Last summer, Changing Environments launched a successful pilot of location-aware, eco-friendly park benches called Soofas in the City of Boston. Combining solar power, sensors and Internet connectivity, these benches allowed the public to charge their electronic devices. Now, thanks to a $1 million seed round that the Cambridge-based startup recently raised, it will be able to create a platform for smart city applications using data gathered from those benches. Chris Lynch from FKA (the tech investing team formerly known as Atlas Venture) led the investment, with the Where Angels Fund and the E14 Fund also participating in the round. Meanwhile, Lynch is also spearheading an initiative to make Boston the nation’s hub for big data. He noted in a press release that the Changing Environments team is particularly excited about gaining access to his hackerspace in Kendall Square.
Already, Changing Environments—which was founded by members of the MIT Media Lab and Harvard Innovation Lab—is planning multiple hackathons in order to engage the community in this effort. Co-founder Nan Zhao revealed that the top priority is to create an open API platform that draws on existing data, which will be used to improve city planning, public transportation and urban life in general.
Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and early investor in Twitter, Kickstarter and Flickr, has been keeping track of the startup’s progress and is optimistic about its potential.
“As hardware, software and networks converge, innovation is increasingly becoming the domain of a new breed of startup entrepreneurs who can design hardware, software and interfaces for a complex urban and networked environment,” he said in a news release.
