Deal Dive: Thank god a startup is solving the bed bug problem

Bugs can be, well, pests. They can cause serious damage inside homes and buildings, and can also wreak havoc outdoors on crops and plants. The amount of chaos and calamity these little fellas can cause is directly tied to one factor: how many of them there are.

Most people don’t realize they have a bug problem until there are enough of them to cause noticeable damage to homes, furniture or wildlife. And by the time they do, the problem may already have become a bit unwieldy.

That’s exactly the kind of situation Spotta hopes to prevent. Using sensors, the startup’s small devices work to spot the first few bugs so people can get rid of the pests before there is an infestation.

“This is a sector that hasn’t innovated for decades,” Robert Fryers, the company’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch+. “Nothing has changed. People are looking at plastic buckets and sticky paper, and surely technology can help this. Catch it early before you need loads of chemicals.”

Spotta’s small devices attract bugs inside them, identify them and send images of the bugs to their users, Fryers explained. For this type of product to be able to scale, he said, it is key for the devices to be small, cheap and require very little maintenance.