Auston Bunsenhad a lot of free time after his companyQuickNodereached a certain size. That company, a blockchain developer platform, was founded in 2017 and subsequently raised more than $100 million in funding, according to PitchBook.
Then Bunsen started thinking about the fact that people wouldperhaps liketo unlock their doors with their iPhone. “I eventually met with some folks atAppleand they decided to make a bet that I could help further their goals to enable every company to bring the power of AppleWalletto their door,” Bunsen told TechCrunch.
Bunsen leftQuickNodelast October and decided towork on his new idea: AccessGrid,which builds APIsthat companies can use to manage digital key fobs directly within Apple and Google’s wallet platforms.
“It works when your iPhone is locked, syncs automatically to your watch, and, in the case of iPhone, works even if your phone is dead,” Bunsen said.The company officially launched in April,and on Tuesday, announced a $4.4 million seed round led by Harlem Capital.
Right now, Bunsen said,the access control industry is stuck in the late 1990s.Many systems mustoperateon-premises and are disconnected from thecloud, oruse unencrypted communications and ID card technologies thatareeasily hackable.
“AccessGridreplaces that with an API that issues uncloneable credentials using encrypted payloads that can be instantly revoked via the cloud,” Bunsen said. “We thinkit’stime to bringphysical security systems up to 2025 standards.”
Cybersecurity is a big concern for a product like this, but Bunsen says the company uses “military-grade” encryption as well as dual-encryption. “We use multi-factor authentication for all server access, and other standard cybersecurity practices,” he continued.
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Bunsen is building this product alone, unlike when he built QuickNode with three other co-founders, and described his fundraising journey as a “distraction.”
“Servingcustomersis our purpose, so anything that is not that is a distraction for us,”he said.
Still,Bunsen met Henri Pierre-Jacques, the managing partner at Harlem Capital, through some friends in Miami.Other investors in the round came from Bunsen’s time atQuickNode, such as Marell Evans from Exceptional Capital, andMayaBakhaifrom Spice Capital.AccessGridalso took part in the HF0accelerator and received its first check from the program.
AccessGrid is going up against other startups in this space, includingSwiftConnectand Sharry. But Bunsen says his startupis different because it does not sell service contracts or middle-ware to talk to existing hardware devices. “We are a‘pureplay’, API-only,” Bunsen said, adding thatit’sa developer platform, not an end-user app with API features.
The fresh capital will beused to continuebuilding the app’ssecurity, as well as for new products andfeatures. The companyhopes to expand into automobile products soon.
Eventually, Bunsen wants to upgrade every access control reader in the U.S.“Our hope is to create a world where everything you normally needa keyfor opens just because you’re nearby,” he said. “You’llnever lose your key becauseit’salways with you. We want to make getting into the places you belong faster, safer, and more seamless,for people and machines alike.”
This piece was updated to reflect how much QuickNode had raised.