The seed round comes courtesy of the Y Combinator accelerator, which Elucd participated in last year, and the Omidyar Network.
The company is relatively young, having launched in the latter half of 2016. But it has already signed the largest municipal police department in the country — New York City — as a client.
“New York City uses information and insights from Elucd to run its neighborhood policing program, which has begun to show progress in building community trust,” Elucd Chief Executive Officer Michael Simon wrote in a blog post announcing the funding round. “Elucd also helps the NYPD identify and prioritize neighborhoods in the city where trust and perception of safety are changing. As a result, the NYPD can better identify what tactics or approaches work, and can direct resources where they are needed most to build community trust.”
Elucd uses mobile phone advertising to achieve high response rates for its surveys. That can produce neighborhood-level data for police departments to gauge how the communities they serve feel about their work.
“We envision a world where cities define success by whether people actually feel safe in their communities, and whether the institutions intended to serve the people engender increased trust and satisfaction,” Simon wrote in the blog post.
