IBM Global Entrepreneur

StreetLight Data CEO and co-founder Laura Schewel gives her company’s pitch at the 2012 SmartCamp Global Finals.

Each year, the companies who make it to the SmartCamp Global Finals are always brilliant startups who are leaders in their field. But what happens once their SmartCamp journey ends? Most of them, like StreetLight Data, go on to do great things.

StreetLight Data was one of the 8 finalists at the 2012 SmartCamp Global Finals and one of only two startups representing North America at the event. Based in San Francisco, CA, and founded in 2011, StreetLight Data delivers next-generation geospatial business intelligence to support critical decisions and improve return on investment in marketing, site selection, urban planning, and economic development. They do this by repurposing and recombining data from traffic and transportation management systems (such as traffic jam alerts and navigation) to help retailers better understand the context in which their stores operate. This intelligence can lead to improved site selection, as well as other applications.

On April 5th, StreetLight Data announced that it has secured a seven-figure Euro funding in Series A financing. This new round of funding is co-led by Vision Ridge Capital Partners, a Boulder-based venture capital firm, and T­-Venture, the venture capital company of Deutsche Telekom. StreetLight is heavily investing in the development of its new product, StreetLight InSight, an analytic platform that stands to benefit greatly from the financial support:

“We have recently announced deals with several transportation and traffic data providers, such as AirSage and KSS Fuels, and this financing will allow us to bring on the additional team members to accelerate putting that data to use and integrating it into our platform,” said Laura Schewel, co-founder and CEO at StreetLight.

“Personally,” Schewel continues, “it means I get a couple years to make good on my belief and vision that StreetLight can improve the way we understand and make decisions about transportation. It’s an extraordinary opportunity. It also means I finally get to pay all the people I convinced to quit their jobs a reasonable salary, which is good too!”

Schewel also cites her company’s SmartCamp experience as a critical part of the journey to securing this new funding opportunity. She said that the mentorship she received through IBM SmartCamp was unique from the other advice she’s been given over the years, in that it taught her how to “distill the message and the focus of my company down to its essence. This has been critical in both fundraising AND in our sales process.”

This focus seems to be working as StreetLight Data has certainly captured the attention of venture capital. Reuben Munger, managing director for Vision Ridge Partners said, “We’re excited about StreetLight’s incredible mix of technical, transportation, and data expertise, as well as their dual financial and environmental value proposition. Their business provides both a game-changing analytic product for brick and mortar retail and a powerful source of information to support more transportation-efficient city planning and economic development. We’ve also been impressed by the strong vote of customer confidence as StreetLight has started marketing its product over the last quarter.”

Congratulations to StreetLight Data on securing this funding as they continue to develop their company and products. They are well on their way to making the planet a whole lot smarter!