State legislative engagement.
Multi-site project execution. Vendor management, supply chain, QA, field commissioning. Keeping CEOs out of meetings that don't need them.
Field deployment cadence, permits, vendors, hardware, crews. Weekly business review, monthly board pack, quarterly investor updates.
B.Arch, Woodbury University (Minor, Urban Studies). Studio-trained, then twelve+ years in the field: mission-critical facilities, luxury retail, civic, and F&B. I speak code, zoning, structural, and inspector.
Hangar, radar station, control room, and field-ops facility design + buildout. Site selection grounded in real construction constraints.
Property acquisition, zoning strategy, water rights, easements. Where cloud seeding actually happens, on land Rainmaker has to lease, partner, or own across.
Watershed access, drone-base land control, partnership structures with ranchers and water districts, federal land permitting.
Cross-functional operator with 8+ years in construction delivery, product ownership, and portfolio coordination. Managed portfolios exceeding $125M in luxury retail tenant improvements, civic projects, and food-and-beverage facilities, consistently on schedule. Led a ten-engineer release train for a platform serving one million users across the US, Canada, and the UK. Oversaw a California portfolio across seven regions and 40+ stakeholders.
Bachelor of Architecture, Minor in Urban Studies
Woodbury University
Bluebeam Revu · MS Project · Procore · AutoCAD · PlanGrid · GIS · Google Earth · Jira/Confluence · Google Suite · Excel
Augustus —
I read your post. Travel to far-away lands, prep and shadow you in smoky-room negotiations, manage the schedule, run the inconvenient errands, and see up close how Rainmaker built the team and the tech to terraform Earth. Most people read that and see the errands. I read it and see the education of a lifetime, sitting next to the person reclaiming a technology America invented and using it to end droughts. I want that seat.
I am applying to be your Executive Assistant, reporting directly to you. Not because the title fits my résumé, but because the work fits how I'm wired. I've spent eight years as the person who carries the load quietly: $125M+ delivered, 40+ stakeholders held together, zero litigation. I am at my best one step behind a serious operator, anticipating the next move, defending the calendar, and making sure nothing touches you that I could have handled first.
Here is what I will do, specifically, in the first ninety days:
I am studio-trained (B.Arch, Woodbury University), construction-hardened, and startup-scaled. I have built a production facility from the ground up, negotiated $1.1M in contracts, pulled permits through three agencies in a single cycle, and coordinated 40+ executive summits across California. I hold rooms with tact and I move with maniacal focus, because that's exactly what you asked for.
If there is a chance to talk, I will arrive prepared: with a 30-60-90 plan tailored to your top three priorities, a list of five things I would take off your plate in week one, and the humility to start with the smallest of them.
Steward the waters. Have dominion over the land. Let's get to work.
With respect and conviction,
davidtphung@nlt143.energy