Apr 8, 2019

It takes a bit of work to get to grips with what Henley on Thames-based startup Shepherd Network is really all about. When I wrote about their seed funding round in December 2017, Shepherd appeared to be an analytics engine for sensor-based monitoring of boilers and pumps (see Shepherd gets dosh to watch over mechanical flock ), which it is. The nuance that wasn’t clear to me at the time was its main purpose, which is risk mitigation and loss minimisation for asset insurers. The idea is that with appropriate sensors attached, Shepherd analyses machine operation to warn of risks associated with potential mechanical or compliance failures (they give the example of Legionella compliance). Shepherd has recently raised a further £2m completing a Series A funding round backed by ‘sustainable’ investor, Earthworm. Shepherd charges from £18 per month (excluding sensor hardware) to analyse four monitoring points on one calorifier (heat exchanger), or £37 per month including hardware (sensors cost from around £20). This rises to £950 p.m. (software only) to analyse 500 monitoring points on 10 calorifiers. There are additional fees if Shepherd is used to offer services to the client’s own clients and partners and also if incorporated into an insurance offering. Shepherd is really a solution-based end-to-end hardware, software and services supplier and integrator, which makes perfect sense in what is a very specific application for IoT and analytics. As such, scaling up will not be as straightforward as for a pure-play software (or for that matter, hardware) product company. I can’t see any reference to partner integrators on its website, which I feel would be necessary if Shepherd doesn’t want its growth to be constrained by dint of its own resources.