Sutro started with looking at the world through the lens of water. We looked around, and saw everything that was blue, and zoomed into those that contained hydrogen and oxygen pairs (or triples, well – two hydrogen for one oxygen… whatever that’s called). We asked the question – what has water looked like, what does it look like today, and what does the future hold?
Through those 3 questions, we saw a trend that scared us.
The Beginnings of an Idea
Sutro was born in India to solve the issue of drinking water. Through many of the folks that we saw working on water issues, everyone wanted to make the ‘Jack (or Jane) of all trades’ of water filters.
“We’re going to fix water — once and for all”, they said.
Well, fixing water is a little more complicated, because of the same fix you have for drinking water looks very different for agriculture, and even more different for swimming pools or food and beverage operations. In some applications you add chemicals, some you don’t want any, others you add nutrients. The mix varies.
We took this concept and created what is called the Water Genome. Now, you’re probably wondering – I’m at a pool monitor website blog, why the heck is this guy talking about saving the world’s water. Because there is one thing that is similar in all of these water(s), and that’s that it needs to be treated (or changed)…somehow.
As an example, when you grow some grapes, you add nutrients (nitrates) into the fertilized water. When you want to go swimming, you add chlorine or acid to fix and treat your water. The loop is the same.
Measure, Understand and Treat. Then Repeat
We set out back in 2015, using off the shelf sensors. We very quickly realized that the sensor technology just doesn’t cut it. In the measure-understand-treat-repeat chain, the measure was broken. If you put garbage into that system, you’re going to get garbage out.