There are several products like this on the market already. You might be able to improve enough on them to win a place alongside them or who knows, you might knock them out! But anyway you need to study them and understand the differences.
e.g. pitlocks http://www.pitlock.com/
Wow sorry for the late reply, I didn't get any notifications for some reason :/ to respond to your guys' points:
@JimK - yeah there's a few guys in this space already. Being a cyclist myself who's had my wheels stolen twice and my bike a third time, I've went through each of these competitors (i.e. pinhead, pitlock, etc.) and they all seem to be off in one way or another... i.e. too high of a price point, poor build quality, difficulty of use, needing two tools to remove the security parts, etc. I've been engineering this for over a while and am confident we did a good job so far... but there definitely is more room for feedback (like from ya'll!).
@sd - wheel theft depends on where you're from. In bike heavy areas, i.e. college campuses, NYC, los angeles, there's tons of it (I'd say I see a new stolen bike frame or leftover bike wheel walking around campus every other day). But in more quieter neighborhoods, wheel theft is much less common. Seems to be a growing trend - one that we can hopefully put a dent in.
@onrbikes - one side of the wrench is functional to remove the nut. The other is a bottle opener ( I DID say I was a college student now didn't I
). More pics attached below. In terms of removing it, we tried to get as aggressive as possible with every common theft tool we could find, i.e. wrenches, needle nose pliers, vice grips, etc. and after a bunch of prototypes, we couldn't get any leverage.
We're making many variations of spanner/nut combinations, to reduce theft as much as possible.
@Dave - if you spent a while... probably. You can never eliminate theft, just create a $hit ton of deterrents... which is what we're going for.
Here's some more pics guys. Thanks for your feedback so far - keep it up!! Responding to tough comments helps me hone the pitch even better. Thanks guys
http://imgur.com/IDYoaqYhttp://imgur.com/BYruRbOhttp://imgur.com/mMZuxTE