With less than 24 hours until its Crowdcube initiative comes to an end, Kickstarter alum and creator of intelligent bike light ICON, See.Sense, has raised over £700,000 from nearly 500 investors. The company launched its campaign on the UK-based equity crowdfunding portal last month with a mission to raise £500,000 and quickly surpassed its initial goal.
The company was founded in 2013 by husband and wife team, Philip and Irene McAleese and it looking to improve cycling safety, reduce theft and collect crowdsourced data to help create smart cities. See.Sense’s ICON, which reacts to environments, helps with cyclist visibility and provides theft/crash alerts when paired with a smartphone. Other features include, rechargeable through USB, daylight visible, See & Be Seen, and water sealed.
Philip McAleese also noted:
“We have some hugely innovative new products in the pipeline, and we’ve some amazing opportunities opening up with cities who are interested in our crowdsourced data. To give fuel to the fire, we’re inviting our community – the people who use and love our products – to help us grow. To demonstrate the potential of our crowdsourced data, we have begun work with city of Milton Keynes on a full-scale trial. We are very excited about these opportunities and we hope that this will entice would be investors to, not only take See.Sense to its next stage of growth, but to join us and be part of that journey.”
As previously reported, See.Sense raised £114,000 from over 1400 backers through two Kickstarter campaigns. It was also dubbed overall winner of the BT Infinity Labs SME Award for Connected Cities. During a recent update, See.Sense’s team revealed the company was awarded Dublin Smart Cycle Challenge Contract. They stated:
“Dublin is recognised as one of the world’s leading smart cities. As part of the Smart Dublin initiative, four Dublin local authorities and Enterprise Ireland recently launched the €100k Small Business Innovation Research Challenge (SBIR) Smart Dublin Cycling Challenge. See.Sense entered this highly competitive and sought-after competitive tender and we are delighted to announce that we are one of a small number of companies that have been awarded a contract for the first phase of the process.The Smart Dublin Cycling Challenge is looking for innovative ways to increase cycling use in Dublin, through the use of existing cycling data; creation of new cycling data to enhance understanding of cycling issues; and develop methods to improve cycling safety and reduce bicycle theft in the city.”
The team also shared they scored the highest out of the three categories of the challenge, which were:
- Addressing the challenge and commercial potential
- Technical solution
- Resources, skills, experience and project management
See.Sense’s campaign is set to close tomorrow.
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