Meet Zak DeBrine of SpotSense in Tempe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zak DE Brine.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story?
I came to Arizona from Broomfield, Colorado in 2012 to pursue a degree in business communications with the goal always being to start my own company. After four (and some change) years at ASU, I realized that I was no closer to starting my own company than I was when I came to school. So my last semester at I decided to get involved with the entrepreneurship club and classes. For the next year I kind of dabbled in different areas with a few different ideas and I realized that I was really intrigued by technology and how it could be used to create amazing experiences for people.

I guess what I’m doing now all stemmed from an idea I had about an interactive “city tour” app for the city of Tempe. I walked into city hall and basically started presenting the idea to everyone and after a while got in contact with a guy within community development who wanted to build something similar. After some back and forth with him we started presenting some prototypes and videos of how the application would work. It was well received, but after a while we were told that an application like the one we were planning couldn’t be done without a massive team of developers and a huge hardware roll out within the city. So I set out to find an easier way to build mobile apps that could adapt to different environments in the real world. I spoke with a friend I had recently met (Jonny) who took an interest in the idea and after a few idea sessions over coffee, the two of us decided to become partners.

Fast forward a few months (and a couple failed ideas later). I decided to go the Phoenix meetup to talk to the people there about an updated version of our technology. For this, Jonny and I had purchased 15 Bluetooth low energy beacons and placed them in different stores on Mill Avenue. The idea here was to open up these sensor devices to different mobile developers to see what types of mobile apps they could build (Think, When you walk up to a restaurant, the menu automatically pops up on your phone). It was at the meetup where I met Chris Matthieu who asked me if I wanted to present our idea to the entire meetup which turned out being one of the best decisions I’ve made. Not only did I gain a lot of amazing new ideas, but I met a man by the name of Spencer Mitchell who believed strongly in what we were doing and our potential to turn into a full-fledged company. I now consider Spencer to be a great friend of mine and his firm’s contribution to the company has been a total game changer.

Currently, we are working on a couple different deals to implement our SpotSense technology within a few buildings at a local university.

Has it been a smooth road?
Not smooth at all. The beginning was full of confusion as to what we were trying to do, we have been told no by numerous people we’ve tried to sell to, and the overall logistics of starting a company, especially a software company, are very difficult if you’re not surrounding yourself with people who know what they’re doing. Even now I look back every couple of weeks and think, “what were we thinking?”

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the SpotSense story. Tell us more about the business.
To better understand our technology, SpotSense, at its core, is a platform that allows mobile devices to precisely determine their location both indoors and outdoors. We are building the software so mobile developers can build applications that interact with the physical world. These apps can incorporate indoor navigation, information that is relevant to a specific location and can even be used to navigate visually impaired people throughout cities… It’s cool because we hear of new things that can be built with our software all the time.

Our values are:

-Interactions with technology should be meaningful and complement the real world
-Data should be collected and used for good
-Location data should be precise

Our mission is to create harmony between humans, technology, and the world around us.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I believe the internet of things is going to create a major change within the next 5-10 years. As more technologies are being connected to the internet, I believe that much of the small day to day tasks that can be automated will be automated. I’m very excited about this because I’m a total nerd when it comes to smart devices.

However, with more devices being connected to the internet/monitored, I think we will start to see a need to create secure connections between the different devices and believe that IoT security and even block chain-like technology will start to play a huge role in making those exchanges of data safe.

With the exponential rate everything is going, it’s hard to guess where things will in 10 years. But it’s very exciting to be a part of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.spotsense.io
• Phone: 3038840838
• Email: zak@spotsense.io

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