Alula is one of Minne Inno's 2019 Inno on Fire award winners. Learn more about the other honorees here.
Security startup Alula recently arrived in Minnesota and already has ambitious plans for growth at its new facility in St. Paul's Midway neighborhood.
Earlier this year, the company moved its headquarters from Hudson, Wisc. to the recently-renovated Midway Innovation Center, which was occupied by McAfee-owned Secure Computing until 2018.
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development awarded Alula a $175,000 grant to help with the company's $1.8 million buildout in the Innovation Center. Alula, according to DEED, expects to create 135 jobs within the next three years with an average wage of $33.82 per hour.
"We were looking at our growth plan last year and realized very quickly that if we wanted to achieve our growth aspiration, which is quite aggressive, we needed to be part of a fast-paced community," said Alula CEO Brian McLaughlin.
Alula specializes in automation and smart home security and was formed in 2018 from a merger of two heavyweights in the space. The company has a number of offerings, including video monitoring, alarm systems and an app.
"We're focusing on the convergence of cybersecurity and physical security," McLaughlin explained. "The wall between those two things is coming down."
He added that Alula is heavily focused on integrating automation and artificial intelligence into its video system. McLaughlin estimates that approximately 25 percent of U.S. households will have installed video doorbells by the end of 2019. Alula is overlaying AI on top of actual video to start recognizing faces and scenes, creating a protective, predictive barrier around the yard.
Of course, that kind of innovation takes a lot of tech talent. McLaughlin said that within the next 24 months, Alula will add 50 to 75 new employees in Minnesota and its second office in Houston, Texas.
"I feel like we're really poised with a disruptive technology stack to capture growth and take from the incumbents out there," McLaughlin said. "I know that we can out-innovate, outmaneuver and out hustle them because we have that startup mentality."
