Under the Wire

Yonatan Frankel is the founder and CEO of the Nucleus intercom system. He lives in Philadelphia.

How did you come up with the idea for a wireless intercom system?

My wife and I were renovating a house in suburbanPhiladelphiain 2013 and we thought about putting in an intercom. We asked the contractor for a quote it came back at almost $5000 — and that was for an old ugly analog system. I googled “Wi-Fi intercom” and was shocked that such a thing didn’t exist. The more I thought about it the more I realized that combining Wi-Fi a wide-angle HD camera and a touchscreen would mean we could sell a better system at lower cost because there’s no need to hardwire the house. More importantly you could extend that intercom system anywhere in the world. Now using Nucleus my wife can call me upstairs in the office or her sister in Yerushalayim. We also have iOS and Android apps that turn your phones into remote intercom stations.

Aside from the obvious — parents keeping track of their kids — who’s your clientele?