Kisi Brand Guidelines: A Munich Doorbell Idea Turned New York Smartphone Door Key

A ringing doorbell in Munich and a move to New York.

Kisi began with a door problem. In a July 2014 interview with the New York International blog, co-founder Maximilian Schuetz said the idea came while he and his colleagues worked at a fitness-machine startup in Munich, where the doorbell rang so often that engineers kept having to stand up to buzz visitors in. The team asked why keys were still physical objects when so much else had moved onto the smartphone. The name, Schuetz explained, joins “keys” and “easy”; the company’s website gives its pronunciation as “kē-zē.”

The company says the first prototype was built in a kitchen in 2012 by its three founders, Bernhard Mehl, Carl Pfeiffer and Schuetz. The 2014 interview reports that the team won the NYC Next Idea Competition in 2013, ahead of 220 other entrants, and then moved the business from Munich to New York City; when the blog met Schuetz, the company was working from the NYU Poly incubator in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Kisi’s own timeline dates its launch to 2013, when the first office fitted with a Kisi prototype opened in Manhattan.

Schuetz gave practical reasons for the move. New York, he told the blog, was a dense market with strong infrastructure, and because each installation needed hardware on site, the team could reach all of its clients by subway within an hour. He also credited the New York City Economic Development Corporation with introducing the young company to investors, clients and contacts.

Early coverage described an add-on rather than a replacement. TechCrunch reported in May 2014, when the company showed its device in the Hardware Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, that the hardware worked with the access control system already installed in a building, so owners could add it with a light installation. Building managers used an online dashboard to issue and revoke keys, send guest keys, open doors remotely and limit access to certain doors at certain times, while key holders slid a button in a free iOS or Android app to unlock. Schuetz told TechCrunch the company was aiming at business customers, and named the New York developer Two Trees and the incubator TechStars NY among them.

From a phone-only pilot to readers, video and occupancy.

Kisi’s range grew from that phone-only start. Its timeline says a pilot of the mobile-only version reached about 100 offices in 2014, and that in 2016 it rolled out the Kisi Reader Pro, a US-made reader for both smartphones and cards. The company says it passed one million active users in 2019, launched a wider platform covering video, intrusion and occupancy in 2021, and in 2022 added compatibility with Wiegand readers, naming HID among them. Its website now lists devices including the Reader Pro, Terminal Pro, Controller Pro and an intercom, alongside visitor management, video surveillance and tailgating detection.

The customers it addresses have widened too. In 2014 Schuetz described office buildings and residential complexes as the company’s main market; the website today has pages for gyms and clubs, yoga and Pilates studios, coworking spaces, commercial real estate and technology firms, and it runs a webinar series for fitness businesses. Kisi says its system is used in more than 50 countries and secures about 500 million square feet of facilities, figures it gives under 2024 in its timeline.

The company describes its manufacturing and development as split across the Atlantic: Kisi says its products are made in the United States and developed in Sweden. Its website footer names Kisi Inc., with offices in Brooklyn and Stockholm, and the company says its team works from 15 countries and includes more than 20 nationalities, with a New York headquarters, a Stockholm office and remote staff across America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Design and documentation.

Access control is a quiet kind of design. Most people meet it as a small reader beside an office door, a keypad at a side entrance or a plastic card on a lanyard, and only notice it when the light turns from red to green. The makers in this guide build those readers, the cards and phone credentials that talk to them, the controllers and software behind them, and, increasingly, the cameras and video systems that sit alongside.

Much of the industry’s imagery comes from the building rather than the product. Pictures on company websites and in trade catalogues often show lobbies and turnstiles, staff badges clipped to belts, a phone held up to a door as a key, a guard desk facing a wall of video screens, and rows of server racks where the software runs. Some brands sell mainly through installers and integrators, so their pictures are aimed as much at the person fitting the door as at the person walking through it.

The trade meets at a few large fairs. ISC West in Las Vegas is where HID Global was introduced to the security industry in April 2006, according to the formation announcement reprinted by SecurityInfoWatch; Security Essen, held in the German city of Essen, is another fixture of the calendar. Trade titles such as Security Today and Benchmark report on product launches, new factories and the industry’s own awards.

Ownership in the sector ranges from family firms to divisions of large lock and technology groups, and several brands have changed hands more than once. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker — who founded it, who owns it, and where it says its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Connect people and spaces.

Two of the founders lead the company today. Kisi’s website lists Maximilian Schuetz as chief executive and Carl Pfeiffer as chief operating officer and chief technology officer. The company states its vision in three words, “Connect people and spaces,” and its mission as developing products that make facility access easier and allow spaces to be managed remotely. It names its values as forward, human, trusted and responsible, and says it publishes a yearly study of work-life balance.

The brand has always been built around a gesture as much as an object. In the 2014 TechCrunch report, unlocking meant sliding a button in an app; in the New York International interview the same year, Schuetz showed it by opening a large steel door in DUMBO with a swipe of his phone. Its later devices share a “Pro” suffix, and its website presents them as parts of one security platform. Its press page offers brand assets, including the Kisi symbol, for journalists and partners.

For a design guide, Kisi shows how a company can turn the act of opening a door into an interface, with a short, spoken-aloud name doing much of the work. Compare Brivo, another cloud access control company, and SALTO, which also makes electronic access systems for buildings. For this guide we use a night blue, fog and a teal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kisi’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.