Sleek smoke alarm chirps its way to Dubai (and funding)

An elderly woman using a gas stove to heat her home right after
Hurricane Katrina sounds like a recipe for disaster. But in the
aftermath of the 2005 disaster, Mark Belinsky’s grandmother was –
along with thousands of others – in this very predicament. Wouldn’t
it be great, he thought at the time, if there were a smoke alarm
that also doubles as a carbon monoxide detector that could send
alerts to your smartphone, or landline?

So the idea for the Smart Air
Monitor was born. The smoke detector, which also functions as a
carbon monoxide sensor and air-quality monitor, is the first
product for Belinsky and his co-founder Justin Alvey. While based
in San Francisco, the team now has its gaze firmly set on the UAE
market. And they’re off to a strong start: having won
Dubai’s Smart
Living City ‘Best Startup Prize’ this year, the company
Birdi now has an extra $30,000 USD to add
to their seed funding. 

The Birdi at work. Silent until necessary. 

For Belinsky, Birdi’s mandate is global. Looking further afield
provides the chance for more opportunities, and especially in
economies that present the kind of air they want to work with:
polluted.

Packaged within a sleek white and circular mold, not dissimilar
from the smoke alarms we are used to seeing, the device
communicates with a user’s mobile device – either Android or iOS –
to keep them up to date with various air related activities in the
home. So, rather than an ear piercing alarm going off when you’ve
let something overheat on the stove, a message is sent to the phone
where a push notification lets you make the next move – alert fire
department or simply ignore said smoke. The same goes for carbon
monoxide levels and other particular air pollutants the user wishes
to monitor. 

Mark Belinsky and Justin Alvey with their birdy
baby. 

“It’s really about exploring where cities are growing and where
it is important to look at air quality,” says Belinsky. Somewhere
like Dubai presents a perfect example for Birdi’s expansion. “You
can’t open your windows to air out your house,” says Belinsky. “You
see respiratory issues developing, asthma and allergy rates going
up, and we want to be there to help.”

The first step to tackling the UAE has been to move into Arabic,
going beyond the language to understand the local circumstances,
and catering to that scenario. “As we’re developing the product we
understand the key signatures for identifying particulate matter,”
says Belinsky, “and then differentiating between the particles to
really communicate directly.” For instance, while in one city
people might be looking to monitor pet hair and dander, a place
like Dubai could be focusing on sand and dust. 

The team was able to turn towards Dubai on the strength of their
prototype’s success in New York. After building a first version at
the NYC
BigApps cleantech hackathon in 2013. People loved it.
Initially called Canary, this success in New York led them to the
funding. Earlier this year they secured their first round of seed
funding, with attention from Silicon big boys such as Jason Calacanis with his AngelList
syndicate (which includes Wamda’s former Editor In Chief Nina
Curley), Kapor
Capital, Eric Ries,
John Galbraith. Investors backing the product have stated an
interest in safety and health. 

The field of health and safety also opens the team at Birdi up
to the bonus of marketing themselves to not only B2C and B2B, but
also B2G. As Entrepreneurs in Residence for the San Francisco
government, Belinsky and Alvey worked within the department of
public health looking at the impact of air quality on citizens. “We
wouldn’t be in existence if it wasn’t for the government,” says
Belinsky, citing that the information their product relies on, such
as GPS and air quality data, is often government enabled. “There
are a lot of home security systems that are looking for solutions,”
says Belinsky. “A lot don’t have the best smoke alarms, and many
have a 70% failure rate.”

He also goes onto validate something many of us have experienced
when dealing with smoke alarms: they can be brutally annoying
enough to want to tear them from the ceiling. “Using intelligence
through algorithms we get to beat the competition at the most basic
level, which is fire protection.” So in tune with such human
behavior as ripping away safety devices, the WiFi enabled device
will send you a message, rather than beeping interminably, when the
batteries are running low, and Birdi will have new ones delivered
to your door. 

After Dubai there were rumors that Singapore was next on the
list as a new market in which to show off the sleek alarm. Belinsky
says it’s certainly on the list but it’s early days yet – maybe the
Birdi can alert them as to whether there is luck in the
air.