Forget searching for supposed hotspots and trying to hack into your neighbor's network.
This startup is out to turn your Internet network into your social one. Karma wants to give you a way to access the web outside of the cozy comfort of your neighborhood Starbucks. The TechStars–approved company is determined to find a way to make Wi-Fi ubiquitous, pay as you go, and–most importantly–shareable.
Users buy a sleek, small $79 hotspot device, linked to Sprint's Clearwire network, and create an account. Karma provides a 1GB of bandwidth to help you get started, and then its pay as you go, $14 per GB. (To put it in perspective, people typically use only 500MB per device, per month. One gigabyte allows you to send and receive 500 emails, watch 50 four-minute high quality video clips, listen to eight hours of high quality streamed music, or check out 1,000 webpages.) Slip the hotspot into your tote or murse, and you have Internet access wherever your feet lead you.
And here's where the whole greater-happiness-for-the-greater-good comes in. Your Karma Wi-Fi signal will be available to everyone around you seeking a Wi-Fi connection. To gain access to your network, all they have to do is log on to your hotspot and make a quick account with the company. New users via your hotspot get a free 100MB, and also pay as they go for any more data they use, while you too get a free 100MB. Just for being a giver. In other words, the more you share your connection, the more bandwidth you accumulate–for free.
"We like to think about it as this crazy idea: Your data is yours and you can do with it anything you please," co-founder Steven van Wel recently told Mashable. " If you have [some of your data allowance] left at the end of the month, you're free to use it next month. You're free to use it in two years. It's your data, you paid for it ... and the next step for us is to build this social-bandwidth platform, allowing anyone to connect to a Karma Wi-Fi and get a line. You don't pay for their data, you just help them to get a line."
Since the company's launch in December 2012, Karma has added tens of thousands of customers to their network. And over that same period of time, users have earned about 3,000 GB of free data. "On average every Karma hotspot earns about 500 MB of free data every month, simply by turning on their WiFi hotspot," shared van Wel (for reference, 660 MB is about how much data it takes to stream one-hour of Netflix.)
The 10-person teamed–startup has spread beyond its base in the Big Apple. "We've brought the social bandwidth idea to 80 different cities [in the United States]," said van Wel. And, in the next few weeks, Karma could be expanding even farther, thanks to the company's new mobile app. According to van Wel, the app will send a push notification whenever a Karma Wi-Fi spot becomes available.
Karma was part of TechStars NYC in 2012, and has received backing from BoldStart Ventures, Collaborative Fund, David Cohen, David Tisch, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, TechStars, Wener Vogels and 500 Start Ups.
Karma's mission is a great one. Who hasn't pulled out their laptop from overstuffed carry-on and eagerly popped it open only to find that either 1) the airport doesn't offer WiFi free of charge (rude) or 2) the access it does offer is horrifyingly overpriced? Karma harnesses the altruistic spirit in us all, and makes the choice to help others, while also helping ourselves, easy.
