Life360 – A Family Networking App That Received Funding From Both Google And Facebook.
Life360 is a social family networking app that was initially released in the market in 2008. Chris Hulls is the founder of the company and it’s currently based in San Francisco, US. Life360 is a publicly-traded information technology company that is operated by consumers across the world except in China. The application offers location-based services, alarming with notifications, sharing location, etc. The idea behind Life360 was to design software that would virtually keep a family together and safe. The Life360 app is available for both Android and iOS users.
About Life360 app
The Life360 app has got several features to always get a real-time update on your friends and family members. There are alerts when your family is entering or leaving any specific places or even when they are driving or just walking. One will also receive a notification after the completion of every drive and get to know if they are running low on battery. One of the features called the Driver Protect offers crash detection, roadside assistance, and updated weekly driver reports. The app is designed in a way that it can automatically detect an accident and dispatches emergency services if needed. This feature can also connect the drivers to trained advisors that can assist during minor accidents.
There are two other important features offered by Life360, namely, Check-In and Help Alert. It is a bit worrisome for parents to let their kids or senior citizens travel alone. So, the Check-In feature helps in getting quick updates for when they are traveling, leaving a place, or arriving. The Help Alert button sends an alert to all the emergency contacts and in the Life360 circle with a click of a single button. It also shows the other users when that button was pressed.
Initial Days
Chris Hulls had the idea for Life360 when he was an undergrad student. The initial prototype was launched in the Android marketplace in 2008. Chris received initial funding for Life360 from both Facebook and Google. Life360 participated and won Google’s Android Developer Challenge in 2008 and received $275,000 as of the grant money. This was a huge amount and got the company started in the early stage. After the company started growing it received the funds of $5.5 million, $17 million, and $50 million in Series A, Series B, and Series C funding respectively.
In 2013, Life360 entered into a partnership with BMW such that the location services of the company would be integrated into the navigation system of BMW cars. In this same year, the company also crossed more than 34 million, outrunning Foursquare. By the end of 2013, Life360 had over 40 million registered users. Another reason that Life360 witnessed a growth in the number of users was Google decided to discontinue its platform, Google Latitude in August 2013. Eventually, the company also added more languages to the app other than English and added international SMS.
Recent Events
With every year, the company kept on adding more and more features to the app making it helpful in every way. In 2016, Life360 launched the feature of automatic car crash detection and contacting the people on the emergency list. Life360 started a joint venture with ADT Go and the news was announced by ADT at the CES 2018. ADT has a very expansive security infrastructure to connect and protect its customers outside the home.
Life360 became a public company in 2019 as it was listed in the Australian Securities Exchange and the fund raised was invested to expand globally and partner with various insurance companies. Life360 has recently acquired two new companies. They are a guide app called ZenScreen and an American electronics company, Tile.
Chris Hulls – Founder of Life360
Chris Hulls is a travel enthusiast and a tech entrepreneur. He served in the military after passing high school and was deployed to the Middle East. As an undergrad student at the University of California Berkely, he got an internship with Goldman Sachs. He always wanted to go to the South Pole but in a medical test, he got to know that he has a tumor and life took a different turn.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more
