Populus Seed Round: We’ve raised $3.1M to help cities plan for the future of shared mobility
From shared scooters to cars, our platform is the first-of-its-kind to securely deliver real-time data from fleet operators for cities to plan safe, equitable, and efficient streets.
Today, Populus is excited to announce that we’ve raised $3.1M in funding to help cities plan for the future of mobility.
We started Populus just over a year ago to address what our founding team identified as a growing challenge in cities, having developed software and data platforms for the public sector over the past 10+ years. In 2012, while working at a research lab at UC Berkeley, we were given the task of developing software to predict the next 30 years of travel in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft had just launched commercial services, employer shuttle ridership was rapidly growing to numbers larger than that of many transit agencies, and we had zero data on how these new solutions were changing transportation decisions.
Fast forward seven years, and what we have seen is that private mobility companies, while often well-intentioned and genuinely focused on delivering convenient options for people to get around, may not have actually achieved the public goals that we had all hoped for — including improving safety, equitable access, and efficiency (i.e. reducing traffic and energy use). The truth is, private mobility operators won’t be able to achieve these goals on their own — in order to do so, they will need to work closely with the cities who manage our streets and must share in this responsibility.
Better data provides cities with the information they need to reshape our streets.
In 2018, we launched Populus Mobility Manager, a platform that is now ingesting real-time data from shared scooters, bikes, and cars, for leading cities and mobility operators. What we have found is that when transportation planners have access to information about where new shared mobility services are being used, they are better able to reallocate precious public space for them, as well as guide them towards improving transportation for everyone.
If you’ve ever tried to reassign a public parking spot for bikeshare or carshare, you may know that it is hard — very hard. And it is only by working collaboratively, and with secure access to better information, that cities and shared mobility operators will be able to make the tough political decisions that we need to redesign our streets to focus on moving more people, not cars.
Today, Populus helps cities large and small securely access and analyze complex data streams from multiple mobility operators such as Bird, Lime, and Spin as we transition towards a future with more shared fleets. Cities that are using our platform have already begun to carve off public parking spaces near transit centers for dockless scooters and bikes.
We’re also pioneering new tools that allow fleet operators of shared cars to report their utilization of city curbs so that cities and operators can partner to design more efficient access and use of them to improve the flow of traffic. Many shared mobility operators have reached an inflection point. In order to sustain their growth, and eventually achieve profitability, they will need a trusted, third-party platform like Populus to help cities give private operators the space (literally) to grow.
The Populus team has worked with cities and shared mobility operators for the past decade, building partnerships and delivering solutions to ensure that new innovations complement long-range public investments in transportation. As dockless bikes and scooters have rapidly expanded this past year, we have worked closely with both private operators and public agencies based on trust, empathy, and our shared goals of delivering sustainable mobility in cities.
With this new round of funding, we’ll be rolling up our sleeves to scale our platform that helps the public sector and mobility operators collaborate to put people front and center as we design the transportation systems of the future.
To learn more about our financing round, please see our press release here, and coverage in TechCrunch and Government Technology.
We’re hiring! To learn more about opportunities to join our team, visit us here.
About Populus
Populus is a platform that helps cities and private mobility operators deliver safe, equitable, and efficient streets through better data and analytics. Trusted by leading cities and the world’s largest mobility operators, the Populus data platform integrates data on shared services (carsharing, ride-hailing, bikeshare and scooters) to plan for the future of transportation. Founded by experts on shared mobility and advanced transportation modeling from MIT and UC Berkeley, Populus builds an essential bridge for cities and private mobility operators to work seamlessly together.
