1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sonali Vijayavargiya of Augment Ventures (Part 3)

Sonali Vijayavargiya: Another example that I would share with you is a company called Flume. It’s in the water space. This came out of Cal Poly. This was brought to our attention by one of our champions and co-investors from the Bay Area. It’s a very elegant solution for leak detection and water management.

I’m sure a lot of people have spent time trying to understand water and how we are not fully valuing the cost of water. I tried to play in that space for a long time but hadn’t found the right solution to get behind.

This is a great product that has not only met direct consumer needs but also met the needs of more than 50,000 water utilities. There’s a simple device that’s strapped on the water meter. The data is monetized both on the consumer side as well as on the water utility side.

The draw to that was it’s a billion-dollar opportunity that can easily be transported all over the world. The team was really passionate and driven. It was a young team, but they understood how to develop experience and talent. That gave us a lot of confidence with them.

The third thing was, it has multiple layers of monetization whether it be for utility, insurance, or home detection. It has a massive market. That got us excited. 

Sramana Mitra: You mentioned something about getting a partial exit. A lot of small funds are doing that. They are exiting into later rounds. Is that something you are doing on a regular basis? Is that part of your thesis?

Sonali Vijayavargiya: We got a 15x return on our investment in Llamasoft. Funds have their cycles and keeping all of those things in mind, we thought, “As Llamasoft continues to grow, we would definitely like to take the benefit of the upside, but maybe this is a good time to take some capital off and give it back to our investors.” That changes based on the lifecycle of the fund. 

Sramana Mitra: Talk about the Michigan ecosystem a little bit. What’s happening? What are you seeing? What has been the trajectory in the last decade?

Sonali Vijayavargiya: It’s been a really interesting transformation. I moved from Mumbai in 2001 to Ann Arbor. It was an interesting time for me. I really enjoyed working with startups back in India. I went around looking. I had to go to some far off off-campus place to find the tech transfer.

Fast forward now, tech transfer at University of Michigan and MSU have done a tremendous job of commercializing their technology. There’s this awareness that we can drive value and impact outcomes by commercializing their technologies.

All facets have been greatly impacted. There have been a couple of unicorns in the area. These entrepreneurs have stayed in the region and have reinvested into new startups. 

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Sonali Vijayavargiya of Augment Ventures
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