Open Garden, Inc. is an American mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) based in

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, that sells eSIM-based prepaid mobile data subscriptions.

History

Open Garden, Inc. was co-founded in 2011 by businessman Micha Benoliel,

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

architect Stanislav Shalunov,

software developer Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, Computer programming, programming, software documentation, documenting, software testing, testing, and Software bugs, bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applic ...

Greg Hazel and systems architect Taylor Ongaro, in San Francisco, California in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Products

Between 2011 and 2015, Open Garden developed software of the same name, a proprietary internet community-based connection sharing

software application Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

that shared Internet access with other devices via

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

. When the person whose Internet connection was being shared left the network, the application automatically detected and connected to the next best available connection. After raising $2 million seed money from a group of

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

s in September 2012, Open Garden started developing and incorporating roll out multi-hop connectivity and

channel bonding In computer networking, link aggregation is the combining ( aggregating) of multiple network connections in parallel by any of several methods, in order to increase throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, to provide redundan ...

into their application. The new funding was led by Allan Green, an early investor in Phone.com and Mobileway,

David Ulevitch David A. Ulevitch (born December 10, 1981) is an American entrepreneur and Venture capital investor. He was the founder and CEO of the enterprise security company OpenDNS (acquired by Cisco) and founder of EveryDNS (acquired by Dyn). In December ...

, then CEO of OpenDNS, Derek Parham, creator of

Google Apps for Business Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet a ...

, and Digital Garage, which also invested in

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and

Path A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail. Path or PATH may also refer to: Physical paths of different types * Bicycle path * Bridle path, used by people on horseback * Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle * Desire p ...

. The application was free for download for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and at that time, Open Garden planned a

freemium business model Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...

, with paid features like VPN access for business users.

Awards and recognitions

Open Garden and its product were introduced on October 11, 2011 at the Android Open 2011, where they won the Startup Showcase Award. On May 26, 2012, Open Garden won the Most Innovative Startup Award at the

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

Disrupt Conference 2012. Toward the end of Conference, one of the judges, venture

capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures, said that Open Garden was his favorite all along, stating that what the company does is the most worthy of the conference name - Disrupt. The following year, on October 23, 2013, Open Garden won the G-Startup Award at the Global Mobile Innovator's Conference.

References

{{reflist, 2 Companies based in Miami