[ed. For a more detailed account of Dropcam's home surveillance system, read this.]
Dropcam, the San Francisco startup that makes a $149 camera that can stream and record video to the cloud, announced $30 million in new funding on Wednesday.
That round, led by Institutional Venture Partners, along with other investments from Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will be used to speed up product plans that originally were slated for 2015 and beyond, says Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy.
"We're pulling in most of our long-term plans," Duffy told CNET. "We're going to try to take care of those much sooner. Definitely expect new stuff coming out in the interim."
Just what exactly those new things are, Duffy's not saying, but he did hint at broadening the company's investment in computer vision technology, which is currently used to spot and report motion. "We want to make these more reliable and more useful," he said.
To do that the company plans to triple its staff of about 40 people. Most of that group is in San Francisco, Calif., along with a group in China that handles manufacturing. Dropcam is on its third-generation model, which how offers HD recording. That model was introduced at last year's CES. Since then the company has added new features, like standard-definition recording and video rotation, and changed how it detects and reports motion, all through software updates.
The investment underscores the growing appeal of hardware companies that are tied with Web-connected services. That same group includes wearable technologies from Jawbone and Fitbit, all the way to Nest and its Web-connected smart thermostat. The big difference in Dropcam's case is that it would be relatively useless if not connected to the Web, where Dropcam customers, according to the company, are uploading more video per minute than YouTube.
by Josh Lowensohn, CNET | Read more:
Image: Dropcam
Dropcam, the San Francisco startup that makes a $149 camera that can stream and record video to the cloud, announced $30 million in new funding on Wednesday.That round, led by Institutional Venture Partners, along with other investments from Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, will be used to speed up product plans that originally were slated for 2015 and beyond, says Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy.
"We're pulling in most of our long-term plans," Duffy told CNET. "We're going to try to take care of those much sooner. Definitely expect new stuff coming out in the interim."
Just what exactly those new things are, Duffy's not saying, but he did hint at broadening the company's investment in computer vision technology, which is currently used to spot and report motion. "We want to make these more reliable and more useful," he said.
To do that the company plans to triple its staff of about 40 people. Most of that group is in San Francisco, Calif., along with a group in China that handles manufacturing. Dropcam is on its third-generation model, which how offers HD recording. That model was introduced at last year's CES. Since then the company has added new features, like standard-definition recording and video rotation, and changed how it detects and reports motion, all through software updates.
The investment underscores the growing appeal of hardware companies that are tied with Web-connected services. That same group includes wearable technologies from Jawbone and Fitbit, all the way to Nest and its Web-connected smart thermostat. The big difference in Dropcam's case is that it would be relatively useless if not connected to the Web, where Dropcam customers, according to the company, are uploading more video per minute than YouTube.
Image: Dropcam
