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When Einaras Gravrock noticed his daughters using iPads before they had learned to talk, he grew increasingly concerned about their online safety. With children adapting to technology earlier than ever, it’s important to protect them from the dangers of hackers.
“As a new parent, I was looking for ways to protect my kids in my home from an internet security perspective,” Cravrock said. “We invested quite a bit to protect it from a physical security perspective but couldn’t quite find anything that applies to all of today’s technology. We used to have one computer now we have 20 — all of those are connected and all of those are easy targets and the tradition security software only focuses on the PC.”
After building e-commerce business platforms and investing in security technologies, Gravrock had an understanding of the market for office security systems, but couldn’t figure out why the same level of protection hadn’t been created for homes.
Gravrock’s friend and co-founder, Yuri Frayman, called him and discussed reports of baby monitors and electronic door locks being hacked. The two recognized the opportunity and began creating CUJO, an easy to use, business-level security system aimed at protecting every device in a home’s cloud network.
The duo built a prototype for the platform in February and received an early seed round before posting the product on Indigogo to gauge public interest.
“People ask us why Indigogo, why crowdfunding? It wasn’t as much for making CUJO possible, but mainly we are getting so much feedback and so many real stories to shape the product. From that perspective, Indigogo has been invaluable.”
CUJO’s goal on Indigogo was $30,000. Within 20 days of posting, they have accumulated nearly $140,000 from 2,443 backers.
Although the public interest in the product has continued to grow, Gravrock, a USC grad and Redondo Beach native, said the company will be in beta until early 2016 and will begin shipping the product in March.
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