Eero rakes in $1 million from slow-Wi-Fi haters

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Hate how slow Wi-Fi is in your home? Seems you're not alone.

A stealthy startup promising faster download and streaming speeds raked in $1 million in pre-orders in just 48 hours, a nod to growing consumer frustration as everywhere from entertainment rooms to home-offices pressure router capacity.

After Eero announced its existence and $5 million in funding led by First Round Ventures on Feb. 3, the company immediately made its sleek white Wi-Fi devices available for pre-order online at $125 for one and $299 for a three-pack, discounted from $199 and $499 respectively.

Within three hours, Eero had $100,000 in pre-orders, and two days later— after hitting $1 million—decided it would end its discounted offer Feb. 16 at 3 a.m. Eastern.

"We assume that will slow the pre-orders a bit, because we want to be sure we can make all our deliveries come this summer," says co-founder and CEO Nick Weaver, 26, whose fascination with famed Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen (known for the futuristic TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and the graceful St. Louis arch) spawned the company's name.

"There's a new expectation around design," says Weaver. "Companies like Apple and Nest have pushed that, and given that the best (Wi-Fi) coverage is provided by having a number of our products in the home, we wanted to make sure it was something people were happy to display."

Eero is a mesh-based Wi-Fi system, which means that the devices talk to each other and form an overlapping and extending grid throughout the house. Sonos music players use the same protocol to speak to each other within a home.

Mesh technology is typically more expensive than alternatives that extend a signal from one powerful base unit, which in turn may limit the growth of a company such as Eero, says NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker.

"Mesh is a premium solution, which may not be for everyone," says Baker, adding that while Eero's out-of-the-box sales are eye-catching, they still pale in comparison to the $800 million spent annually by consumers on routers.

That said, "extending the range of an in-home network is certainly something that has a lot of players in the space moving fast, and the technology is getting better," he says. "Clearly it's an issue for people as they have more and more devices in the home that have to be connected."

Weaver founded the company with Stanford University friends Amos Schallich and Nate Hardison. He tapped a few significant advisors in cooking up his white, arched-top square: Fred Bould, an industrial designer with a hand in shaping Nest's thermostat and smoke detector, and Jon Rubinstein, former Palm CEO who worked on the Apple iPod and AirPort. The latter is the Cupertino company's brisk-selling wireless router.

Beyond promising more reliable and faster download speeds, Eero's setup and software upgrades are simplified by virtue of the device being connected to the cloud. "We wanted this all to be as easy and seamless as possible for the consumer," says Weaver.

His next challenge will be overseeing the production of 10,000-plus Eero pods in China.