Personal alarm entrepreneur targets Britain’s army of lone workers with tech roll-out

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It was an attack on a neighbour that inspired Rebecca Pick to launch her personal alarm start-up Pick Protection, which now has the UK’S eight million-strong army of lone workers in its sights.

The entrepreneur was studying at the University of Strathclyde when she heard of the attack, and was shocked to find out that nobody came to her neighbour’s assistance despite her cries for help.

Having previously been an intern at a security company, Pick says she knew that police would automatically respond to a burglar alarm, adding: “I saw there was a way of changing it from monitoring a building to monitoring a person, and I raised the first £60,000 of angel investment on the back of it being a business-to-consumer product.”

Since then Pick Protection, founded in 2014, has raised almost £1 million of investment to take its technology to market. In October, the firm secured £744,000 in a funding round led by Equity Gap, with other backers including the University of Strathclyde, Gabriel Investment Syndicate,