David and Annie Lu, siblings and co-founders of H20k Innovations
Photo courtesy of David and Annie Lu
Annie Lu she was a student at Harvard when Covid-19 brought the world to a halt, including her own college experience.
“I remember in March 2020 I used to be kicked off campus and every thing went virtual,” Lu, 22, told CNBC in a video interview in June. At the tip of the spring term of 2020, in Lu’s second yr, she didn’t return to highschool.
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She hasn’t looked back since then.
That is because Lu and her older brother David25 years, since then they founded and are currently developing their very own company, H2Ok Innovationwhich uses a mixture of hardware and software to enhance the efficiency of factories by reducing the quantity of liquid they use.
“I can not say what it might have been, but I can say it was such a simple decision for me and it was so obvious,” Annie told CNBC. “The compromise was practically nothing.”
Leaving Harvard and obsessing over improving factory efficiency along with his big brother might appear to be a surprising move.
Nevertheless, there may be a deep family bond: Annie and David’s paternal grandfather founded a specialty effective chemicals factory in China, and their dad worked within the family’s chemical manufacturing business. Similar to Annie and David’s uncles. And so they were pleased with it. “As with all family business, everyone seems to be involved within the family business,” Annie told CNBC.
David was born in Saskatoon, Canada and moved to the Bay Area on the age of 1, where Annie was born. Their parents are immigrants from China.
Annie Lu visits her family’s factory in China when she was younger.
Photo courtesy of Annie Lu
When Annie and David were young, their grandfather, who was very obsessed with chemistry, taught them chemical reactions and how various industrial devices worked. Also as children, Annie and David visited the family’s factories and learned about parts of the chemical factories, reminiscent of the distillation towers. The thought of ”lean manufacturing” was also a subject of conversation within the family.
“I remember how in primary and middle school I spent my holidays visiting factories and having contact with large industrial devices, understanding how they work. We grew up on this sector,” Annie told CNBC. “I’d say that is where our inspiration got here from.”
For the reason that official launch of their sister company in March 2021, H20k Innovation raised $6.8 million from investors, including Construct capital, Flybridge capital, Tech stars, 1517 Fund AND 2048 projects. The corporate’s headquarters is situated in Greentown Laboratories in Boston and records revenue. Annie and David were credited for 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 and in March, H20k Innovations was recognized on the annual Unilever Supplier Summit and received an award Startup of the 12 months Award.
Annie and David Lu at a Harvard Innovation Labs event while they were still inventing.
Photo courtesy of Annie and David Lu
The 2 founded the corporate at a time when Covid-19 disrupted supply chains world wide, emphasizing the importance of producing.
“The pandemic exposing gaps in manufacturing and industry … was the inspiration” for the launch of the H20k, Annie said. “It was an awesome opportunity.”
From Techstars in Minnesota to starting a store in Boston
In the autumn of 2020, Annie and David moved to Minneapolis for Techstars From field to fork program that adopted them on the idea of previous projects.
“Annie and I really like hacking and constructing together,” David told CNBC. “We work rather well together. There are such a lot of projects we built during our upbringing after we were growing up.”
Annie and David Lu on the farm to create the TechStars accelerator.
Photo courtesy of Annie and David Lu
They got here to Techstars with the thought of developing a low-cost technology to discover contaminants in natural waterways and drinking water. But as a part of this system, Annie and David accessed 120 executive leaders in various areas of food technology and asked those executives what their biggest headaches were.
Ultimately, they decided to concentrate on improving the efficiency of liquid use of their production processes.
“Fluids and fluids are at the guts of the manufacturing process in so many various sectors,” said Annie, including food, pharmaceutical, semiconductor manufacturing, and cooling of economic buildings and factories. “It’s such a giant white space and an area where there are loads of gaps.”
At the tip of Techstars, Annie and David had a set vision for H2Ok Innovations and began to make it occur.
They got here up with the thought of using a mixture of physical sensors and software to measure and optimize each the use and composition of fluids and fluids in production. Their process involves collecting this data and using their software to mix fluid data with other factory and facility data into what Annie calls a “very, very versatile” IoT system.
Conventionally, the information collected on the factory stays in place. “We’re essentially unlocking previously untapped streams of information,” Annie said.
Improving the efficient use of fluids in manufacturing processes reduces waste and product loss, which suggests factories are also operating more sustainably.
In 2021, David joined Annie in Boston, working in an area called A craftsman’s asylum for about six months and then moved to Greentown Laboratories.
