Friends and I were having beers and decided to come up with the most absurd product we could conceive of actually getting funded. One guess as to what it was.
Honestly, doors and locks do not need 'disruption.' Many many other things could use this treatment and the hours put in.
Aside: We decided the pricing sweet spot was 40, as that's about double the cost of a real lock. Also, this actually passes one of the Valley tests, that the company help get you laid (Fb, Google, Uber, etc all do this and the lock here does too as it is 'James Bond-y')
As someone who's very forgetful and tends to leave things behind, I must disagree. When I was in college a few years ago, I left my door unlocked for a period of months, because I had lost my keys, but replacing keys required a fee (increasing every time) and was generally a cumbersome process. I suppose an easy solution would be to not have an obnoxious fee, but if I had had a Lockitron, I could have just used my phone, and if I lost my phone (which, of course, has a remote GPS function), I could have switched to a new one.
A different use case: over New Year's I was on a trip to Germany, working with some friends in a hackerspace there. Since it was a private space (and open at all hours), the door was not kept unlocked, but a relatively large number of people had access to it. The hackerspace could have handed out keys, or used some more complicated keycard system, but instead they used a Lockitron-like device (not sure which one; it being a hackerspace, they were managing the lock over SSH!). This way they could give anyone (potentially temporary) access without complicated logistics.
Good write-up. Also, Denny's is a shining counterpoint to this. Many locations are 24/7/365. Friends have made it to store management and are explicitly told that though there are locks on the front doors, no-one has the keys as they typically loose them. Apparently, this is not uncommon. I heard about a place in LA that hasn't closed in 50 years or something. The only time they tried to was during the Rodney King riots, but as the keys were long gone, they decided to stay open.
Honestly, doors and locks do not need 'disruption.' Many many other things could use this treatment and the hours put in.
Aside: We decided the pricing sweet spot was 40, as that's about double the cost of a real lock. Also, this actually passes one of the Valley tests, that the company help get you laid (Fb, Google, Uber, etc all do this and the lock here does too as it is 'James Bond-y')