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South African Wi-Fi monitoring startup Asimmetric has raised a seven-figure dollar funding round from three United States (US)-based early-stage hardware and Internet of Things (IoT) investment firms, allowing it to launch operations in San Francisco.

Launched early last year, Asimmetric has developed a monitoring tool that allows Wi-Fi providers to manage the user experience on their network.

Its hardware bots are installed at each Wi-Fi network site and monitors connection strength by acting just like other users, logging into access points, authenticating through a captive portal, and using real services. They constantly test the network end-to-end to ensure a positive user experience.

Disrupt Africa reported in September the Asimmetric had been selected to join the San Francisco-based hardware accelerator Highway1, becoming the first South African company selected to join the renowned 16-week programme.

As a result of its participation, Asimmetric has raised a seven-figure dollar funding round from VC firms Root Ventures, Bolt and Haystack, co-founder David Wilson told yesterday’s NetProphet event in Cape Town.

“That’s completely changed our trajectory. We now have an office in San Francisco that is going to be our commercial centre and we’re going to build our tech team in Cape Town,” he said.

Asimmetric has already taken on an additional two engineers, with Wilson saying the startup believes it has found a good solution in splitting its resources between the US and South Africa.

“We think by being in San Francisco and Cape Town we have the best of both worlds,” he said.

Participating in Highway1, Wilson said, had provided Asimmetric with access to VC investors it would not have otherwise had.

“Fundraising is really hard. There’s an adversarial relationship naturally between entrepreneurs and investors a lot of the time,” he said.

“Being in San Francisco in person makes it ten times easier to raise smart capital. There are more people there than anywhere else in the world that have built and scaled tech startups, and we want to tap into that.”

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