Annie and David Lu with members of the H2Ok Innovations team at Unilever’s Ben and Jerry’s facility.
Photo courtesy of Annie and David Lu
In fall 2021 and early 2022, Annie and David attended Accelerator 100+ program, a virtual acceleration program run by Unilever in partnership with AB InBev, Coca Cola Co. and Colgate-Palmolive.
“The aim of the Accelerator 100+ program is to quickly drive the event of startups developing sustainable solutions, including reducing energy consumption in supply chains. Through partnerships, we work directly with entrepreneurs to refine and test their recent technologies inside our businesses to place their solutions on an accelerated path to positively impact our sustainability goals.” Sandeep DesaiUnilever’s ice cream delivery director told CNBC in a written statement.
“These startups are working in lots of fields, including recent packaging technologies, digital and geospatial solutions, and recent ways to recycle product ingredients that will otherwise be considered waste,” said Desai.
As a part of this partnership, Unilever tested the H2Ok Innovations solution at Ben & Jerry’s facility in Waterbury, Vermont.
“At our Waterbury Ice Cream Sourcing Unit, our partnership has resulted in an 18% reduction in downtime during cleansing, which increases productivity and lowers costs in the provision chain. By utilizing this technology, we also saved 40% of the water consumption within the cleansing cycle,” said Desai. Unilever is working to implement the H2Ok solution at other non-ice cream plants within the US and Brazil, Desai said.
Within the spring of 2021, the siblings raised the primary round of funding and increased it in the summertime of 2022. H2Ok Innovations currently employs a complete of 17 employees.
For investors, the H2Ok value proposition is particularly timely as more production returns to the US and these facilities must meet increasingly stringent efficiency standards.
“The US is rising again as a producing powerhouse, and industrial firms are seeing a compression of the traditional technology lifecycle adoption curve and a push to be each progressive and more efficient given a long time of intense global competition,” Flybridge Capital’s Jeff Bussgang told CNBC. “U.S. manufacturers have a powerful climate and sustainability mandate, which forces them to be much more precise of their use of fluids and energy.”
As well as, some investors see the inevitability of the sensor technology that H2Ok Innovations uses.
“We found H2Ok’s vision of replacing monolith-based water measurement with a swarm of sensors to be very compelling. Our thesis is that each one measurements and data will likely be delivered in real time and used to optimize the operation of power plants, data centers, etc.”, Alex Iskold of 2048 projects he told CNBC. “That is what H2Ok builds.”
Annie and the H2Ok Innovations team at a customer’s facility point to their technology implemented on the factory.
Photo courtesy of Annie Lu
The bond between siblings is deep
All of the investors who spoke to CNBC said how impressed they were with Annie and David, which is to be expected from investors who’re in love with their portfolio firms, but nevertheless the enthusiastic praise was noteworthy and reflected the siblings’ belief in constructing an area where their family has worked for generations.
“They’re exceptionally smart, visionary and brave – the sort of founders whose investors dream of backing,” Iskold told CNBC.
“We invested because they’re amazing founders. Annie and David are relentless and incredibly smart, and that is the culture they’ve built at H2Ok. They’re the suitable and rare mixture of customer and problem oriented, and have done well to construct a reliable technical solution that meets customer needs,” Dayna Grayson of Construct Capital told CNBC.
“The founders are sensible technologists and visionaries,” Bussgang of Flybridge Capital told CNBC.
Being siblings brings a certain level of innate trust, which is helpful to each Annie and David, who’ve been close to one another and the remaining of the family throughout their lives.
The H2Ok Innovations team at Greentown Labs in Boston, where they’re currently based.
Photo courtesy of David and Annie Lu.
This trust is priceless as running a business with employees, partners and customers could be stressful.
“There are difficult conversations that have to be had,” Annie said. “We will have these difficult conversations in a really, very comfortable way, holding one another accountable and pushing to be higher.”
“We all know methods to fight, we all know methods to have difficult conversations. We have been fighting all our lives,” said David.
Each Annie and David giggled on the thought. They said it was a joke, but in addition serious. Getting through difficult conversations is “crucial to the success of the business,” said David.
Their free skill set can also be an awesome boon.
Annie is creative and “especially out of the box,” said David. And David is great at spotting patterns across disciplines and implementing technical solutions, Annie said.
In addition they share a philosophy of interacting with people. They recognize that they’re young and that listening to others is significant.
“I believe this aspect of authenticity and going into every conversation with customers, users, mentors and more with deep humility and empathy is central to who we’re as a team and especially who we’re as founders,” said Annie.
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