The inspiration
LockEyeGaze is trying to fix a real gap in authentication. Passwords and standard biometrics often fall apart in higher-risk situations, they’re either easy to compromise, too rigid, or they create friction that pushes users away. On the other hand, stronger security checks usually come at the cost of usability or accessibility.
LockEyeGaze bridges this gap, using gaze-enhanced authentication. We combine simple gaze stimuli with eye-tracking to turn natural eye movements into flexible, customisable biometric signals for identity verification.
To check whether this was actually a problem worth solving, we focused early on customer discovery and validation. We spoke with people and organisations who deal with sensitive accounts or high-value actions and asked where existing authentication methods fail in real workflows. We also tested how people reacted to early prototypes and demos, especially whether eye-movement biometrics felt believable and usable rather than experimental or intrusive. We used feedback to continuously refine both the product idea and how we explain its value.
The team
LockEyeGaze sits right where security, human behaviour and biometric sensing meet. This matters because authentication is never just a technical model, it has to work inside real products, under real pressure, with usability limits, attackers trying to break it, and regulators watching closely. Our strength is that we don’t treat gaze or eye tracking as a lab curiosity. We approach it as something that has to survive messy, real-world conditions and still feel usable to people.
All of our founders are PhD students in Computer Science, AI security and safety, and biometric authentication. One of us focuses on the technical core: eye tracking, stimulus design, and making sure the signals are robust. Another drives the product, thinking through integration, deployment constraints, and how developers would actually use it. The third focuses on adoption and trust: talking to stakeholders, framing risk in ways that make sense to them, and preparing for governance and compliance questions. This balance lets us move from research insight to a believable product story, and, crucially, to a concrete plan for real-world deployment.
Joining King's Start-up Accelerator
We wanted a supportive but structured space to turn a solid technical idea into something that could genuinely work as a real venture. At this stage, what we needed most was not just advice, but a way to stress-test our assumptions, sharpen how we explain what we’re building, and learn how to talk about value beyond an academic or technical audience.
What really drew us in was the accelerator’s emphasis on building alongside other founders, mentors, and practitioners. The hands-on support, through mentoring, workshops, and community events, has helped us surface the unknowns of early-stage venture building. That’s especially important for a security start-up like ours, where success depends not only on technical strength, but also on trust, integration into real systems, and being ready for governance and regulatory conversations from day one.
The first six months
Over the first six months on the accelerator, we shifted from talking mainly about the technology to leading with the real-world problem and the people making decisions. We became much clearer about who the user or buyer actually is, what decision they are trying to make, and which concrete risks or costs LockEyeGaze helps reduce. That pushed us to move beyond performance claims and focus more on how our solution fits into existing systems and workflows.
What’s surprised us most was how much progress came from sharpening the narrative rather than adding new features. In security especially, people want clarity about threat assumptions, trade-offs, and deployment realities. Our biggest learning has been that commercialisation is a form of validation in itself: every claim needs evidence, a clear audience, and a realistic adoption path. The accelerator has reinforced this mindset through repeated cycles of testing, feedback, and refinement.
Support from King’s Start-up Accelerator
The biggest impact has come from the hands-on mentoring and the accelerator’s structured way of pushing ventures forward. It consistently forces us to get clear on the fundamentals: what problem we’re actually solving, who it matters to, why now, and what would realistically convince someone to move away from an existing authentication solution. This kind of guided pressure is especially valuable in security, where technical novelty alone isn’t enough, credibility, trust, and stakeholder alignment really matter.
Just as important has been the founder community itself. Being surrounded by other teams going through similar challenges makes iteration feel normal rather than risky. We’ve learned a lot simply by comparing notes with peers, on positioning, pricing, and how real procurement decisions get made, which helped us spot gaps earlier and sharpen our go-to-market thinking much faster than if we were working alone.
Longer-term vision
In the long run, we want LockEyeGaze to become a practical and trusted layer of gaze-enhanced authentication, something teams can actually deploy when passwords or standard biometrics are either too weak or too disruptive. Our goal isn’t novelty for its own sake; it’s to make stronger identity checks usable in real products, so security doesn’t come at the expense of user experience or accessibility.
By the end of the accelerator, we’re aiming to be very concrete about what comes next. Specifically, we want to validate one or two priority use cases with clear success metrics, deliver a product-ready prototype or integration path that a real partner could trial, and strengthen our governance and trust story: how we handle data, how risks are framed, and how we communicate this to stakeholders. The accelerator’s structure and network make these goals achievable rather than aspirational.