The H2O Story

It all began with respect for water. Juan Carlos Bocos Sr., an award-winning civil engineer, emigrated from Cuba in 1996 to pursue the American dream. He invented a solution that could save children’s lives by using sensors to activate a platform in the pool that would rise automatically if an unattended child entered the pool area. Although it was an award-winning prototype, Juan Carlos was not able to raise sufficient capital to pursue that dream. But behind every failure there is a seed of inspiration for success if you are a true entrepreneur.

One day when he was filling up a boiler with water, Juan Carlos realized there was a substantial amount of air in the municipal supply. And that observation inspired him to develop the first version of a valve that would compress air as it goes through the water meter. In 2010, when his son Juan Carlos Bocos Vilar Jr. graduated from college with a degree in civil engineering and came to America, they teamed up to pursue a new dream. They quickly realized they could create a valve to allow anyone to reduce their water bill as well as their water volume usage. Together they worked on an improved version of the valve and named it the WAVE Water Valve. Over three years they perfected the valve and received a patent in 2015.

Their next goal was to distribute the valve and gain market acceptance. They had over 1300 successful installations. And, like any startup that comes to a point of growth inflection, they realized that in order to scale on a global basis they had to team up with an experienced management team.

They approached, Damir Perge, an immigrant from Yugoslavia, who cofounded a business accelerator called Entrepreneurdex in Dallas. The business strategy of Entrepreneurdex is to use complexity science principles to launch, grow and scale startups and growing companies in diverse market sectors. Entrepreneurdex’s objective is to help founders and entrepreneurs build unicorns.

Damir grew up in Serbia where he often tagged along with his father, a civil engineer responsible for building the water infrastructure for local towns. At age six, Damir climbed with his father, deep down a ladder (his mother would have been horrified) into a water well, where his father taught him to appreciate the pristine, cold fresh water that was to be pumped to nearby villages.

Juan Carlos Sr., Juan Carlos Jr. and Damir Perge all shared incredible passion for water conservation and quality. They teamed up to build a management team and a new company called H2O in order to scale this disruptive technology and make a difference by saving water across the world.

There is a saying, “It takes a village to raise a child,” and the same principle applies to startups. It takes a great team to build a great company. H2O is composed of an experienced, talented and passionate management team.