LynQ co-founder Matthew Misbin demonstrating his wearable technology.
LynQ provides long-range location tracking that’s simple and easy to use. It requires no phones, no WiFi, no networks, no maps, no apps, and no monthly fees. It’s the only location tracker that works when nothing else will.
1. Why did you start LynQ? Do you remember the moment when you first thought of the idea?
At LynQ, we’re all outdoor enthusiasts, festival goers, skiers, and hikers. Every one of us has experienced the anxiety of being lost or losing a friend or family member outside. But my co-founder Dave and I also both had grandparents with Alzheimer’s and dementia. My grandfather who was an inventor and hardware entrepreneur in his old age used to get lost on his way to work. Despite being one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known, age comes for us all. Dave and I really emotionally connected on solving this wandering problem for the elderly.
2. How do you see LynQ impacting how we live our lives?
LynQ is a super simple solution – but with mass-market application. The beauty is the problem we’re solving resonates with nearly everyone in their own personal way. Whether they were lost, lost someone, have aging parents, have kids, or just like to ski with their friends. People just connect the dots with how it’ll impact their lives. That’s why we sold 20,000 devices ($1.7M) in 60 days in our presale.
3. How have New York and Newlab positively impacted the development of your business?
New York and Newlab have been instrumental to where we are today – many of the other member companies have contributed to our strategy or directly partnered with us on deliveries. 10X Beta helped us design our accessories and our commercial charging hub (leveraging their learnings from designing something similar to another Newlab company StrongArm). Member companies LightPhone and Waverly Labs also helped us directly with our presale strategy, providing valuable insight into what made theirs so successful. The feedback loop here is just so much shorter! We can step out of our loft and walk down the hall to speak to some of the greatest minds in hardware. Name me another place where that’s possible in New York, or anywhere else for that matter. (Get at us Silicon Valley).
The Valley is doing its own thing with big dreams and New York is over here carving out a really amazing universe of hardware companies with a springboard to engage with much broader biodiversity of industries and companies than anywhere on earth. Talk about a plethora of problems and businesses to work with – it’s really hard to replicate. Heck Newlab even put us in touch with Tech Transfer Day and US PACOM which led to our eventual participation in the field experiment with the US Government. And the Army Futures Command Accelerator we participated in and presented in at Newlab gave us a unique opportunity to engage with end-users and the folks over at the Army Applications Lab that’s led to our first government commitment to purchase.
4. What do you see as your responsibility to make technology ethical and accessible to all?
Technology maps our social needs. And necessity is the mother of invention. If technology isn’t ethical or accessible, then what’s the point? As makers and problem solvers providing the solutions of tomorrow that touch people’s lives, we have a GREAT responsibility to make sure as many people can have these solutions and feel as good about using them as we feel about producing them. Without scale and widespread adoption, the advancements and solutions exist in a silo. Technologists have great power to do what’s possible, or in some cases what was never before possible. To solve problems, capture people’s attention and imagination, and make them happy!
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