Deal highlights

• Collaborative data platform for neighborhood communities that centralizes and maps data to measure and improve commercial activities.  

• Location intelligence will be a $25B+ industry by 2025 

• Successful beta testing in New York City

• URBAN-X alumni

• $105k raised to date

Problem

Communities lack access to strong local data

Data is the center of how we apply technology to our daily lives, particularly in commercially active areas in downtowns and cities. There are different types of data about places, but local data is the most difficult to get. Local data provides operational insight about on-the-ground conditions - things we actually use in our daily lives & things that shape how we experience places.

Solution

Citiesense helps you navigate your neighborhood

By helping local business communities collaborate and use technology to improve their neighborhood, we solve the complex problem of maintaining accurate, standardized local data, and improve access to information about neighborhoods. Our map-based toolkit creates a hub for data about all properties, public spaces, and neighborhood improvements. 

Track all the great things your neighborhood has to offer

How it works

Connect your data - Create your knowledge-base with data about properties, contacts and streetscapes, in one platform

Use the Map to Analyze Areas - Citiesense enables you to analyze data about any area, whether district, block or neighborhood scale. 

Engage your community - promote your community’s knowledge-base as the hub for insight about the neighborhood. 

Press

As seen in

Traction

On track to reach 20 communities this year

Citiesense has tested its product to track, manage & improve business districts in New York City using local data. We are on track to scale to over 20 communities in New York City by the end of this year, as well as 5 more outside New York.

We track streetscape assets and activities, such as street furniture like benches, street trees, food vendors, transit facilities, bicycle infrastructure, street lighting and lamp posts, waste bins, pedestrian activity, and more. 

We also look at businesses and real estate, from commercial vacancies, a mix of retail business types, number of employees per business, number of tenants per property and building, commercial lease rates, development activity, housing options, etc. 

Early adopters:

Customers

Launching in some of the world’s biggest cities

Our customer is a neighborhood community organization and its members. In New York, we’ve worked with local data about busy downtown areas across the city and helped access data about streetscape assets and commercial real estate information to track, manage, and improve these areas.

Some of our customers include: 

• Long Island City Partnership 
• Grand Central Partnership 
• Third Avenue BID 
• Alliance for Coney Island 
• Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
• Village Alliance
• Flatiron 23rd Street Partnership

Testimonials:

“As someone with experience running operations for a number of BIDs across NYC, I know first-hand how complex the neighborhood improvement process is, and how much access to good data supports the process. Citiesense understands this, and they've built a truly unique all-in-one solution for any downtown community that needs to start thinking about using data locally.”

Paul Lotter | Director of BID Field Operations

Long Island City Partnership

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“Working with the Alliance for Coney Island, I was able to see first hand how resourceful small teams with limited resources can be when they adopt a toolkit like Citiesense. The systematic platform Citiesense is building revitalizes the way Business Improvement Districts access and analyze data about communities, and enables us to take a data-driven approach to informing local stakeholders of the impact our local organization is having on the neighborhood. It's exciting to be part of it, and I look forward to seeing how the platform evolves.”

Mamta Melwani | N360 Fellow at Alliance for Coney Island

NYC Department of Small Business Services 

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“Citiesense is a terrific company to work with and understands our needs.  The platform Citiesense is building with early adopters like us is revolutionizing how we access and analyze data about our community and use that data to inform local stakeholders and key partners about opportunities to work together toward shared goals for the neighborhood.”

Jeannette R. Rausch | Director of Planning & Development

Long Island City Partnership

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“Citiesense has revolutionized how our BID analyzes and presents our district’s data and property contacts. The platform has helped bring us into the 21st Century.   We are a small team with limited resources and a toolkit like Citiesense saves our employees valuable time and allows us to demonstrate to our board and community the impact of our organization. Citiesense puts us on an equal playing field in terms of data analysis with organizations that have larger capacities. It is exciting to be part of the evolution of this new product whose potential continues to expand.”

Daniella LaRocco | Director of Planning & Economic Development

The Village Alliance

Business model

Access data through subscriptions, license data through the marketplace

Stage 1 - SaaS 

Data management for business district communities. Helping communities access & manage their data. 

All-in-one - A complete toolkit to maintain the most accurate data about a business district, including tenancy, development activity, vacancy, foot traffic, and streetscape conditions. 

Priced to scale - Citiesense provides three different levels of pricing for the SaaS customer, as well as a free level to get new communities started. The higher levels include additional features and more seats to increase collaboration.

Stage 2 - Local data marketplace (in development)

 Enabling communities to license their data, establishing the platform and source for local information about cities. 

Shared maps 

Citiesense takes a percentage of fees set by a Business District community for membership.

API access 

First 700 requests per month...Free

Each additional 100 requests...$5.00

Market

Location intelligence is a $25+ billion market by 2025

We expect annual growth of 15% over the next three years as artificial intelligence and smart cities work together with real estate developers and urban tech companies to solve local issues. Location intelligence provides valuable strategic insight into understanding how humans move around and interact with commercial areas in cities, and how cities can be designed to perform better for a wider variety of people. 

Competition

Citiesense is the only data platform built specifically for neighborhood organizations

This includes Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Development Corporations, Community/Local Development Corporations, Chambers of Commerce, campuses, and other place-based non-profit organizations. In our rapidly urbanizing world, these stakeholder groups are realizing they need to adopt technology and data management tools into their workflows in order to keep track of the various assets that make up their neighborhood and ensure that their neighborhood is moving in the best direction for the many different people that live, work and visit the area. 

The platform’s toolkit is a unique combination of map-based data analysis features, cloud-based data management and productivity tools for neighborhood communities, and membership management services for the organizations managing these communities. This unique suite includes user-friendly forms and QR Codes for managing information as a community of local business owners and property owners, as well as integrations with IoT technologies, government data sources, and popular tools for managing website content and contacts, like Wordpress, Wix, Salesforce, etc. 

Investors

Raised $150K to date

Citiesense has raised over $150K to date from SOSV and other investors. We are also a part of the Urban-X accelerator.

What's next

Mapping the cities of tomorrow together

We plan to use the next year to map and collect data in 20 communities in New York. From there, we plan to grow to 197 communities and enter our commercialization stage. After that, we hope to continue growing in both data collection and revenue. Our current goals are to grow our team and set up pilots in cities across Canada and the US, and we are also currently fostering new markets overseas in Europe, Asia and Australia as well.

Founders and team 

Help us strengthen your community’s local knowledge! 

Together, we can help neighborhoods everywhere thrive.