History repeats itself, but it doesn't have to. I was inspired to launch my startup, Varuna, when Austin Water released its first-ever boil water warning in 2018 -- a moment eerily similar to the massive winter storm in Texas just a few weeks ago. Because the water utility companies didn't have enough real-time data to measure water quality in individual neighborhoods, they took the blanket approach of asking all of the city's 950,000 residents to boil any water ingested through drinking or cooking. After several days of substantially reducing water usage -- and seeing more than 625,000 plastic bottles of water handed out across the city -- I set out to find a solution. A systems engineer by trade and a problem-solver by nature, I repurposed our dishwasher's sensor to create my first water-quality measurement device.