Startup Society puts the Spotlight on CITYDATA.ai

This blog posts delves into Startup Society's review of three GovTech companies, their expert opinions and their assessment of the market

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Arteen Zahiri, Elham Chaudhury, Rumeer Keshwani and Julian Ramcharan from Babson.edu are the founders and editors of the Startup Society, a weekly blog that promotes nationwide entrepreneurship to keep alive the American dream.

They recently reviewed three San Francisco-based GovTech companies innovating within the public sector and the regulatory environment.

1. CITYDATA.ai : Building digital replicas for smarter cities
2. Hummingbird : Combating money laundering and fraud
3. REMIX : Designing the future transportation for cities

Their choice of companies and the timing of their review was nothing short of perfection given that just last week REMIX was acquired by Via for $100M which makes it one of the largest exits for a GovTech startup in recent years.

We wanted to commend the team at Startup Society for a fair, balanced, and objective review of our company CITYDATA.ai. Below are the excerpts of Startup Society's write-up about our company. Be sure to read the full review here.

Startup Society's Review of CITYDATA.ai

Overview

• CITYDATA.ai analyzes thousands of cities on a global scale. Its self-serve map-based visual dashboard called CITYDASH.ai combines public and private datasets to unearth insights for civic impact.
• The company’s main function is to measure the presence, activity, and movement of people to build digital replicas for smarter cities and real-world businesses. Their geospatial AI platform provides fresh, accurate, anonymized, and actionable insights into how people interact with the real world.
• The company’s platform leverages a deep understanding of geospatial intelligence to open valuable insights about customers, enabling brands to understand and connect to targeted audiences while measuring foot traffic.

Products

CITYDATA.ai has three main products/services;

1. CITYDASH
2. CITYGRAPH
3. CITYCHAT
4. CITYTRACE

Assessment

• CITYDATA.ai is building four concurrent products that all work in unison around their main offering. Splitting attention is proven to be less efficient than deep focus, however software offerings are made up of features, which offer its users increased usability and value.
• The fact is that each of CITYDATA's software offerings are supporting the overall goal of the company, which is to bring in the next wave of city management and planning for public spaces.
• State and local direct general expenditures in the United States increased from approximately $1.1 trillion in 1977 (in inflation-adjusted 2017 dollars) to $3.1 trillion in 2017 — a 178 percent increase over 40 years. Offering the public sector new solutions to simulate public spaces allows for more intelligent and intellectual planning and construction.
• The GovTech industry is set to be worth $1 trillion per year by 2025. There is a clear sizable market here combined with public data to fuel CITYDATA.ai as they refine their products in order to drive increased value to the public sector.