From ride sharing apps to your delivered groceries, as a customer you now know where your requested services are at all times. For companies with a mobile workforce, using that same GPS tracking to know where inventory is in real-time can provide much lower operational costs as well as visibility on potentially expensive assets.
From construction companies to utility firms, startup ThingTech‘s IoT platform helps manage and maintain their assets, agents, and equipment for a streamlined customer experience.
“We’re collecting tons of data in real time for mobile field services — where they’re located, how they’re behaving, how they’re utilizing the heavy equipment,” says CEO Tim Quinn. “All of this data comes back to us, and we create action from it.”
After a successful pitch at last year’s Venture Atlanta conference, the ThingTech team finished the year on a high note, closing an $1.8 million seed round led by early-stage investment firm AIM Group with participation from TechSquare Labs’ venture fund.
“Our use of funds will be about 30 percent on product development,” says Quinn. “We have a milestone by the end of 2018 to have a release for our next-generation platform. It will focus on scalability, performance and sheer amount of volume that we collect. We’re improving that so that we can handle up to 10 million records per minute. The rest of the funds will go toward sales and marketing and new customer acquisition.”
Started in 2014, Quinn and co-founder Brian Corcoran are now up to 18 employees and 30 customers, with 80 percent acquired in 2017. Atlanta’s Fulton County, State of Delaware, and Berkshire Regional Transit in Massachusetts are among its customers.
“We’re gaining some traction that’s turning into momentum,” says Quinn. “We’re right at $1.7 million in ARR right now, with a really good path to show we’re projecting at least 100 percent growth next year.”
For enterprise asset management, ThingTech helps manage heavy equipment such as generators, cranes, and vehicles, and captures location and diagnostic data to prevent theft and downtime.
“A construction company has hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment out in the world. They have no visibility, very little accountability of how that equipment is being operated, and they can’t measure the performance,” says Quinn. “They can’t really understand if it’s being utilized safely, cost-effectively, or if somebody is stealing from them.”
Their Mobile Workforce feature applies to field services (think Internet or cable providers) whose employees deliver a product/service to the customer. The company needs a one-stop-shop to manage all vehicles and technicians, as well as have dispatching functionality. ThingTech connects it all together by providing real-time utilization and automation of your crew’s smartphones, sensors, and more.
Currently a portfolio company within Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Quinn says he found that raising investment in Atlanta was a good learning experience where they garnered much-needed feedback. During the process, they found the support of the ATDC incubator essential.
