If you lost your cell phone at Navy Pier over the weekend, a Chicago startup wants to help you find it.
Crowdfind, a company that launched in 2013, is an online tool to help you relocate items you may have misplaced at large events and attractions. When people lose an item, they can go to Crowdfind and search photos of other lost items from the event. When owners looking for their lost belongings think they’ve found their item, they go through a series of verification processes to ensure Crowdfind returns items to their rightful owners.
And it seems like several event organizers and patrons have been taking advantage of Crowdfind’s services. Just this year, the company has experienced significant growth in revenue, and has become independent of their parent company, L Street Collaborative, who was their principal investor. L Street Collaborative is a Chicago-based holding company that launches startups.
Crowdfind has more than 180 clients and has processed more than 60,000 claims since they launched, with over half of them being processed in 2017.
“This year has been big for us because we’re now our own company,” said Dan Sullivan, the general manager at Crowdfind. “We’re tapping into a really unique customer service opportunity.”
At Lollapalooza earlier this month, festival-goers lost more than 1,800 items, ranging from common belongings, like cell phones and credit cards to weirder ones, like pagers. Through Crowdfind, about 950 of them were returned to their owners. In fact, Crowdfind works with several large music festivals, including Bonnaroo, Coachella and Mamby on the Beach.
But Crowdfind doesn’t just operate locally. This year, they’ve established a global presence. They just wrapped up work at Splendour in the Grass, a music festival in Australia. Additionally, they have a deal with the Major League Baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers.
Depending on the kind of event or attraction, event organizers can opt for a 30-90-day contract, but those, like Navy Pier, that operate year-round, often have year-long contracts.
Looking ahead, Sullivan said he expects Crowdfind to continue experiencing growth in revenue, clients and users, which could result in hiring more employees in the future. Right now, they only employ five full-time employees in their Bridgeport offices.
Crowdfind has mainly operated on word-of-mouth marketing, but with the recent addition of a full-time marketing employee, they plan to begin paying for more traditional forms of advertising, Sullivan said.
“We’ve already exceeded in every metric,” Sullivan said. “We’ve grown quite considerably [compared] to a year ago, in terms of activity, client numbers, revenue, everything.”
