Dropcam
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| Industry | Consumer electronics |
|---|---|
| Fate | Dissolved & Rebranded |
| Successor | Nest Cam |
| Founded | San Francisco, California, United States (January 2009) |
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Area served
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United States Canada |
| Products | Dropcam Pro Cloud Recording Dropcam App |
| Owner | Independent (2009-2014) Nest Labs (2014-present) |
| Parent | Independent (2009-2014) Google Inc (2014-2015) Alphabet Inc. (2015-present) |
| Website | www.dropcam.com |
Dropcam, Inc. was an American technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company is known for its Wi-Fi video streaming cameras, Dropcam and Dropcam Pro, that allow people to view live feeds through Dropcam’s cloud-based service. On June 20, 2014, it was announced that Google's Nest Labs bought Dropcam for $555 million USD. In June 2015, Dropcam's parent company, Nest, introduced the Nest Cam, a successor to the Dropcam Pro. Dropcam app users are also currently being transitioned to the Nest app.
Software engineers Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani founded Dropcam in 2009. Duffy served as Dropcam’s CEO and Virani served as COO. They originally developed software for cameras made by Swedish company AXIS. Wanting to develop a less expensive camera, the two companies parted ways and Dropcam began producing its own cameras that primarily provide video monitoring for homes and small businesses. Duffy and Virani credit Duffy’s dad with at least part of the inspiration for Dropcam. He wanted to identify the neighbor who was letting their dog poop on his lawn but they were having trouble finding a security camera that made it easy to record, stream and monitor large amounts of data.
Dropcam received early funding from technology investor Mitch Kapor, and in June 2012, Dropcam secured $12 million in venture capital funding led by Menlo Ventures and previous investors, Accel Partners and Bay Partners. Dropcam has also received funding from Felicis Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The following year, it received $30 million more in funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, bringing the total raised to $47.8 million. Duffy said Dropcam’s revenue grew 500 percent year over year.
Dropcam hosts cloud data through Amazon Web Services and Duffy says that Dropcam presently records more video than YouTube.
Dropcam has become popular in families watching their children, through monitoring pets at home, at pet stores and in adoption centers. Users have also reportedly caught home-burglaries in progress. Duffy has said, “Moms are using it to catch their babies' first steps when they're not around, checking that older kids have arrived home safely; contacting children who are ignoring their cell phones; and sharing footage from birthday parties.”
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Wikipedia