UrbanLeap Raises $4.2M In Seed Funding Led By StageOne Ventures

Leading urban innovation platform offers marketplace and discovery solution for $517 billion Smart Cities industry

San Francisco, CA /PRNewswire/ - UrbanLeap today announced $4.2 million in seed funding led by StageOne Ventures, and with participation from existing investor lool Ventures. UrbanLeap will use the financing to further develop its leading marketplace and discovery solution, which connects governments with technology companies to accelerate innovation in the public sector.

UrbanLeap also announced today that Yoav Samet, managing partner at StageOne Ventures, and Yaniv Golan, general partner at lool Ventures, are joining the company's Board of Directors, effective immediately.

UrbanLeap is a marketplace and discovery solution that manages the innovation lifecycle from discovery to evaluation to procurement. The platform allows city officials to evaluate technologies based on real-world data and measured outcomes, connect with vendors, and adopt solutions — all within a single platform. UrbanLeap also enables the creation of networks where governments come together to address regional issues, and collaborate on everything from how they frame the problem to how they explore and achieve positive outcomes for their municipalities.

"Half of the global population today resides in urban areas with 1.5 million people migrating to cities every single week," said Arik Bronshtein, CEO & co-founder, UrbanLeap." This is why spending in the smart cities sector is expected to grow to $2.57 trillion by 2025. As a result, cities will need to innovate faster and embrace new approaches to collaborating, sharing knowledge, and measuring progress around new technology solutions. We developed UrbanLeap to help governments solve these complex challenges, and this new round of funding will help us further develop our solution to continue improving cities around the world."

"The private sector is generally effective at meeting a high standard of innovation for consumers, yet governments fall behind on innovating where it matters most: public services for its residents," said Samet. "Today's residents expect more from their cities, and UrbanLeap's vision is to close this innovation gap. We are excited to support UrbanLeap in realizing this vision and in empowering local governments around the world."

Customer Story: SMC Labs
SMC Labs is a smart region initiative by the County of San Mateo with a mission to use modern innovation and "smart technologies" to address regional issues. These initiatives generally involve discovering, engaging and evaluating new technologies to ensure the county is delivering the best solutions for residents, businesses, and universities in the area. As a result, the county has adopted UrbanLeap to help them accelerate this process.

"We must continuously leverage new technologies to better serve those who live in, work in, and visit San Mateo County," said Jon Walton, CIO, SMC Labs. "The key is to adopt technologies that enable better, faster sharing of information, and help render our core services more effectively. Being a smart region requires working with smart solutions, and UrbanLeap helps us engage, evaluate, organize, and manage all of the startups and use cases that we currently have in our lab environment — to ultimately ensure we're choosing the right providers."

About UrbanLeap
UrbanLeap is an urban innovation platform that helps +50 cities solve their toughest challenges. With insights from hundreds of urban innovation projects and world-class workflows, cities leverage UrbanLeap to explore innovative technologies, engage vendors, and rigorously evaluate the best solution for their unique needs. For more information, visit www.urbanleap.io

About StageOne Ventures
StageOne Ventures provides financing and professional guidance to early-stage companies to help build exceptional enterprises. StageOne invests in early-stage companies in the fields of Software, Communications, and Internet Infrastructure. The fund is committed to providing its portfolio companies with top value creation through the technological and financial strength of its team. By acting in synergy with the dominant trends in IT & Telecommunications, StageOne invests in start-ups whose exceptional technologies address market leaders' true needs. For more information: www.stageonevc.com

About lool Ventures
Lool Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage startups, based in Tel Aviv. Lool works shoulder to shoulder with exceptional founders with huge dreams that, once realized, will make the world a better place. For more information: lool.vc