The city's only hardware accelerator, Bolt, opened the doors of its Chauncey Street shop to its first batch of startups in late July. Mere months later, the first – and likely not last – company from Bolt's cardinal class has added a few more bills to its bank account.
Los Angeles-founded Petnet announced on Tuesday that it has raised $1.125 million in seed funding from Grishin Robotics, Kima Ventures, SparkLabs Global Ventures and Launch Capital.
The sum will go towards commercializing the startup's first product, the Petnet Smartfeeder – an intelligent, smartphone-connected feeder designed to fill your beloved Fido's bowl with the right portion of chow when mealtime strikes.
"[Petnet] has an exceptional team that had worked together for years at a prior company, but is now looking to disrupt a major market that's desperately in need of some innovation," Bolt Co-founder Ben Einstein told BostInno. Over the course of the past few months, the Petnet team has grown from three to six employees, all hoping to make a lasting impact on the pet industry, worth $100 billion industry.
Using intelligent sensor technology, learning algorithms and processing power that assesses the dietary requirements of the pet, the Smartfeeder creates a custom feeding schedule to meet those requirements. What's more, the product connects with your smartphone to alert you when your pet has been fed, and even reminds you to purchase more food when the supply runs low.
The company claims to have already received 10,000 orders for the Smartfeeder, with demand coming from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, France, Australia, Hong Kong, Russia and Korea.
While the Petnet team plans to relocate back to sunny California now that the accelerator's term has come to a close, Co-founder and CEO Carlos Herrera is quick to tout Bolt for its guidance, namely in brand awareness, investor validation and product development.
"Many prominent Boston-based investors became aware of our company via Bolt. Ben Einstein, Axel Bichara, and Scott Miller all have a tremendous legacy of success, which we inherit as a Bolt portfolio company. Nearly 60 percent of our investors have some relationship with the Bolt founders," shared Herrera, noting that the hardware accelerator's team is composed of "some of the sharpest engineers I've ever worked with."
For its next round of hardware-centric companies, Bolt is rolling out a simplified application process, which you can check out here.
