Move over Nest. There's another well-funded, design-centric Internet of Things company in town.
August is a smart lock company co-founded by Yves Behar, the designer of, among other things, the Jawbone Up fitness tracker and Jambox mini-speaker. August's first product is a beautifully designed gadget that replace's your door's dead-bolt with one that can be opened either with your smart phone or even over the web. Last week, August company raised $38 million in venture funding, making it one of the best funded companies in the home automation market.
It's hard not to draw comparisons with Nest, which was acquired by Google last year for $3.2 billion. Like Behar, Nest co-founder Tony Fadell is a designer with a track record for creating sleek consumer devices (including the iPod). The two companies' products even look similar.
Beyond design, the two companies also have similar ambitions. While many Internet of Things products have been marketed to geeks and power users, Nest and August are both aiming for mainstream adoption. Nest has Google behind it and is already widely available in retail outlets across the world. And though the August lock has met with mixed reviews, the dead simple installation, good looks and new marketing budget could make it the first smart lock to gain mass acceptance.
In short, August and Nest are both poised to bring smart home technology into the mainstream. But will they end up in competition?
After all, Nest is acting as Google's sense of sight and touch, and the data it gathers will likely help it learn more about its users when they're offline. August, meanwhile, is developing a product that goes beyond just locking and unlocking doors. Its app doubles as a piece of identification, and that could have broad implications for many other applications, from smart cars to password replacements. Identity could be the killer app that allows the August lock to become the anchor device for a broader smart-home platform, much as the Nest thermostat acts as a gateway to other Nest-connected devices.
But August co-founder and CEO Jason Johnson says he doesn't think the two companies will go head-to-head. He says that August will stay hyper-focused on smart locks. He cites wireless speaker system company Sonos, which has stayed focused on audio for more than a decade, as an inspiration. "I believe in delivering not just hardware, but software and firmware as well," he says. "I love that my Sonos hardware is over 10 years old, but it's still getting better."
He stopped short of saying the company would never offer any other type of product, but the implication is clear: any new products from August will be related to home access control.
What's more, he says, the two companies are already working together. If you own both devices, you can have your August lock tell your Nest thermostat to start warming up the house the moment you walk in the door, or to turn the heat down once you've left.
But that doesn't mean that Nest won't end up competing with August. Since its launch in 2010, Nest has been slowly expanded its offerings beyond its trademark thermostat by adding the web-connected smoke detector Nest Protect in 2013 and acquiring the home surveillance camera Dropcam last year. It's not hard to imagine the company adding a smart lock product to its line-up. For now, the two companies both have an interest in working together---the smart home concept is still in its early days, and getting users to accept the concept at all is the first necessary step. But once users are hooked, it could end up every gadget-maker for itself.
