$10m in the pot: What's next for PredictHQ?

In just four short years, PredictHQ has gone global and raised $10 million in a Series A funding round, which only adds weight to CEO Campbell Brown's statement that the company isn't a slow burner when it comes to growth.

The $10 million funding announcement hit the news this week, led by Aspect Ventures and supported by Lightspeed, Rampersand VC and AddVenture Fund.

PredictHQ's event intelligence platform and premium data service that takes real-world events and analyses them, resulting in a single global source of truth. This helps businesses understand the impact of events, and also helps to build smarter products.

"In the company's own words, it aggregates and verifies more than 2 billion data points to enrich nearly 20 million events across 30,000 cities worldwide into a single API.

"Businesses receive a complete, standardised and enriched dataset that they can use to build forecasting, planning, and marketing models at scale. Developers use PredictHQ's API to dynamically adjust services, supply chains, features, messaging and pricing based on real-world events.

Businesses like Domino's, Uber and Booking.com already use PredictHQ's software to understand a range of events such as concerts, conferences, public holidays, weather, and even terrorist attacks.

Uber, for example, uses PredictHQ to understand how many drivers it needs on the road at any given place or time.

In a company blog, Brown adds that PredictHQ also helps businesses to unlock previously unobtainable intelligence and create world-first IP.

"Since we launched our API three years ago, we have relentlessly focused on creating a platform that can handle the dynamic nature of scheduled and unscheduled real-world events," Brown writes.

"It's not an easy problem to solve – we know this first-hand – and it's been confirmed by many of our customers who are some of the smartest and most recognisable businesses in the world, and who attempted to build their own versions before they discovered ours.

He adds that while PredictHQ gained many customers at home in 'beautiful but isolated' New Zealand, global scalability was always the goal from day one. Eighteen months ago, the company opened its San Francisco office.

He says that the company's focus on building a 'uniquely capable platform' sets the foundation for the company's next phase.

The company will continue to invest in event intelligence data, as well as more relevant predictions, greater event context and data structure, and an easier way to derive value from its API.

"We're on a mission to help businesses and their customers better prepare for what's happening around them. We are powering predictive commerce," says Brown.

Aspect Ventures cofounder Theresia Gouw will now be on PredictHQ's board of directors, and Lightspeed partner Arif Janmohamed will be a board observer.

"Campbell is an incredibly gifted CEO who has a special vision for his company, a talented team, and a product that can create billions of dollars in economic opportunity for global businesses," comments Jammohamed.

"Any company selling a tangible good or service - from transportation to soft drinks to computer hardware - needs to optimise their supply chain and understand their demand. With PredictHQ, those companies now have access to the necessary data to do just that.