Investment Rationale · Sapphire Ventures
Product
SafeGraph provides geospatial data on over eight million physical places across point-of-interest, spatial hierarchy, and foot traffic categories.
SafeGraph provides valuable data on over eight million physical places in the U.S. and Canada, and across three broad categories: point-of-interest (POI), spatial hierarchy and foot traffic data.
Traction
SafeGraph serves enterprise customers including Amazon, ESRI, Pepsi, Starbucks, Verizon, and United Health.
Today, SafeGraph supports global enterprises across multiple industries and customers including Amazon, ESRI, Pepsi, Starbucks, Verizon and United Health.
SafeGraph launched PlaceKey, an open-source place identifier that gained over 1,000 corporate signups including Neustar and ESRI.
Placekey was made available to the public in October 2020, and has already seen tremendous interest and traction with over 1,000 companies signed up already, including big data companies like Neustar and ESRI.
Team
Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman has over 15 years of data experience and previously built and sold five companies, including LiveRamp.
Prior to starting SafeGraph in 2016, Auren built and sold five companies, including LiveRamp, which was acquired by Acxiom in 2014.
Business model
SafeGraph operates a pure-play DaaS business model selling data rather than software applications.
Instead, it’s a DaaS business that doesn’t sell applications, only data.
Investment context
Sapphire Ventures led SafeGraph's $45M Series B funding round.
That’s why we are excited to back SafeGraph and lead the company’s $45M Series B, supporting the team’s mission to democratize access to clean, accurate and comprehensive geospatial data on physical places.
What founders can learn
- The traction evidence that carried weight: Sapphire Ventures wrote that SafeGraph serves enterprise customers including Amazon, ESRI, Pepsi, Starbucks, Verizon, and United Health.
- How the team was judged: Sapphire Ventures wrote that Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman has over 15 years of data experience and previously built and sold five companies, including LiveRamp.
- How the model was assessed: Sapphire Ventures wrote that SafeGraph operates a pure-play DaaS business model selling data rather than software applications.
Source and provenance
Investment Rationale published by Sapphire Ventures on sapphireventures.com (first-party source). Read the original
