iControl makes you the "Big Brother"
One new Silicon Valley company that catches our eye today is iControl, the latest to demo at DEMO. As its name suggests, it literally gives the user control over the whole home — including everything from video-recording to the thermostat — from a Web-based system. Nice analogy by Business Week about Big Brother.
We were alerted to the Palo Alto start-up by the prolific blogging from Jeff yesterday from DEMO. Jeff is a player (a venture capitalist with skin in the game) but doesn’t seem to pull his punches when he sees something wrong. That’s unusual, VCs don’t do much critical venting in public. In this case, he says iControl “is impressive,” but shares Stewart Alsop’s view that its going to be tough for this company because other companies have tried and failed before.
We checked in with iControl to ask about funding. Apparently, it’s all angel and founder money so far — but they’re currently closing a $1 million seed round, and anticipating raising a bigger round in Q2. Guess it makes sense, since they’re only launching for real in summer.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
