Elucd raises $1M from Omidyar Network, Y Combinator to expand to new cities

We’re proud to kick off what will be a big 2018 by announcing that Elucd has closed a $1M Seed financing round, with participation from investors including Omidyar Network and Y Combinator (we were part of YC’s Summer 2017 batch), along with a group of seasoned angel investors.

In 2017, we launched in New York City with our first customer, the New York Police Department. These new resources will help us expand our impact to multiple new cities in 2018. We have already begun to make investments in growing our engineering and data science teams, and we’ll continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep up with demand for our products.

Elucd helps police address today’s most pressing challenge: building trust and safety in the communities they serve. If you ask police chiefs around the world what their mission is, you’ll likely hear that it’s making communities safer — it’s the True North of policing. Of course, reducing crime is a critical part of that mission. (That’s why major police departments worldwide collect, track, and analyze crime data and statistics through CompStat or other similar systems.) But that’s only one component; building trust with the community is an equally important piece of the puzzle.

The problem is that police have never had a reliable way to systematically and regularly measure community sentiment, so they don’t know what works. In the past, gauging sentiment meant commissioning polls or surveys that were un-representative, geographically generalized (city-wide) and time-limited (data gathered over a few days or weeks). Worse, they didn’t provide actionable insights. As a result, sentiment has remained largely peripheral to the core of policing activities. After all, you manage what you measure.

That’s where Elucd comes in.

Our products are the first of their kind, providing a unique solution to this problem: they transform opinion polling from a one-off exercise producing a static report into a dynamic intelligence system that improves decision-making. Elucd’s ​data-driven​ tools provide ongoing neighborhood-level data showing the degree to which the public trusts the police and whether people feel safe in their communities. This ​helps​ city leaders​ take data-driven approaches to ​improving ​community​ ​trust​ ​while​ ​also​ ​reducing​ ​crime.

The New York Police Department has used Elucd’s tools as part of what NYPD Commissioner James P. O’Neill called “an evolution of policing.” New York City uses information and insights from Elucd to run its neighborhood policing program, which has begun to show progress in building community trust. Elucd also helps the NYPD identify and prioritize neighborhoods in the city where trust and perception of safety are changing. As a result, the NYPD can better identify what tactics or approaches work, and can direct resources where they are needed most to build community trust.

This is just the beginning. We envision a world where cities define success by whether people actually feel safe in their communities, and whether the institutions intended to serve the people engender increased trust and satisfaction. We are so excited to help make that vision a reality in 2018 and beyond, and are grateful to have great partners supporting us on this journey.

For more information, visit our website, or find open roles here.

Featured Image: Michele Ursino/Flickr under a CC by 2.0 License