Website gotenna.com Founded 2013 | Headquarters New York Type Privately held company | |
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Founders Daniela Perdomo, Jorge Perdomo | ||
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goTenna (goTenna Inc.) is a Brooklyn, New York-based startup that designs and develops technologies for off-grid and decentralized communications. goTenna devices pair with smartphones and, through intelligent mobile ad hoc networking protocols, enable users to send texts and share locations on a peer-to-peer basis, foregoing the need for centralized communications infrastructure of any kind.
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History
goTenna was founded by siblings Daniela and Jorge Perdomo in November 2012 after Hurricane Sandy knocked out 25 percent of cell towers, and caused outages for 25 percent of Internet services, across 10 states on the East Coast. The company’s stated goal is to build “people-powered peer-to-peer communication systems…reducing our reliance on cell towers and wifi routers, and providing anyone the ability to create a network on their terms.”
goTenna’s first prototype was built out of hardware hackerspace NYC Resistor. The company was bootstrapped until it raised a seed round of venture capital late in 2013. The company started taking pre-orders for its first product in July 2014. These orders started shipping in October 2015. In March 2016, goTenna closed a $7.5MM Series A financing and started to sell its product in retail channels beyond its own website.
In September 2016, goTenna announced the release of a second-generation device: goTenna Mesh, the first consumer-ready mesh network of its kind, as well as plans to follow it with devices meant to address professional mobile radio communications needs. In addition to hardware developments, goTenna launched goTenna Plus, a, subscription-based upgrade to the goTenna applications, which includes the capability to use other goTenna users as gateways to relay messages through to traditional SMS networks. The company also released its software development kit, enabling software developers to create new applications using goTenna hardware.
Partnerships
In April 2015, goTenna won a grant through the New York City Economic Development Corporation’s RISE:NYC competition, aimed at increasing resiliency among small businesses either affected by Hurricane Sandy or susceptible to similar natural disasters resulting from climate change. As a term of the grant, goTenna will provide devices to roughly 10,000 small businesses who suffered damage from Sandy in 2012 or are otherwise in the FEMA-designated 100-year floodplain.