Downtown Boston-based One Mighty Roar announced in a blog post on Monday that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding for Internet-of-Things-for-the-office spinoff company, Robin.
The round was led by Atlas Venture’s Jon Karlen, making One Mighty Roar his first investment since joining the firm in early April. Also participating in the round were Deep Fork Capital, Boldstart Ventures and Space Pirates, a seed venture group led by Mike Germano, CDO of VICE and one of Robin's advisors.
"We share Robin’s vision for ‘smart’ offices and workspaces, and it’s one of the Internet of Things applications we are most excited about at Atlas. Sam and Zach [Dunn] and the team at Robin are exceptionally talented entrepreneurs, and we’re lucky to be an investor in the company," Karlen told BostInno via email.
The BostInno Beat broke the first news of One Mighty Roar's product spinoff when it was a rumor, back in February. The One Mighty Roar team has been fairly tight-lipped about Robin. The company’s CEO, Sam Dunn, provides a good overview of the offering in his blog post:
Robin brings presence sensing and automation to the office. Booking a meeting on your calendar is as easy as walking through the conference room door. With Robin, your office becomes a super-aware and intelligent assistant — for everyone in it, helping to find people and places to get work done.
One of Robin’s many features is room auto-booking. If you enter a room with someone and linger for 30 seconds, the smart software books the calendar automatically for a meeting. Similarly, if you and your coworker or client finish up early, the room will be marked as available as soon as you exit. Robin also lets people search for rooms and individuals based off of various sensor data and department affiliation, respectively. For example, it lets you look up “quietest meeting room available” or a “free person in accounting.”
The fresh capital will be used to expand the number of "Robin Powered" offices and fuel product development. As a result, the team will
be launching the “Rockin’ Robin Alliance,” a beta program designed to bring the connected service to a handful of companies in Boston and other "innovation-centric cities," Dunn told BostInno via email. There are currently six Boston firms in the Alliance, which will be largely focused on coworking spaces and tech companies. The team is planning a more widespread release of Robin for the fall.
Founded in 2009 by twins brothers Sam and Zach Dunn, One Mighty Roar has grown to 15 people. The company stopped doing client work through One Mighty Roar earlier this year. Since then, the team has been focused on building Robin, which will function as "an all new company," shared Sam Dunn. "We may add a few fresh faces to the team, but [we] are very well stocked since we're fortunate that the entire One Mighty Roar team is coming over and we've worked together for years," added the CEO.
"Offices should be as smart as the people that work inside them," shared Dunn in the blog post. "We think people deserve to see a future of work that actually helps them focus on what matters. Today is the first step in that direction."
