A DISRUPTIVE approach to funding saw Robin Knox and Paul Watson create SeedHaus, Scotland’s first pre-seed technology accelerator and now they’re back on the start-up scene with a smart and affordable home security system.

The pair were also behind the UK’s first iPad-based till system Intelligent Point of Sale (IPOS) and, after growing it to around 80 staff, sold it to Swedish payments services firm iZettle. It was then acquired by PayPal for £1.7 billion.

SeedHaus was born in 2017, creating a community of entrepreneurs, investors and digital makers.

The pair’s new venture – Boundary – will launch in the middle of next year and is targeting 100,000 homes in four years with £6 million in annual recurring revenues.

Knox and Walton are now re-investing into Scotland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and have already made around £500,000 in investments into early stage businesses in the last year.

Boundary is expected to create a significant number of new jobs in technology, sales and marketing.

As part of its future plans it wants to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to create market-leading solutions, including a camera that learns as it watches.

They have personally invested £300,000 in Boundary and will raise a total of £1.5m to bring it to life.

An equity investment round is expected to close in November and a Kickstarter campaign is planned to go live in October.

Knox was on honeymoon when he came up with the idea for Boundary. He realised that if his home was broken into, there was nothing he could do but watch events unfold on webcam.

When he to Scotland he looked around in vain for a reasonably priced self-install security system.

He found that established market leaders with expensive alarm systems suffered from damning online customer reviews and acres of negative media coverage and said it was clear they were not providing a good service.

Sensing a gap in the market, Knox turned his attention to home security and, along with Walton, started to explore how the use of technology could transform the sector.

The current home security market is polarised at two extremes, either very expensive and overly complicated or so cheap and basic, that it cannot be trusted to work when it is required.

Knox said: “As humans we all have a deep-rooted instinct to protect our property and our possessions. Effective home security should not just be something for the rich but for every homeowner, from first-time buyers in a terraced house or a pensioner living in a bungalow, to young professionals in rented accommodation.

“Our aim is to bring crime rates down by making our homes safer.”

Walton added: “There is a massive opportunity that is not being addressed by incumbent UK alarm systems either by budget players (Yale and Smanos) or high end (Verisure and ADT) to develop an easy-to-install, wireless home security system.

“The market for burglar alarms is ripe for disruption with poorly featured legacy systems and undervalued customers creating a gap for a trusted low-cost monitored security solution that is easy to install and operate.

“Our alarm will comply with strict EU and British standards to allow for police monitoring options at an affordable price.”