This Founder Wants to Help You Stop Package Theft

In his novel The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett wrote, “Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth….” What Pratchett could not have foreseen is a third kind of pirate—those that achieve immortality, or sometimes just a pair of socks, by stealing packages from the porches of unsuspecting online shoppers.


We’ve all been there: Placing an order on Amazon, getting the notification that the box has been delivered while we’re at work, seeing photographic proof of it on our doorstop… only to get home and find that package has been snatched up by a ruthless marauder with no regard for whether the contents inside were treasures or this month’s shipment of toilet paper.


“It’s a smart locker,” she told Inc. “It’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled, and all of the magic happens in an app on your phone, kind of like a package and delivery management suite of technology.”


Rather than needing to stay at home to try and intercept a delivery or go to, say, an Amazon locker location or UPS store, you can set the box up at your home, secured to your locked door. The box is battery and solar-powered, offering 18 months’ battery life with no charge required.


“The sleek, weather-proof delivery pod can be secured to the front of a home or apartment entryway with a quarter-inch carbon fiber cable tether,” according to press material. And it should certainly withstand the average boxcutter.


When customers check out at an online merchant, they open the Hyve app to generate a unique code, which they can paste as a set of delivery instructions into Amazon, Costco, Instacart, or DoorDash, to name a few examples of vendors. When the delivery person arrives, they’ll input the code into your Hyve box, which will unlock it so they can place your order inside.


That should prevent theft. However, there are some additional failsafes. If anyone tries to break into the box to steal something inside, a screaming alarm will sound, hopefully drowning any would-be porch pirate’s thieving ambitions. You’ll be alerted too. The app is also intended to be shared by contacts in your community, so if your box is breached, neighbors will be notified too.


“It’s going to send your neighbors a notification that right now on their neighbor’s doorstep someone is trying to steal packages,” Kieling said. “Unlike the video doorbell that captures the show, you’ll be able to notify and activate communities in real time when theft is happening.”


Hyve’s app is intended to be a subscription-based model, but Kieling and company haven’t yet settled on its structure—whether it will be a monthly membership or a tiered (pay per package) system.


“We’re not technically taking pre orders, we are just getting an indication of demand for the product,” she said. “Then we’ll order. I’m not sure how many units exactly we’ll order, but you know, like anything, you start out small until you gauge what the demand for your product is.”


“We worked with an incredible design firm out of Michigan on the industrial design and design for manufacturing, and we’re ready to go into production now, and we will have our first small pilot order,” she added.


Kieling and company are in the process of working on securing partnerships with companies to build out native infrastructure so that members of Hyve could automatically have their orders from online retailers delivered to their coded boxes.


“Hyve not only offers consumers peace of mind and security for their packages but also allows online retailers the opportunity to adopt more sustainable practices and reduce their carbon footprint exponentially,” Kieling says.


Right now, returning unwanted items can be a real hassle. Whether a customer has to take time to stand in an endless USPS line or sit at home waiting for a scheduled pickup so the package doesn’t get lifted by porch pirates on its way out, the options aren’t exactly convenient.


“Imagine being able to schedule a return through your app and then just setting your return securely in the Hyve on your doorstep and have that trigger your delivery provider, whether it’s Amazon or FedEx or DHL,” she said.


And while a Hyve may not be an option for everyone—and won’t stop thefts of large items like furniture, in any case—anything that makes a dent in that porch piracy number is worth its weight in gold.