An Atlanta neighborhood surveillance startup that helps report crime to police departments has raised a funding round, just in time for criminals' favorite season.
Flock Safety has raised nearly $10 million from eight investors in a recent round, according to a filing with the SEC.
Just three months prior, the company reported raising $9.59 million in a round led by Matrix Partners. This brings the startups total funding raised to $19.7 million, according to Crunchbase.
Though the eight investors remain unnamed and the company has yet to announce the funding publicly, Ilya Sukhar, a Matrix Partners partner, is listed among the directors in the new SEC filing. Sukhar was also listed as a director of Flock Safety in the last funding round in August.
Flock Safety provides video technology to communities to record and provide evidence to police. The startup says its mission is to solve more crime, in addition to preventing it.
"We believe that we are working in a multi-billion dollar market here trying to actively help neighborhoods create a safety net they haven’t had in the past," Josh Thomas, a spokesman for Flock Safety, said.
The startup is hiring for front end and back end engineers, machine learning engineers, firmware engineers, sales reps, field reps and account management roles, Thomas said.
"We are actively trying to grow this team as quickly as possible," he said.
Flock Safety's solar-powered technology is mounted on posts throughout a neighborhood or community and captures surveillance 24/7 to identify license plates, according to the startup's website. Video is uploaded to the cloud, where neighborhood residents---and only residents---can access the surveillance at any time.
Already, the technology has played a role in solving crime, including a break-in in an Buckhead neighborhood this time last year. Nearly 80 percent of all property crime is never solved, Thomas said, and the FBI states 70 percent of all crimes are committed with a vehicle, thus the license plate readers with Flock Safety.
The goal is to eliminate nonviolent crime and give individual citizens the tools to help solve crime, Thomas said. Flock Safety is now available in 27 states and more than 100 cities.
"We are finding a real market here that really hasn’t been served in the past," he said.
