Smartbin.io is raising a Crowd SAFE at a $6 million valuation. This is a relatively reasonable valuation for a hardware technology company at this stage. While other startups might leverage their autonomous robot technology to raise at massive valuations, smartbin.io’s offer is more fair for investors. The company’s existing smart waste bin technology is already generating revenue via a pilot at Google’s headquarters. If revenue from that product continues to grow, smartbin.io could soon justify a valuation much larger than $6 million. That’s not even considering smartbin.io’s plans to create an even more advanced trash collection robot, which could become very valuable proprietary technology if all goes well. Therefore, this funding round offers a good price for investors. 

Smartbin.io sits within the nascent smart waste management market, which is quite small. It was valued at just $1.8 billion globally in 2020. However, the market is growing rapidly. With an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.7% over the next several years, global demand for smart waste management is expected to exceed $6.5 billion by 2026. 

Smartbin.io’s goal is to capture value from the broader waste management market with expanded solutions for autonomous trash collection and robotic sorting of recyclables. Siphoning value from the traditional waste management market is a much larger opportunity, as that market is expected to exceed $2.4 trillion by 2030. 

For now, smartbin.io is nestled within a relatively small industry. However, demand for smart waste management solutions is expected to grow significantly in coming years. The company also has the opportunity to vie for the broader waste management market, which is primed for disruption. As such, the company’s market prospects are strong.

Smartbin.io was founded by Hamoun Karami, an entrepreneur with a passion for urban planning and sustainable development. Karami holds bachelor’s degrees from Carleton University and Sheridan College. His only professional experience thus far has been founding an app designed to help city dwellers use and give feedback on public facilities. This company apparently shut down less than two years after founding. 

Karami has recruited two additional executives to the smartbin.io team, but neither one works on smartbin.io full-time. Andrea Bulgarelli is smartbin.io’s CTO and is also the founder of his own robotics company, Scribit. Scribit, a writing and erasing robot, raised $1.6 million on Kickstarter and was honored as one of Time’s 100 best inventions of 2019. While Bulgarelli’s experience with Scribit is impressive, he still serves as CEO, so his time spent on smartbin.io is presumably limited. The same is true for smartbin.io’s head of design, Alexander Lehnert. While Lehnert has more than a decade of design and motion graphics experience, he is employed by a different company as a lead UX designer. 

Smartbin.io’s only full-time executive is relatively inexperienced, and its better-credentialled leaders don’t work for the company full-time. Plus, none of the senior team has experience in the waste management industry. Both of these factors might be concerns for prospective investors.

Smartbin.io’s existing product, a smart waste bin that monitors its own fullness, doesn’t offer particularly compelling differentiators beyond normal trash cans. While it’s nice to be able to monitor trash can capacity with an app, this feature alone doesn’t seem to be enough to build a company around. In addition, there are other companies building smart waste bins, including Intuitive AI and Bin-e. Both of those companies’ products are very similar to smartbin.io’s waste bins.  

Smartbin.io’s intended expansion into autonomous trash-collecting robots is much more exciting. This solution offers a drastic improvement over trash cans that are tediously emptied each day by janitorial staff at malls, office buildings, airports, and other public places. Potential buyers could easily be swayed by the cost savings of a one-time robot purchase compared to ongoing personnel costs. Smartbin.io appears to be one of the first companies building robots dedicated to trash collection. If the company succeeds at building a high-tech robot (and can then patent that technology), it could build a formidable moat that would protect it from competition in the smart waste management industry.

Smartbin.io is a very young company without a great deal of performance data. The business brought in a bit more than $11,000 in revenue in 2020 (the last year of audited financials available), presumably from its smart trash bin pilot programs. Smartbin.io’s net loss that year was roughly $28,000. Expenses were minimal, so research and development programs for autonomous robots probably hadn’t begun in earnest yet. 

The company’s chief successes thus far have been its smart waste bin pilot program at Google’s headquarters (which has apparently been renewed and expanded) and its acceptance into the Techstars accelerator program. Beyond those wins, investors don’t have a great deal of data to assess whether smartbin.io is moving in a positive direction.

Smartbin.io is a high-risk investment. The company is very young and hasn’t demonstrated strong revenue potential yet, which poses an existential threat to further operations. The development of autonomous trash-collecting robots will undoubtedly be very capital intensive, but smartbin.io hasn’t demonstrated an ability to raise capital. Therefore, funding and financials are major areas of concern. There’s also a time risk, as it could take a long time for smartbin.io to successfully build a functioning robot. Lastly, the company’s leadership team is inexperienced, and key leaders aren’t committed full-time.

Smartbin.io is a very early-stage company. An investment in this business is highly speculative. Smartbin.io’s trash cans — which monitor their own fullness with a companion reporting app — aren’t very exciting or well differentiated from competing smart waste bins. The success of the company seems to hinge on the development of autonomous trash-collecting robots, which will be a major research and development project requiring intense focus, time, and capital. It seems dubious that smartbin.io’s small team of three executives — two of whom aren’t committed to the business full-time — can manage this major project. Envisioning, prototyping, testing, and manufacturing these robots will also take a great deal of capital, and smartbin.io hasn’t raised money from institutional investors. While investors evaluating this crowdfunding round have the opportunity to get in early on a potentially valuable technology company, it’s just as likely that they’ll fail to receive a return on investment if smartbin.io can’t deliver on its vision of autonomous trash-collecting robots.

While smartbin.io has a long way to go before making its concept of autonomous trash-collecting robots a reality, it’s easy to see how this innovation could be a game changer in the waste management industry. Administrators of airports, shopping malls, office buildings, and other public spaces could be easily swayed by the efficiency and cost savings of an automated trash-collecting solution. When combined with future smartbin.io products like an autonomous recycling system, these robots could be a meaningful step forward for waste management. In addition, the smartbin.io team includes a seasoned robotics entrepreneur with experience developing and manufacturing innovative technology. The company was accepted into the prestigious Techstars accelerator and has expanded a smart waste pilot program at Google headquarters. If this trajectory continues, investors receiving a good deal in this round could reap major benefits as the company grows.

Smartbin.io is a smart waste management company offering self-monitoring trash cans and, eventually, autonomous trash-collecting robots. The company’s CTO was honored by Time magazine for developing one of 2019’s 100 best inventions (a writing and erasing robot), and smartbin.io was accepted into the Techstars accelerator. Although the smart waste management market is small, it’s primed to grow rapidly, and smartbin.io could potentially draw consumers from the much larger waste management market. Smartbin.io has a long way to go in developing its robots, but it is raising at a fair valuation given its early stage. 

However, investors should note that smartbin.io has only one full-time employee and hasn’t generated any meaningful revenue yet. The company’s success seems to hinge on the prospect of autonomous trash-collecting robots. Its existing smart waste bin product isn’t particularly compelling or well-differentiated from competitors. The process of developing trash-collecting robots could be arduous, time-consuming, and capital intensive. Investors may feel that smartbin.io’s meager track record doesn’t provide strong enough evidence that the company can achieve this lofty goal. Therefore, smartbin.io has been rated a Neutral Deal. 

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd analyst report or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com. 

Analysis written on February 25, 2022.