What a Former Water Startup Founder Learned... and Why He's Coming Back to Buy
Most people who survive the grind of building an early-stage water tech company walk away with scars — and a healthy urge to do something, anything, else.
Jamail Carter is not most people.
Jamail co-founded Varuna, a real-time water chemistry intelligence platform that placed hardware directly into distribution systems. He ran it, grew it, served utilities across the country, and eventually wound it down about a year and a half ago. Then he did something I don't hear often: he decided to go back.
Not as a founder this time. As an acquirer.
His company, Curo Ventures — curo meaning "to care for" — is searching for a water industry business to buy and operate long-term. Not flip. Not optimize for exit. Run.
I sat down with Jamail recently for Below the Surface, and I came away with a few things I keep thinking about. Here's what stood out.
"Caring for" is a strategy, not just a name
When Jamail explained the Curo name, he wasn't being sentimental. He was being deliberate.
He's not PE. He's an operator and former entrepreneur who watched PE from the other side of the table and understood the difference in incentives. His signal to potential sellers — especially founders who built something from scratch and care what happens to it next — is intentional. He wants to work with owners who share his values around employees, customers, and long-term thinking.
That framing matters to me, especially in an industry full of multi-generational family businesses. The companies in my world didn't get built by people chasing multiples. They got built by people who believed in what they were doing. Finding a buyer who speaks that language changes the whole conversation.
The service layer is where the real opportunity sits
We talked about the consolidation wave sweeping the industry — IOUs snapping up municipal operators, major players merging, infrastructure funds circling. Jamail's take was the most grounded one I've heard on the topic.
His thesis: when consolidation happens at the holdco level, it creates demand at the service layer below it.
The American Waters and Essentials-type deals need someone to actually do the O&M, run the sampling routes, maintain the SCADA systems. They need service companies with real depth and real teams. And those companies — 20 to 30 employees, field services, SCADA integration, O&M — are exactly what he's looking for.
"Build or acquire a really solid company, run it well, take care of your people, and you'll have options no matter what."
There's no buzzword there. That's just the playbook.
Value is in the mind of the customer — not yours
This is the part of the conversation I'd hand to every water tech startup founder I know.
Jamail told a story about the classic pitch mistake: walking into a municipal utility and leading with how your technology can take a 10-person job down to one person. Sounds like a value prop. Except most government utilities aren't in the business of cutting staff — and you just made the room uncomfortable.
The actual value? You free those people up to do higher-yield work. The outcome might be the same, but the framing changes everything.
"Value is determined by the end customer. Not you."
I've seen this pattern over and over in the water industry. Engineering founders build something genuinely impressive, then describe it the way they'd want to hear it described — in technical terms, focused on what it does rather than what it means to the person writing the check. That gap between what a product does and why someone buys it is exactly where marketing lives.
It's a ten-year journey. Plan like it is.
Jamail's co-founder used to tell him this from the beginning. Jamail admitted he didn't believe it at first.
He believes it now.
The advice he'd give to early-stage founders today: be flexible on how your solution gets deployed, make sure the value you think you're delivering actually maps to what your customer cares about, and — critically — make sure your capital partners have a time horizon that matches yours.
"There's been a lot of talk about the misalignment between VC and this industry. I'd agree with that. But it can be overcome. You just need to understand time horizons and be aligned."
This is also just good marketing advice in disguise. If you're building a pipeline expecting 90-day returns, you're going to get frustrated and start making reactive decisions — changing your message, chasing the wrong accounts, hiring before you have a strategy. The water industry doesn't reward urgency. It rewards consistency.
Water is local. Build accordingly.
One of Jamail's hot takes: people outside the industry see water as a massive, scalable monolith. They imagine nationally-scaled platforms, unified infrastructure plays, the whole vision.
His counterpoint is simple: water is inherently local.
Every utility is different. Regulations, relationships, budgets, geography, treatment needs — all of it varies. The investors and founders who fail to internalize that tend to build strategies that don't survive contact with the actual market.
"Think about regional platforms. But looking at the entire water space as a monolith is a recipe for value destruction."
I'd add: it's also a marketing mistake. If your messaging is written for every utility everywhere, it usually resonates with none of them. The more specific you can get about who you serve and what they actually need, the more your message lands.
Listen to the full episode
Jamail and I go deep on the M&A landscape, what it's like to approach acquisition as an operator rather than a financial buyer, and the real reason so many water startups struggle to get early customers.
If you're a founder in this space, an operator thinking about an exit, or someone who just wants a clear-eyed perspective on where the industry is headed — it's worth your time.
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