Software engineers Greg Duffy and Aamir Virani founded Dropcam in 2009.[7] Duffy served as Dropcam's CEO and Virani served as COO.[8] They originally developed software for cameras made by Swedish company AXIS. Wanting to develop a less expensive camera, the two companies parted ways and Dropcam started producing its own cameras that primarily provided video monitoring for homes and small businesses.[9] Duffy and Virani credit Duffy's dad with at least part of the inspiration for Dropcam.[10] He wanted to identify the neighbor who was letting their dog poop on his lawn but they were having trouble finding a security camera that made it easy to record, stream and monitor large amounts of data.[11][12][13]
Dropcam received early funding from technology investor Mitch Kapor,[14] and in June 2012, Dropcam secured $12 million in venture capital funding led by Menlo Ventures and previous investors, Accel Partners and Bay Partners.[15] Dropcam has also received funding from Felicis Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.[16][17] The following year, it received $30 million more in funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, bringing the total raised to $47.8 million.[18][19] Duffy said Dropcam's revenue grew 500 percent year over year.[18]
Dropcam hosts cloud data through Amazon Web Services[20] and Duffy said in 2014 that Dropcam presently records more video than YouTube.[9][21]
Dropcam has become popular in families watching their children,[22] through monitoring pets at home, at pet stores[23] and in adoption centers. Users have also reportedly caught home-burglaries in progress.[24] Duffy has said, “Moms are using it to catch their babies' first steps when they're not around, checking that older kids have arrived home safely; contacting children who are ignoring their cell phones; and sharing footage from birthday parties.”[25]
Due to the success of Dropcam, several companies launched similar products and services in 2014 and 2015, such as SpotCam and simplicam.[26]
In June 2014 Google acquired Dropcam for $555 million and put it under its Nest Labs.[27][28] In June 2015, the parent company Nest introduced Nest Cam as a successor to Dropcam Pro.[29]
On April 7, 2023, Google announced that it would end support for both Dropcam and Nest Secure on April 8, 2024.[6][30]
