The company, which has been around since 2011, has now raised a total of $27 million. It provides transportation data and analytics to government agencies and some private-sector firms, specializing in using de-identified and aggregated data from cellphones to do things like on-demand traffic counts at intersections and looking at the reasons people make the trips they make.
It has “several hundred” customers, according to CEO Laura Schewel, and they run about 1,500 different analyses on the StreetLight Data platform each month.
“We have become the go-to transportation tool for transportation professionals who know what data they’re looking for, and we’re really proud of that,” Schewel said. “We want to build more toward being the go-to transportation tool for people who don’t know what data they’re looking for, but they know data would help.”
Part of that journey will involve rolling out new data visualization tools that Schewel said will help users play with the data. Schewel also just wants it to be easier for users to do certain things — for example, identifying good places for bicycle lanes.
But she also wants to start tackling some of the new transportation modes hitting the marketplace, such as shared networks of electric bicycles and scooters, and how those interact with existing traffic.
Or even more than that.
“We have clients thinking about how aerial transportation might affect their city, or how autonomous vehicles might affect their city,” Schewel said. “They’re thinking about … Uber and Lyft.”
The company is also looking to build out and serve customers outside the U.S., probably starting with Mexico. Schewel is also looking at South America and Europe.
As part of the funding round, StreetLight Data is adding Veery Maxwell to its board of directors. Maxwell is director for Energy Innovation, an organization that performs research and analysis to help inform clean energy strategies.
