Minnov8

Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation

SmartThings Announces New Financing

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smartthingsAlex Hawkinson, CEO & Founder of SmartThings, wrote this post today announcing their new A round of financing:

Today marks a very important milestone for our young company, and we would be remiss if we didn’t take the time to thank everyone who has made it possible. As you may have seen, we’ve just announced our next round of funding from two premier venture capital firms: Greylock Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Congratulations to Alex and the entire team. We are looking forward to new product, new distribution and an acceleration in to the Internet of Things (IoT) space!

For your viewing pleasure (since many people I’ve talked with about SmartThings have not seen this video) this Twilio video shows a demo by Jeff Hagins, Founder and CTO of SmartThings, talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) and the physical graph (Note: Twilio is the company that SmartThings uses to send notifications to those of us using their products and apps!).

SmartThings Shop is Open for Business

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SmartThings_ShopThe team at SmartThings continues to execute and they are now delivering on their promise — to have a one-stop-shop to buy ‘things’ that connect with your SmartThings hub — and the SmartThings Shop is it.

One more very positive development is that they are also selling a handful of third party devices like those from Aeon Labs and GE Lighting Solutions. In addition to these top vendors there are a growing list of SmartThings-compatible third party products which SmartThings has tested and we wouldn’t be surprised if more of them are offered directly at the SmartThings Shop.

SmartThings in Wired

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IoT_Wired-MagazineYou will be hearing A LOT about “The Internet of Things” or “The Internet of Everything” or “Industrial Internet” this year and next. But it was this month’s Wired magazine who devoted the issue’s cover story to “Welcome to the Programmable World.” It starts off with a focus on SmartThings‘ CEO Alex Hawkinson and his ‘smarthome’:

On a 5-acre plot in Great Falls, Virginia, less than a mile’s stroll through ex­urban scrub from the wide Potomac River, Alex Hawkinson has breathed life into a lifeless object. He has given his house, a sprawling six-bedroom Tudor, what you might describe as a nervous system: a network linking together the home’s very sinews, its walls and ceilings and windows and doors. He has made these parts move, let them coalesce as a bodily whole, by giving them a way to talk among themselves. Open a telnet session in the house’s digital hub and you can actually spy on his chattering stuff, hear what it says when no one’s listening.

There are few more appropriate guides to this impending future than Hawkinson, whose DC-based startup, SmartThings, has built what’s arguably the most advanced hub to tie connected objects together. At his house, more than 200 objects, from the garage door to the coffeemaker to his daughter’s trampoline, are all connected to his SmartThings system. His office can automatically text his wife when he leaves and tell his home A/C system to start powering up.

Great article and it is one you need to read, not only for SmartThings, but because many people (including me) believe strongly that the connected, programmable world will be the biggest thing to hit our world since the internet itself.