Clark Start-up Improves Heating, AC Systems | $2M in venture money could put MachFlow on the map
Charles Agosta, chairman of Worcester-based Clark University’s physics department, figures 2006 was the perfect time for he and business partner Arthur Williams to found MachFlow.
Because now, after meetings, meetings, science, more science and more meetings, the company has attracted $2 million in venture funding and is close to launching a prototype of its energy efficient heating and cooling system.
Sweat Equity
But it takes a lot of toil and persistence for a university physics professor to get a new company off the ground, and for now, MachFlow’s home is still in a basement office somewhere on the Clark campus.
Part of that has to do with the physics. Agosta and Williams weren’t going to start coffee shop. No, they had what Agosta calls “a relatively unique idea” for a heating and cooling system that uses low-friction gases like neon, xenon and krypton in order to reduce power consumption.
“It actually started with a bunch of meetings with Art Williams. He had moved to be near his grandchildren in Worcester. His ideas were very interesting and very practical,” Agosta said. “We could make a consumer product or a commercial product.”
Like any interesting idea with potential to become a new business, “there are a lot of details,” Agosta said. “Raising money, talking to investors; it changes year to year what people are willing to invest, but we were just ahead of the rush for clean tech. Now, it’s exactly the right place to be.”
MachFlow got its funding from Kleiner Perkins Cuafield & Byers, a California-based venture capital firm and Mukesh Chatter, a Massachusetts entrepreneur who runs Burlington-based start-up NeoSaej Corp.
MachFlow has filed a number of patent applications and Agosta said it’ll probably be a year before a prototype is ready.
“The technology we have allows us to make a product for the HVAC industry that can avoid using harmful refrigerants common in heat pump systems and can make those products more efficient,” Agosta said.
“Right now, we’re still in the basement of Clark University, but we’ll grow out of that soon.” When that does happen, Agosta said MachFlow is very likely to remain in Worcester “for a number of reasons.”
“Worcester is a great place to start a business,” he said. “Art lives in Holden, I’m at Clark, and there are great engineers at WPI.”
Academic Incubator
McRae Banks, head of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s management program and director of the school’s collaborative program for entrepreneurship and innovation, said the familiar and inexpensive confines of universities present professor/entrepreneurs with clear advantages.
Being associated with a university tends to carry a bit of cachet when talking with investors or potential customers. A university may also allow a tech entrepreneur to occupy business space without having to worry about who’s paying the electric bill.
“Universities tend to be fertile ground for innovation,” Banks said. “Professors starting businesses already know the infrastructure of the institution. They know the people, they know the players, and assuming the university is supportive, they may get support you wouldn’t get out there and they may get it free.”
Chatter said the association with Clark was one of the things that made MachFlow attractive to him as an investor. He said the company was also attractive because of its “top notch founders and the market space they are playing in — energy efficiency.”
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