Announcing the Series B of Placer

In a year marked by empty malls, silent cinemas, and boarded-up storefronts, no one would expect to find a thriving startup in the business of selling data about foot traffic in shopping center real estate. Nevertheless, Placer leads the market in location analytics for retail real estate, and they are thriving in the midst of the pandemic. 

This week, the company announced its $50 million Series B, led by Josh Buckley, Todd Goldberg, and Rahul Vohra. We at Stage Venture Partners were proud to increase our investment in Placer as part of the Series B. 

Using Placer, anyone in the commercial real estate world — owners, tenants, brokers, investors, or business groups like chambers of commerce — can gain an unprecedented understanding of the foot traffic patterns that are the lifeblood of local commerce. To show the power of Placer, I can analyze the traffic patterns at the local shopping center where I (Alex) do most of my grocery shopping, the Waterside Marina del Rey.   

Using Placer’s heat map, we can see that regular shoppers to this property (at least three visits), live predominantly in Marina del Rey, Playa Vista, and Playa del Rey. Additional customer clusters can be found in Inglewood, View Park, and downtown Los Angeles.  

The shopping center is in the top 14% by customer visits — nationally, on a state level, and in the immediate region. 

The data shown here is just a fraction of what Placer can do. Growth teams at chain retailers can use Placer to enable more efficient site selection for new stores. Landlords and tenants can use Placer to inform leasing and pricing decisions. Public equity investors can use Placer’s chain-wide data to enhance their financial models for retailers, REITs, and consumer brands. Best of all, Placer has been product-led from the outset, allowing anyone to register and explore Placer’s free tier, before upgrading to the robust paid plan. If you want to discover the story behind any place that matters to you, sign up at Placer.ai and start exploring. 

Speaking with knowledgeable people in the world of real estate, we began to hear one of the best things an investor can hear about a portfolio company: Placer is becoming a verb in its industry. Given that opening a new store can cost millions of dollars or more, it is becoming untenable to make a new location decision without the data provided by Placer. We are witnessing the rise of a new industry-standard data set. 

As an emerging industry standard, Placer is growing rapidly in spite of the turbulence of the last year. The company now counts over 500 customers, a number that roughly tripled over the last twelve months. Revenue also tripled in that time period. Placer added dozens of members to its team during 2020, hiring aggressively in the summer when talented people were being let go from startups that had been hit hard by COVID. 

Placer’s pace of innovation continues to accelerate. Last week, the company launched its marketplace, enabling the integration of top tier economic, demographic, and social data sets into Placer’s true trade area data. Additional products will follow throughout 2021 and beyond. 

We’ve loved being a part of the Placer journey to this point, and we are thrilled to continue our partnership with CEO Noam Ben-Zvi, his co-founders, and the growing team at Placer.