THE Scots-based entrepreneurs who built up and successfully exited Intelligent Point of Sale (IPOS), a tablet-based payment system targeted at the retail and hospitality trades, have unveiled details of their return to the Scottish tech scene.
Robin Knox and Paul Walton sold IPOS to iZettle in 2016, three years after starting conceiving the idea at a kitchen table. Swedish payments giant iZettle was then itself snapped up by PayPal for $2.2 billion in May this year, just as it was preparing to become a publicly-listed company.
Now Mr Knox and Mr Walton are returning to the tech industry in Scotland with the development of a new smart home security system, Boundary, with the ambition to have it installed in 100,000 homes within four years. That would equate to £6 million of recurring annual revenues, they say.
The pair, who are understood to have sold IPOS for a seven-figure sum, have invested £300,000 of heir own money in the Edinburgh-based venture to date and aim to raise a total of £1.5 million to bring their product to market. An equity investment round is expected to close in November, to be followed by a Kickstarter campaign in October.
The aspiration is to raise around £1.2m from angel investment, and up to £100,000 through the Kickstarter offer.
The entrepreneurs, who employed 80 staff at IPOS, expect to create a significant number of new tech, sales and marketing jobs at the venture, and have vowed to leverage artificial intelligence to develop solutions such as a camera which learns as it watches.
Mr Knox said: “As humans we all have a deep-rooted instinct to protect our property and our possessions. Effective home security should not just be something for the rich but for every homeowner, from first-time buyers in a terraced house or a pensioner living in a bungalow, to young professionals in rented accommodation.
“Our aim is to bring crime rates down by making our homes safer.”
Mr Knox is understood to have hatched the idea for Boundary while on honeymoon, when it occurred to him that if his home was burgled all he could do would be to watch events unfold on webcam. He was then unable to find a reasonably-priced self-install security system on his return to Scotland, when he discovered that established market leaders selling expensive products were frequently subject to negative reviews.
Believing there to be a gap in the market, between expensive and complicated products on the one hand, and cheap unreliable systems on the other, he and Mr Walton investigated how technology could be used to transform the sector.
Mr Walton said: “There is a massive opportunity that is not being addressed by incumbent UK alarm systems either by budget players or high end to develop an easy to install wireless home security system.
“The market for burglar alarms is ripe for disruption with poorly featured legacy systems and undervalued customers creating a gap in the market for a trusted low-cost monitored security solution that is easy to install and operate.
“Our alarm will comply with strict EU and British standards to allow for police monitoring options at an affordable price.”
A spokeswoman added that the Boundary team is developing the capability to integrate the product with other smart home technologies, such as Amazon Alexa and Philips Hue, which allows a home’s lighting to be turned off when an alarm is set, or turned on if an intruder is detected.
The company expects to sell a starter kit for £199, which ill include two sensors and a hub.
Boundary is not the only business activity Mr Knox and Mr Walton are engaged in.
After selling IPOS, Mr Knox set up the tech accelerator Seed Haus last year, with Mr Walton joining as partner investor. The first of its kind in Scotland, it aims to support entrepreneurs with ideas to tackle commercial problems in large markets. The pair have used the vehicle to invest around £500,000 in early-stage businesses in the last year.
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