Garageio

The idea for Garageio began in 2012 when co-founder Zak Dziczkowski discovered his garage door remote was missing.^[8] Zak soon discovered that the replacement cost for a new remote was too expensive and envisioned a better way to control the garage door. That same night Zak called co-founder Dave Reif and together they began to work on the Garageio prototype.^[9][10]

In October 2012, Garageio became a product of Alottazs Labs, LLC bringing aboard additional co-founders, entrepreneur Greg Colarich, creative designer Jess Boonstra, and marketer Zach Cochran.^[11]

Garageio spent the early part of the year focusing on application development and product design. Garageio was the recipient of the Cool Idea! Award by Minnesota-based plastic manufacturer Proto Labs which provided gratis prototype casings and a subsequent production run of parts.^[12][13] In November 2013, Garageio launched a successful crowd-funding campaign through Fundable raising $30,000 in pre-order sales.^[14]

Garageio began shipping early in 2014 to its early crowd-funding backers and continued to take orders through its website. Garageio released an updated version of the application and announced additional platform integrations such as IFTTT (if this than that), which allows users to create recipes that trigger customized events.^[15][16][17] Garageio IFTTT recipes include events such as if it rains then close my garage or if I leave my house close my garage.^[18] Garageio increased its manufacturing network and continued to ship throughout North America.

Garageio was one of the first recipients of the Alexa Fund, a fund by Amazon.com to support startups on voice control technology.^[19]