Gridless
Partner since Feb 2019
50% of business comes from Verkada
2:1 ROI with Verkada
Background
When Hurricane Sandy devastated the northeastern United States in 2012, Gridless founders Jason Halpern and Patrick Murphy took the call to help by deploying their first mobile battery system to power search-and-rescue operations. Since then, Gridless has won a range of awards highlighting their commitment to clean energy and providing portable on-demand power in places as far as Liberia, Nepal, and Ethiopia.
“Originally, we were a company that did a lot of work with government agencies, including hurricane response and emergency batteries,” says Patrick, “The city of Philadelphia introduced us to Verkada and asked us to put our products together to develop a solution.”
The Challenge
Gridless attacks a unique use case with their off-grid products. At the city’s request, they began to develop a self-powered security camera system that would be simple for customers to access from a cloud-based remote platform.
"Government agencies need to be able to deploy cameras quickly and easily without the burden of a lot of infrastructure and training."
The Solution: Building Sentry with Verkada
“We hesitated to enter the security industry at all until we met Verkada. With the way Verkada stores footage so analytics are pushed out to the edge on individual cameras, we eliminate the need for an NVR or DVR, which is big for off-grid deployments. We finally saw the [Sentry] kit as viable.”
Gridless leveraged Verkada’s hybrid cloud cameras to develop Sentry, a solar-powered 24/7 security system that can be mounted to a pole and requires no wires, servers, or power lines. With Sentry, Gridless empowers customers with an easy way to remotely monitor and secure their sites.
“For our customers, it’s all about ease of use and reliability. That simplicity allows them to expand usage outside of the IT department, so anybody in the organization can use it. Being able to easily share a live link and grant or limit admin access to cameras is also a huge plus for government agencies.”
Key Result: 50% of the Business Comes from Verkada
“Verkada was the key to unlocking an entirely new use case, market, and verticals we didn’t sell to before – including oil, natural gas, and construction. Just after 2.5 years of partnership, about 50% of our business comes from Verkada.”
Today, the Sentry kit with Verkada has become Gridless’s fastest-growing product line, and makes up half of the business that Gridless is projected to do this year. Partnering with Verkada has allowed Patrick and his team to approach new industries with faster buying cycles than the government.
“It's been very exciting for us to see a product catch fire - customers call in and want to buy right away.”
Solving Critical Challenges for Customers
“After the Pittsburg Bridge collapsed, the Sentry units and Verkada cameras were deployed over the bridge to get eyes on these critical locations.”
With Sentry, Gridless enables customers to monitor remote areas from an easy-to-use, centralized software platform - accessible from any mobile device or web browser. Video security is natively integrated with Alarms for 24/7 intrusion detection with professional monitoring.
“We have one construction site in Southern California that had five break-ins per weekend. By partnering with Verkada Alarms, that customer now has the ability to not only view the construction site, but in an area where they don't have power and activity.”
Driving Demand with Customer-Focused Collaboration
The value provided by the Sentry line makes selling it as simple as demoing the product. “It’s very easy to sell Verkada because it's just about finding customers. It's not so much about convincing them because once they see the platform, they see how easy it is to use and how seamless it is to manage across multiple sites.”
To help them meet their goal, Verkada’s sales team works to find customers and generate leads for Gridless. “The benefit of having Verkada reps on the ground is that they understand what the customer problems are.”
Scaling Sentry Behind a Single Pane of Glass
“Many of our customers start with differents camera manufacturers and management systems on a very cobbled together platform, which creates a lot of usability issues. The great thing about Verkada is that it’s a fully integrated system - anybody in the organization can very easily log in and use it.”
With Verkada, Gridless provides customers with a video security system that is simple to set up, use, and scale. Customers are able to view all their cameras at once, be notified of incidents with real-time alerts, and share footage from one centralized platform. “That’s what got us and the City of Philadelphia so excited about Verkada, we looked at the sharability and said, ‘This is such an easy platform to use.’”
Looking Ahead: Innovation and Expansion
Innovation is at the core of Gridless’s partnership with Verkada. From the Sentry line to projects underway, Gridless adopts a builders’ mindset that is mirrored in Verkada. “Verkada comes to us with leads, but also with new customer pain points saying, ‘Hey Gridless, how do we solve this problem and build a solution together?’”
The result of the collaboration has been powerful.
“Not only does Verkada bring 50% of the leads that are helping us grow our business, we're also doubling in size this year. Growing alongside Verkada with startup energy has been amazing.”
Gridless plans to continue expanding the Sentry line, with the goal of making it a national brand. Their partnership with Verkada has also pushed boths teams to develop new products to continuously solve for customer pain points. “We’re developing a battery system for school buses, that allows for Verkada cameras to be seamlessly plugged for monitoring.”
Interested in learning more? Sign up for an on-demand webinar for information on Verkada’s Partner Programme.