One Surprising Key to Unlocking the Future of Cities

As the world’s cities offer more and more top-notch venues and amenities to urban dwellers, there are still many challenges to growing a world-class, economically thriving area. Especially one in which residents are proud to call home. Available professional opportunities, time for personal pursuits, and green/low-impact living, are issues on the minds of urbanites everywhere.

People want to live where they can grow, have fun, and feel comfortable. They want their spaces to have efficiencies and conveniences, allowing them the time to make the most of daily life.

Solving this problem of access — access to spaces and to time — as well as reducing impact on the environment, are central to improving modern city living and are what inspire the founders of nello, an URBAN-X Accelerator participant.

Nello’s story started with a much simpler problem. When Daniel Jahn and Chris Baumeister met in Munich in 2013, while finishing their PhDs, they just needed an idea to run with. They had both dedicated their education and careers to studying technology, business, and entrepreneurship. They had a solid vision to produce a great product from the bottom up. Now they actually wanted to do it, to create a company and make a great product that solves a problem for the modern city. They just needed a business idea that they felt had a significant chance at success.

They knew they could take the right concept to the next level. During their graduate work, they had made a confidence-building discovery. Chris’s analytical mind and talent for managing detail, plus Daniel’s big-picture ideas and creativity made for a powerful combo. With these compatible talents, they became a powerful problem-solving duo and got to work exploring their options.

After examining hundreds of different business models and ideas, they immediately saw the potential to make city living better by solving the problem of unattended services. Some of today’s most successful tech companies provide valuable services city dwellers depend on. They are part of the “convenience economy” — think Uber, AirBnB, Blue Apron, GrubHub, and others — with many more launching all the time.

In reality, those services aren’t always as convenient as they could be. Someone must to be home to let in AirBnB guests or receive packages and groceries. Not to mention the headache of needing to be available during three-hour windows for home services and repairs. Daniel and Chris saw the pain that consumers experience and wanted to use their entrepreneurial partnership to tackle those inefficiencies.

“Time is the most valuable asset in everyone’s life,” Daniel says. “We can unlock that valuable time by making sure that all services get done even when you are not at home. Sort of like a digital concierge/doorman for every urbanite that helps to regain quality time to do the things in life that matter.”

Originally launching under the moniker “Monkey” (“Mon” in French means “my.” Therefore “Monkey” in English is “My key.”) and accumulating over 1,000 backers on Kickstarter, the team arrived at a turning point. Daniel and Chris had to decide whether to keep going with the company or not. They could return the Kickstarter money and abandon the idea or rally and look for more funding.

Daniel remembers the moment he knew moving forward was the way to go. On vacation, on the ski slopes in Austria with Chris, they stopped to reflect at the bottom of a run. They had achieved a milestone with the success of the Kickstarter campaign. They had built the company to employ nine people and it continued to grow. They decided to go for it, changing the company name to nello and applying to the URBAN-X Accelerator.

While the idea behind nello seems simple enough, the execution depended on getting the right support. To create a chip that can integrate with every intercom system in the world takes significant technical expertise, resources, and connections.

Being accepted into the accelerator was a game-changer. Nello was paired with URBAN-X electrical engineering mentors who helped design the chip. Branding experts worked with the nello team on a new company name, app, logo, and website.

Keyless entry of future smart-cities will soon become a reality. Remembering how this vision came to be, Daniel revealed two keys to nello’s continuing success:

1. People: Work with people you want to work with. Hire smart people who are the right fit.
2. Time: Control what you work on. Ask yourself if your time is well spent. If it makes sense, prioritize it. If it doesn’t, kill it.

These strategies have led the nello team to launch nello one in November. Plus, through URBAN-X connections, they began collaborating with one of the largest cable companies in the US on integrating nello natively into their new smart home products.

Ask any urban dweller what they want most from living in their city. Whether it’s more convenience, time for creative possibilities, or access to people and activities, nello continues to find creative solutions, unlocking the potential of smart cities of the future.

Originally published at sosv.com on October 6, 2016.