AVAIO: Building data centers requires adding resources in stages.
Merely owning land doesn't qualify investors to say, "Hey, we're data center developers," says Mark McComiskey of AVAIO Capital, which has added experts in real estate, construction and private equity to oversee the ground-up development of six data centers simultaneously.
Starting with a small team, AVAIO Capital has carefully and frugally grown its business with the goal of presenting potential customers with a broad range of services once the projects are complete, adds McComiskey, a Partner at the infrastructure investment firm.
To efficiently develop data center sites while managing costs, AVAIO Capital built its team strategically, adding expertise only as needed. "You need to have people with experience in real estate - entitlement in real estate, permitting in real estate, identification, and procurement," McComiskey explains. "And then as we've moved forward and reached the point where our sites have become more mature, we've added people with construction and project management expertise in the data center space."
This phased approach allows AVAIO to keep costs low while ensuring that necessary expertise is in place at the right time. "And so our approach has been to start with a small team and work through kind of the steps on a number of sites that get them to the point where you need incremental expertise, and then expand the team as we go," he says.
McComiskey describes this strategy as "just in time deployment of capital and just in time additions to the team." He adds, "That's kind of a differentiation in our approach. And in terms of how the team is put together, you don't find a lot of people in the data center development space that mix all three of those."
AVAIO’s broader strategy has been to "move at least half a dozen sites along to the point where you could immediately start construction of data centers on them before we set out to raise an additional round of capital and to commercialize the sites." This differentiates AVAIO from others in the space, McComiskey says: "There are a lot of people out there that have a piece of land, and that say, 'Hey, we're data center developers.' There aren't a lot of businesses out there that say, 'Hey, we can serve your needs in Europe and all across North America. We have sites that are good for AI. We have sites that are good for cloud.'"
McComiskey shares his insights in the Cool Vector episode, "How AVAIO Builds Data Centers With 'Just-in-Time' Capital." Watch the full interview on Cool Vector's YouTube channel:
Cool Vector on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/esN6FYW2
Cool Vector Website: coolvectormedia.com
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