Who will win the SamsungNEXT Startup Competition at Propelify 2017 along with tons of cash, prizes and bragging rights? We’re thrilled to introduce you to the 10 semi-finalists of this year’s Startup Competition. They will be pitching to judges in a showdown this Thursday, May 18th during the Propelify Innovation Festival in Hoboken, NJ. Be there to see who is crowned the winner!
Get to know monitor-io, professional monitoring for your home network and internet.
Describe the problem you are solving.
We depend on the Internet for more and more things in our lives. However, we have no visibility into how our Internet connections are performing within and outside our homes or businesses. At monitor-io we monitor all your Internet connections, outside, to your Internet service provider, and inside, to all your devices and provide notifications if they are not performing or connecting as expected.
Why did you start this company? What excites you about it?
Having been involved in networks my entire professional life, it bothers me that the one network we have the least information is the last mile, the one in our home or business. It was frustrating to watch people struggle to solve their home network issues. What excites me is to see the reaction on people’s faces when they first use the product and see the light bulb go on about all the information they can have at their fingertips without knowing any of the underlying technology.
What steps have you taken to validate the market? What traction can you share?
The first set of validation comes from my years servicing consumers dealing with networking issues; first running the architecture team for AT&Ts ISP service, then building IP based systems for large carriers globally. Over the past year, we have sent out many focused surveys, pitched the concept to countless people, and used the product ourselves for more than eight months. We have several people using the product over a past few months in a closed Beta that we have been expanding. The final product has now passed FCC/CE certification and is being prepared for sale. We plan to have the product for general sale by June.
Who is your target demographic?
While anyone with a small “home” network is a potential customer, our ideal first customers are:
a) Consumers who are fast climbing the IoT curve and have instrumented their homes and critically depend on IoT devices
b) Those consumers who have disproportional share of Internet issues.
c) The “”I want to be sure”” consumer – because we can detect anyone hopping on their network
d) The person who is responsible for either their work network, home network or gets that call from a parent or child about their network issues.”
Does your product solve a social good?
Before we turn more of lives over to IoT devices, it might be good to have visibility into the “I” in the IoT.
Join us on May 18, 2017 in Hoboken, NJ at Propelify Innovation Festival, where 8,000+ innovators from across the Northeast unite for a must-attend day of tech, investors, talks, exhibitors, VR, drones, and music. Register For Propelify Now.
