Stealth startup OnBeep is working on some type of wearable device, which may involve push-to-talk technology. Jesse Robbins, the San Francisco firm's CEO and cofounder, is promising a life-changing product.
Robbins told VentureBeat that OnBeep's hardware could "directly change the lives of everyone on the planet." However, he declined to provide much more information. GigaOM suggested OnBeep aims to produce a device capable of push-to-talk (PTT) capabilities for use in vertical markets, including public safety.
Integration of push-to-talk functionality with LTE network technology is one of the aims of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), which is charged with building the 700 MHz nationwide public-safety broadband network. If OnBeep is developing a wearable device with PTT that could be used by first responders, it is likely that FirstNet would be keenly interested.
Interestingly, Robbins, a former Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) executive, also is a volunteer firefighter. And cofounder Greg Albrecht is described on LinkedIn as a former senior engineer at Splunk as well as an emergency medical technician and disaster worker.
Another cofounder, Roger Wood, is also chairman of Art+Data and worked at Motorola's iDEN Group and Nextel Communications in its pre-Sprint (NYSE:S) days. And Neil Girling, now a hardware engineer with OnBeep, formerly worked at Ekso Bionics, which has pioneered intelligent exoskeletons.
OnBeep, which raised $445,000 during 2013, is currently seeking Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android developers, providing a wee bit of additional insight into its plans.
For more:
- see this VentureBeat article
- see this GigaOM article
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