New funding, new executives, new offices at uControl

AUSTIN, Texas—Home security and automation provider uControl on July 20 announced it received $3.9 million in new funding, hired two new executives and is doubling its office space here.

The company is aggressively hiring new talent, said Jason Domangue, VP of marketing, and intends to grow the size of its staff of 15 to 32 "with the current hiring plan." Tom Chmielewski is uControl's new VP of sales and David Costilow is the new VP of customer service.

"We're almost five years old, and up until now, we've been focused on building the product," Domangue said. "These hires will put us in position to bring the product to market in a big way. Before now, it was just me doing sales and marketing, really, all customer-facing aspects. This will accelerate our business development and sales dramatically."

The new funding completes part of an open $9 million round. "We expect the remainder of the $5.1 million to be closed by end of the year," he said.

The company has always raised its funding from private equity, angels, customers and partners—never traditional VCs or institutional funding.

Domangue said traditional VCs have, frankly, not been interested thus far. "We've been able to be lean and mean," he said. "We may have raised less money, but we're a big player in the space." The lack of massive funding has "made us make bets rather than do everything. We've stayed laser-focused on a rock-solid home security product."

UControl has recently announced deals with cable customers such as Comporium, Massillion and NewWave. Its partners include Ember and SMC Networks.

"I think over the next couple of months, we'll be able to talk about some folks we've not announced," Domangue said, "much larger players in the cable and telco space."

Security Systems News continues to report on this story. Look for an interview with uControl president Jim Johnson later this week.