We help you make the right connections
Manufacturers choose us because they can reduce go-to-market by as much as 80%. Engineers love the robustness of the Afero service and how they can re-use 90% of their work from project to project. And customers love how easy it is to get their device connected and how reliable and responsive their device operates. (That's code for: fewer customer support calls!)
From thing to connected thing:
simple economical secure connectivity
From sensor to cloud:
capturing unique data sets
From cloud to insight:
converting data to meaningful analytics
From insight to action:
driving real-time interactive action
From data paths through supply chain:
hardware-backed security
From device shipment to customer activation:
easy onboarding
123+
IoT patents
600+
SKU portfolio
100B+
Device interactions
Our Story, a gazillion connections at a time
Afero's objective is to make all the world's devices really smart and really secure.
The Afero Platform provides the 'Operating System' to make the massive range of connected products work securely every-time. Afero solves the really hard problems associated with connected things - wifi, voice, Bluetooth, platform integration among many others. We all have stories of trying to set-up supposedly 'smart things' only to be frustrated to the point of giving up and even returning the product. Afero solves these issues.
The Afero IoT Platform™ accelerates time-to-market, eases ongoing operations, and simplifies how your business apps control and interact with far-edge and near-edge devices. With Afero, connected things can participate in business processes securely, easily, and at scale.
Imagine all your IoT devices accessed, controlled, and managed as if they were all designed together. Imagine everything works with everything, and new devices can build on previous work, or be added to the same beautifully designed and intuitive mobile app. The Afero Platform makes that possible.
Our Team
Joe is an experienced Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Afero to re-think the way Internet of Things products and solutions are developed: by hiding complexity, Afero lets developers and users focus on their data. Joe also founded Danger Research in 1999 with co-founders Andy Rubin and Matt Hershenson. At Danger, Joe led the design of the hiptop smartphone (sold in the US as the T-Mobile Sidekick). Danger was purchased by Microsoft in 2008 for $500MM.
Before Danger, Joe joined WebTV as its first employee, where he developed the OS used in the WebTV set-top box platform, which was licensed by Sony, Philips, and others. His career began 25 years ago at Apple, and has also included senior engineering roles at 3DO and Catapult Entertainment. Just prior to founding Afero, Joe spent several years at Google working on Android.
Shin has had extensive startup business development experience in both Japan and the US over the last 20 years. Prior to Afero, Shin was part of the founding team of Movida, a major startup incubator and accelerator in Asia. Before Movida, he was at Hambrecht & Quist, where he managed investments in internet companies across the US and Japan.
Earlier in his career, Shin was with GE's Corporate Audit Staff, and also at Mitsui & Co., where he worked with various global electronics component companies.
Rocky Pimentel joined Afero in early 2017 as Chairman of the Board. Rocky's background includes experience as an operating executive with P&L responsibilities and a strategic advisor for numerous companies. He serves on the Board of Directors of Xilinx (XLNX) as well as Imperva Inc. (IMPV). He held various executive positions at Seagate, including President, Global Markets & Customers.
Rocky served as the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer for McAfee, Inc., a consumer and enterprise digital security products company acquired by Intel, (INTC). Rocky has either been an operating executive or on the Board of Directors for LSI Logic (acquired by Broadcom Limited (AVAGO), WebTV, (acquired by Microsoft), and LifeLock, Inc. (acquired by Symantec).
Preethi Narayanan joins Afero as VP of Engineering, bringing her years of experience shipping products such as mobile phones, first-generation Echo products, mesh-based access points, Chromebooks, and Smart TVs. Prior to joining Afero, Preethi held engineering leadership positions at Roku, eero, Intel, Amazon, and Motorola. She has helped bring many Zero-to-One products to market and then scale product production to hundreds of millions of units. Preethi has built and grown teams at both startups and large organizations. She holds bachelors and masters degrees in engineering.
In addition to her distinguished work career Preethi is Chapter Leader at UPWARD Women, a global networking organization accelerating the advancement of executive women.
Kumar Das is a business development executive with expertise in partnerships and go-to-market strategy. With a proven track record of launching and scaling consumer hardware products, Kumar excels at cultivating partnerships and growing revenue. Most recently Kumar led go-to-market efforts to deepen engagement with Android and Google Assistant platforms. Prior to this, Kumar grew a team that managed retail partnerships for Google's consumer hardware business, starting with the launch of its first mainstream hardware products in Chromebooks and Chromecast. He scaled the business across smart home, networking, home entertainment, computing, phones, and tablets and guided products across these categories from zero to tens of millions of users. Prior to his time at Google, Kumar worked at networking security startups. Kumar holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in computer science from MIT.
Dave leads Afero's Product Management that covers mobile apps, cloud and device requirements and specifications. Dave is a veteran of Silicon Valley having worked at companies such as Sun Microsystems, Pixo, and Palm. He also bring valuable wireless and mobile experience to the team.
In his spare time, Dave edits book manuscripts and attends classic rock and pop concerts.
Tracy Schmidt brings almost 20 years of experience in HR to her role as Chief People & Culture Officer for Afero. 10 of those were at Google, where she led the HR Business Partner function for Android and the Mobile business unit. She has worked extensively with international teams, including time spent in Google's Zurich tech hub.
She specializes in scaling quick-growing organizations and evolving an exciting culture for teams distributed across the world.
Bret joins Afero as Chief Security Strategist and brings a wide range of business insights, product strategy, cybersecurity expertise, and over 25 years of leadership experience to Afero. Prior to joining Afero, Bret held leadership positions at Broadcom, Symantec, Blue Coat Systems and several other startups, enterprises, and nonprofits.
Bret has extensive experience collaborating with government agencies, critical infrastructure, industry thought leaders, and academic researchers from around the world to drive creative new ideas, technologies, and solutions that can have material impact on protecting systems and data crucial to our way of life.
Scott is responsible for hardware design and operations at Afero. With more than 20 years of experience, he has been at the nexus of disruptive technologies applying his skills to advance the early stages of game consoles, Mac compatibles, low-power processors, smartphones, and now IoT. Most recently, Scott was Vice President of Hardware for 3D Robotics, designing and manufacturing unmanned aerial vehicles. Prior to that, Scott worked at Google, Danger, Microsoft, Transmeta, Hello, UMAX, Radius, and 3DO. In his spare time, Scott creates kinetic art that breathes fire and unleashes lightning.
Ben leads the Afero Customer Enablement (ACE) team that works with Afero customers around the world to help assure their success. Ben's team handles Sales Engineering, Customer Development Support, and post-launch Customer Technical Support. The ACE team is filled with amazing people who are dedicated to customers' success. With such a well-designed and easy-to-use product though, it can be too easy a job sometimes, but don't tell anyone that.
Ben's background is in wireless and high-tech product development, with over 20 years experience, including being a salaryman in Japan for Mitsubishi Electric, working at research labs in the UK, Australia and US, launching 13 mobile phones to market, and stints at Sharp, Intel and finally Qualcomm before joining Afero. For fun, he codes games in Java and keeps koi fish.
