09-25-2012

Our Investment in Mobiplug Networks

by Ryan McIntyre

We are pleased to announce that we’ve led a $2.7m Series A financing of Mobiplug Networks, a graduate of this summer’s Boulder TechStars program. Mobiplug is developing an affordable all-in-one home monitoring and control solution that starts with a gateway device that sits on a home network and speaks a variety of the most common wireless protocols like ZigBee, Z-Wave, Insteon and more.

Once installed, homeowners will be able to monitor and control lights, locks, thermostats, sensors and other devices in the home via smartphone and tablet applications that will make using these technologies simple and delightful. A great benefit to the consumer will be the comfort, convenience, and peace of mind they receive at an affordable price. At the same time, Mobiplug is opening up their API so that developers can innovate on their platform as well, which will enable all sorts of cool functionality by allowing web services with open APIs to interact and access the gateway to create truly automated actions with the connected devices, via simple API calls.

Most importantly, Mobiplug will make advanced home monitoring and control technologies accessible to a much broader market than has previously been possible because their system works with off-the-shelf electronics from major retailers, bypassing the typical high costs and difficulties inherent in deploying traditional high-end systems in the home.

Ryan was a mentor for Mobiplug throughout the summer TechStars program and was excited by the strength of the founding team and their vision of bringing home monitoring and control and the Internet-of-things to a broad market. They also have a clear strategy to leverage the large existing install base of home automation devices already in the market that have been historically been far too complex and expensive for the average homeowner to deploy.

Finally, fellow Mobiplug mentor Tim Enwall, previously the founder of Tendril Networks, became equally enthusiastic about Mobiplug’s vision and decided to join the company as CEO.

As these things came together in the final weeks of the TechStars program, we offered to lead Mobiplug’s Series A financing, and, thankfully, they accepted our offer.  We’re looking forward to helping Jeff, Lee, Mike and Tim build Mobiplug into a great company in the coming years.