Nearly one month after collecting the first tranche of a $50 million round in the form of a strategic investment from home security company ADT, Life360 has named a chief technology officer, and expanded its platform as new competitors encroach.
The San Francisco-based company named former Klout chief technology officer Virendra Vase as its new CTO. Vase previously worked at Salesforce and Yahoo!, and will be responsible for the technology and engineering strategy at Life360.
Experience at mammoth platform plays like Salesforce and Yahoo! could come in handy as Life360 continues to expand its partnerships with automakers, network carriers, security companies, and pretty much everyone else in its bid to become a hub for the connected home.
In addition to its new hire, Life360 is also rolling out its app on Windows phones in addition to its presence on the iOS and Android platforms. That move comes as the company faces what could be its biggest potential threat — Apple’s announcements at WWDC included new features that directly compete with Life360′s focus on personal connectivity and location tracking.
“Time will tell how that shakes out,” says Life360 chief executive Chris Hulls. “We think that family sharing will give us more users.”
Over 33 million families use the company’s services, according to a statement. The company has raised at least $76 million to date from investors including: Expansion Venture Capital, DCM, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fontinalis Partners, Seraph Group, 500 Startups, BMW i Ventures, according to CrunchBase.
Hulls also sees a competitive advantage in Life360’s ability to work across operating systems. “Apple is a real threat,” he acknowledges, “[but] because we are cross-platform we will win.”
Other tech companies in the location sharing space are also pinning their success on their cross-platform operability. Glympse, which raised a new round of funding today, makes the same argument for its own viability as Apple casts its shadow over the market.
Lest anyone think that Life360 is competing with Apple on family messaging alone, it’s worth pointing out Life360’s wider ambitions. It wants to become a hub in the Internet of Things — which happens to be an area Apple, with its Home Kit and Health Kit, is also targeting. Life360 already has a few stakes in the nascent market through partnerships with strategic investors ADT and BMW .
Comment