Glympse offers real-time location-sharing technology used by consumers and enterprise partners. Founded in 2008 and based in Seattle, it integrates with carmakers like Ford and device makers such as Samsung, and supplies 'tech-tracker' apps to Rogers, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. The company has a 35-person team and has added partnerships including IBM Watson, an Amazon Echo Skill, and integrations with Microsoft Dynamics and Cortana. Management says recent traction spans both consumer and enterprise use cases and that similar businesses in Europe will utilize its product next year. Glympse plans to use new funding to grow headcount and continue developing its technology, and it intends to announce additional partnership news at CES. Its last financing was a 2014 $11 million Series C that included Verizon Ventures and pushed total funding past $20 million. Glympse operates a real-time location-sharing platform and public APIs that let apps, in-car systems, wearables and messaging services embed temporary location tracking and mapping. The company launched its consumer mobile app in 2009 and was bootstrapped until 2011 while building an ecosystem of partners. Notable integrations include Verizon Messages, BlackBerry, Samsung, BMW, Ford, GM, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Volvo, Pebble, Garmin, NAVIGON and Gogo. Glympse monetizes via its API—charging customers whose integrations exceed 300,000 monthly users—and through private APIs/SDKs for deeper enterprise integrations. The company says there are now “tens of millions” of users across roughly 25 apps. Management plans to use new funding mainly to hire staff to support inbound enterprise partnership demand and to enable deeper automotive integrations, with more announcements promised by year’s end. Glympse centers on temporal location sharing through short-lived ‘Glympses’ that show a real-time map of a user’s location. The company offers apps for iPhone and Android and lets users share Glympses via SMS, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Clicking a Glympse link opens a webpage with an updating map; a Facebook widget can update directly in the News Feed. Users set how long each Glympse lasts — up to four hours, with the average around forty minutes — after which location updates stop. The service emphasizes temporary, selective sharing rather than continuous location broadcasts. Glympse says it is working with partners to integrate the product into the “everyday life experience” and to move beyond its own apps. Glympse enables users to send a "Glympse" — a time-limited URL that shows the sender's real-time location for a preset period — via email so recipients can view location without registering. The app targets ad-hoc and temporary location-sharing use cases such as meeting coordination, checking on children, or sharing location with acquaintances and strangers briefly. It is positioned as an alternative to continuous broadcast services like Google Latitude and social-location networks that require friending. The product is in public beta on the Android T-Mobile G1 and in private beta for iPhone and BlackBerry; on iPhone it cannot run in the background so the app must be open to update location. Founding CEO Bryan Trussel, a former Microsoft casual games director, has suggested possible revenue models including a freemium tier with premium features (photo/video sharing) and future location-targeted advertising. The company raised angel funding in October.

Total raised

$31M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Dec 2016