Level Lock is the Smart Lock you Never Know is There

Smart locks come in all shapes and sizes and mostly end up with a large unsightly mechanism on the inside of your home. Not with Level Lock. In this interview, we chat with Ken Goto, founder, and CTO of Level Home, about their first invention - the invisible smart lock.  Transcript: Marc Aflalo: We are back on YourTechReport. Thank you guys so much for being here. It is @YourTechReport on all our social media. Where you'll find lots of cool stuff. Anytime we talk about something here on the radio show, we tend to like to showcase it on our various social media platforms. And this next product we're going to be talking about is one that is close to home because I'm a big smart home fan. If you guys listen to the show and hopefully you guys do. Our next guest, his name is Ken Goto. He's the CTO of a company, Ken the company's Level Home, right? Ken Goto: The company is Level Home, correct. Marc Aflalo: Level Home, and this product. And I'll tell you guys a story here. Every once in a while, I search online as I'm doing research for new products. And I try to see what's coming out in the market. Because I've gone and leaned towards the HomeKit platform because my family is mostly iOS. I fell upon Level Lock. Now there are a lot of smart locks out there, and people who are trying various things when it comes to a lock. But Ken when it comes to the form factor of the way we think of smart locks, I think there's always a key pad on the outside. And then there's some kind of big bulky thing that sits on the inside. You got to change the batteries every couple months. And really you guys have taken things to a whole different level. And I want you to do your best because I know it's hard to describe physically, but describe physically the Level Lock to people. And then we'll get into the backstory and how this came to be. Ken Goto: Yeah. Yeah. So let's definitely talk about that. As you said, smart locks tend to be big, bulky, obvious things sitting on your door, holding batteries, circuit boards, all that stuff. Level Lock is basically invisible to your eye. Once it's installed, it looks like the lock you already had on your door. In fact, it is the lock you already had on the door. So the way we do that is you take your housings from your existing deadbolt. You take them off your door and inside that cavity, that's in your door, you've got a bolt that's there now. And it's taking up all that space. And what we do is we live inside that borehole entirely inside. So our motors, our gears, our boards, sensors, it's all in there. It's all in a two and an eighth inch diameter, less than an inch wide gap. Ken Goto: And then you take your housings that you just took off and you put them back on. And we go away. So the end result is suddenly, it's smart. It's funny when we were prototyping the product, I put it on my front door at my house and I'm sure you're familiar with this experience. I bring every piece of technology home, and most of the time it's a disappointment. And I usually have to hear it from my wife. "Can I just turn on a light? Can I work the stereo. I want to watch [crosstalk 00:02:50]." Marc Aflalo: Oh my God this is the last three months of my life. Ken Goto: Yeah, seriously. So I put it on our door. It was there for maybe three months before I actually said, "Hey, that thing I worked on it's in there. Do you want me to give you the iPhone app and it'll let you use it." It was just really interesting because we can meet people where they're at with technology. And in your home, you've got people who are. They're in different places in their life. Some people want to use a key they're old school. They don't want to mess with that. Other people, as you know, you're tethered to your phone, it's like part of your body. So we wanted to create this technology that was invisible, that just literally disappeared, so that it blends seamlessly with your daily routines. Marc Aflalo: Guys, I will post some videos and links in our social media. So you can really get a good view of how this works. And I think if you've ever installed any lock whatsoever. Your brain's going to click and go, "Oh my God, that is just genius." Because it really is. So now I really have to ask the question, where did this idea come from? Because there's always something that happens in the story of whether it's one of the founders, someone had something happened to them and it was born out of that, right? Ken Goto: Yeah, no, this is true. John Martin, my co founder and I, we've been passionate about the home space for the longest time we can remember. Your home is super sacred. It's where you greet your friends, and it's where your family is, and it's where you want to be safe. Especially now, these days where we're sheltering. So I think he and I both had a whole series of experiences where it's like, "This is really irritating. Why isn't there some technology in my home that makes my home welcoming. That makes my home ea...