Today Streetbees, a ‘next gen’ market research startup, has announced closing an approx. €34 million Series B round to accelerate the development of the world’s first human intelligence platform. The round, which was led by Lakestar with participation from LocalGlobe, Atomico, GMG Ventures and Octopus, recognises the potential of this fast-growing startup to leverage its community of 3.5 million consumers and decode human behaviour.
Founded in 2015, Streetbees lets people record by video, photo and text the reasoning behind their purchasing decisions, to bring rich insights for companies. Its creator Tugce Bulut (who we recently included in our TOP 50: Europe’s most influential women in the startup and venture capital space list) has grown a community of millions users – or ‘bees’ – across 189 countries, a powerful community indeed. The Streetbees team apply deep neural networks to the raw data collected by this community, which is able to capture the emotion and context behind the 80% of human decisions that we make offline. Just as Google indexed the online world, Streetbees is making the offline world visible and searchable by indexing its proprietary dataset of millions of offline moments.
Currently, 8 of the world’s 10 largest consumer goods companies – including PepsiCo, Unilever and Procter and Gamble – rely on Streetbees to provide intelligence they cannot find elsewhere.
“Human reality is incredibly complex, and while technology has made progress in healthcare and pharmaceuticals, we’re still no closer to truly understanding the decisions that we make. Our behaviour is captured online and in the artificial reality of social media, but the near 80 percent of our lives that happens in the offline world, remains untapped,” explained Tugce Bulut, CEO of Streetbees. “Streetbees is building the world’s first human intelligence platform with a completely proprietary dataset to index these offline moments in consumers’ own words. With this round of funding, we will accelerate the creation of a searchable world where brands can finally decipher human behaviour and decode the real reasons why consumers do what they do.”
Over the past 12 months, Streetbees has achieved 150% revenue growth and reached a critical mass of proprietary data in the consumer goods space, allowing brands to access a searchable database, rich enough to answer their questions.
This Series B round allows Streetbees to fund data acquisition across a variety of new verticals including ‘Media & Entertainment’ and ‘Finance’ that will unlock significant new sales opportunities. With its headquarters in London, an office in Lisbon and a new office in North America, Streetbees also plans to increase headcount from 100 to 230 over the next 12 months.
Throughout COVID-19, Streetbees has played a useful role for national health services and NGOs such as the NHS and the Red Cross, allowing them to understand how consumer fears and mental health have been evolving through the pandemic. Streetbees has also released a public facing ‘Mood of the World’ platform, providing a real time view of consumer emotion across 50 markets, derived from open text.
Christoph Schuh, Partner at Lakestar, commented: “We are very proud to lead the Series B round and to join Streetbees on its successful journey. The market for customer research is largely controlled by an oligopoly of legacy panel players and has seen little disruption. Streetbees has an innovative always-on way of engaging with the customer base at global scale to quickly and accurately understand their evolving needs and behaviours. The uncertainty of the global COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the value and necessity of having a real-time product suite that turns raw data into customer intelligence and actionable insights.”
LocalGlobe, an early investor in Streetbees, is investing again through its breakout fund, Latitude. George Henry, General Partner, LocalGlobe/ Latitude, explained, “Much like Bloomberg became the platform of choice for professionals requiring up-to-the-minute access to financial market information, we have always felt that Streetbees will become the de facto market research platform for brands needing real-time access to rapidly changing consumer markets.”
Alan Hudson, Managing Partner, GMG Ventures LLP, an investor in the round, explained: “In the current market environment, more than ever, brands need to obtain qualitative real time human insights at scale. Streetbees’ global network of engaged consumers and its AI based platform provide these insights and power its clients decision making, both at the strategic and operational levels. We believe the team’s talent and focus further enhance its positioning as a true disruptor in the market research sector. We are delighted to continue our support of the company in its latest funding round and look forward to seeing Streetbees continuing to thrive.”
