The frenzy around data centers has many companies looking to become “picks and shovels” providers, building profitable businesses that are ancillary to the gold gigs that sell server access or train leading artificial intelligence models.
MayimFlow, winner of the Built World stage at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt, is a good example. The startup essentially focuses on one task: preventing damaging water leaks.
Data centers use a lot of water, and this water can be a big hazard, even if the leak is small. Founder John Khazraee told TechCrunch that many data centers only have reactive solutions for water leaks. This can cause disruption to companies and set them back millions of dollars if that happens.
Khazraee would know. He spent more than 15 years building infrastructure for IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. With MayimFlow, it has developed a combination of IoT sensors and machine learning models deployed at the edge that can detect signs of impending leaks.
“I’ve seen these issues in data centers and the only solution they had was, ‘when the leak happens, we find out,'” he said in an interview. “Now you have to spend a lot of money to fix the situation. Now you have to shut down the servers. Now the data is being disrupted. So I decided to do something about it.”
Khazraee assembled a small team with enough experience to meet this challenge. Jim Wong, chief strategist at MayimFlow, has spent decades working with data centers. Chief Technology Officer Ray Lok has carved out a career in water management and IoT infrastructure.
Beyond the more terrifying consequences of unnoticed water leaks, there’s an element of frugality to what Khazraee is trying to do with MayimFlow, which he said stems from his childhood.
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“I grew up in a very, you know, I don’t want to say the word ‘poor’ family, but we weren’t the wealthiest family,” he said. “And my dad would always, when I showered, say, ‘Hey, you’ve been in the shower too long. Do you sing in there?”
Growing up, Khazraee said he found himself always thinking about how to do things more efficiently — especially as he studied to become an engineer. In college, he worked at a facility that collected frying oil from restaurants and turned it into biodiesel. It was a “messy job,” he said, but he liked the end result.
Khazraee is now trying to blend this penchant for frugality with his team’s experience. He believes they can give data center operators 24 to 48 hours of advanced warning that repairs will be needed.
MayimFlow has collected a wealth of sample data from various industrial water systems that allow them to make these kinds of predictions, he said. The company can provide sensors that can help monitor a water system, or plug machine learning models into existing ones if companies already have similar hardware.
Khazraee said he wants to bring this solution beyond data centers to commercial buildings, hospitals, manufacturing facilities and potentially even utilities. In his eyes, any company that wants to detect leaks early or optimize water use could be a customer.
Khazraee believes it’s such a big opportunity that he turned down roles at several big tech companies while building MayimFlow over the past two years.
“I really believe in the vision. I believe in the impact we’re having,” he said. “Water is becoming one of those big issues in our world.”
