Keen Home Announces $1.52M in Seed Funding; Launches Smart Vent

Keen 2

Keen Home, the new startup bringing to life an automated, intelligent and digitally connected home, announced on Wednesday (October 29th) $1.52M in seed funding. Led by RMR Capital, with participation from R/GA Ventures, Bullet Time Ventures, NYU Innovation Venture Fund, Rugged Ventures, Galvanize Ventures, and Brand Foundry Ventures, as well as strategic investors American Family Ventures and Comporium, Inc., the seed round will serve to bring its first product, the Keen Home Smart Vent, to market.

Keen 5The Smart Vent is a connected air vent that intelligently redirects airflow throughout the home, and connects with a smartphone to tailor the heating and cooling of each room to fit any lifestyle. Co-founder of Keen Home, Nayeem Hussain, stated, “For most people, maintaining and affording a home is their biggest source of worry. Our goal at Keen Home is to help your home take care of you – not the other way around.”

“Keen Home strategically anticipated consumer interest in the connected home and created a well-designed product that provides a subtle, seamlessly integrated utility,” explained Stephen Plumlee, Global Chief Operating Officer, R/GA Ventures. “We see the Smart Vent as the launchpad for a suite of products and services that will inspire and excite consumers with convenient ways to reduce energy consumption and monitor their homes.”

Keen Home’s journey began in 2013 as a TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield participant and with a successful crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. The company’s Smart Vent is designed to increase comfort while also lowering household energy bills. Heating and cooling represents half of the energy costs of the average American home.

The Smart Vent opens and closes based on user-input from a smartphone, or automatically in response to specific details about a user’s home and lifestyle—even accounting for outside weather conditions—effectively reducing the square footage that needs to be conditioned within a home.

Keen 1“When it comes to home heating and cooling efficiency, the thermostat is only part of the solution,” Ryan Fant, co-founder, Keen Home, shared. “You wouldn’t use one light switch to control all the lights in your home. So, why are we still using a single thermostat to control a home’s heating and cooling needs? That’s why we developed the Smart Vent.”

Keen Home has forged partnerships with Lowe’s Home Improvement Centers, SmartThings, and Wink and will distribute the Smart Vent through these channels at launch in Spring 2015. Further partnerships with the industry’s leading connected home platforms will be announced shortly.

The Smart Vent is just the beginning — Keen Home will continue to develop devices that bring proactive intelligence to the core systems of a home. These products will aim to “wake up” traditionally sleepy devices around the house by combining new technologies with a keen design aesthetic.


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