Lightspeed (company)

Lightspeed
Private
Industry
  • Software
  • Point of Sale
  • eCommerce Software
Founded 2005
Founder Dax Dasilva
Headquarters Montreal, Canada
Area served
 Worldwide
Products
  • iPad Point of Sale
  • Retail Point of Sale
  • Restaurant Point of Sale
  • eCommerce Software
Website www.lightspeedhq.com

Lightspeed is a point-of-sale software provider based in Montreal, Canada.[1][2][3][4][5] Dax Dasilva founded the company in 2005 and is the CEO.[2][3][6]

History

Dax Dasilva founded Lightspeed in 2005 to help businesses re-create an online shopping experience that offered convenience, personalization and product information.[2][4][6] DaSilva is a programmer and previously interned with an Apple developer.[4] From 2006 to 2011, the company had a 1900 percent growth and was named one of the fastest growing companies in Canada.[4] In 2012, Profit ranked Lightspeed number 61 on its list of "Canada's 200 fastest growing companies."[7] Accel Partners led a $30 million investment round in 2012.[3][7][8][9][10]

In August of that same year, the company was named winner of the 5th Annual Innovative Award - Software Applications for their product, Lightspeed for iPad, which was designed to offer the ease-of-access, value and speed typical of the online shopping experience to brick-and-mortar retail businesses. Considered the first interactive POS platform of its kind, Lightspeed for iPad armed retailers with powerful sales and inventory management tools and helped to speed up the customer checkout process.[11]

Lightspeed opened its first US office in New York City in March 2013. The 3,000 square foot space, which houses its US sales team and demonstration showroom would come to serve as a training center for retailers. Known for hosting numerous retail innovation seminars, these events were organized to encourage business owners to meet and exchange ideas, insights and best practices with the goal of improving the in-store shopping experiences they offered.[12]

In July 2013, the company launched Lightspeed Retail, an HTML5 web-based product that can be used from any computer.[13][14][15] The product was created by MerchantOS, a Lightspeed acquired point-of-sale software developer.[13][15][16] Lightspeed's customers processed $7.5 billion in 2013.[3]

On June 18, 2014, Lightspeed announced the addition of Advanced Analytics to Lightspeed Retail’s feature roster. Generating over 40 reports that provide real-time sales, employee, payment, vendor, inventory and customer data; the insights retailers could gain would help them easily spot trends and make better business decisions. The type of data analysis the feature yields is comparable to that of wide-scale ERP or business intelligence solutions, but is far more affordable and easier to understand.[17]

In September 2014, Lightspeed closed a $35 million investment round led by iNovia Capital[1][3][9] That month, Lightspeed partnered with Vantiv, a payment processing and technology solutions provider, to develop a payment platform that lets users make transactions within Lightspeed's software.[3] The following month, Lightspeed acquired POSIOS, a Belgium-based mobile hospitality point-of-sale company, to expand into the restaurant industry.[2] By October 2014, Lightspeed served 21,000 businesses and processed $8.2 billion in annual run-rate transactions.[18]

As of April 2015, Lightspeed was being installed in 1,000 new stores every month, its software was being used by 23,000 businesses in more than 30 countries [19] and its transaction volume had increased 120 percent from the previous year. In September of that year, Lightspeed closed a $61 million Series C round of funding led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Investissement Québec, with participation from earlier investors Accel Partners and iNovia.[20][21]

In November 2015, Lightspeed acquired Amsterdam-based eCommerce software developer SEOShop, and announced that it would be expanding its product offering to serve both brick-and-mortar and online retailers.[22][23] SEOShop’s eCommerce platform would be rebranded as Lightspeed eCom and further refined to offer a more complete integration with the company’s retail POS software.[24]

Operations

Lightspeed has 480 employees in Montreal, Ottawa, Ghent, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, and New York [2][3][16][25][26] The company has customers in thirty countries, but primarily in the United States, Canada, Australia and England.[4] In October 2014, Lightspeed served 21,000 businesses and processed $8.2 billion in annual run-rate transactions.[27]

References

  1. 1 2 Jon Russell (October 22, 2014). "Retail Software Startup Lightspeed Now Caters For Restaurants After Buying Belgian Startup POSIOS". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Terry Dawes (October 22, 2014). "LightSpeed Retail Expands Into Restaurant Industry With Acquisition of Belgium's POSIOS". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Gerrit De Vynck (September 17, 2014). "Lightspeed Plans Payments System With $35 Million Funding". Bloomberg. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Bruce Rogers (February 12, 2014). "Dax Dasilva's Lightspeed Creates 'Apple Store' Experience for Retailers". Forbes. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  5. ↑ Johanne Royer (October 30, 2012). "LightSpeed Retail drives store traffic back up". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Max Nisen (November 7, 2013). "Lightspeed Is Helping Stores Kill Off 'Showrooming' For Good". Business Insider. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  7. 1 2 Christine Dobby (June 12, 2012). "Lightspeed secures US$30-million from Accel". Financial Post. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  8. ↑ Eric Blattberg (January 13, 2014). "Stores using LightSpeed processed $6B in transactions last year". Venture Beat. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  9. 1 2 Steven Loeb (September 17, 2014). "LightSpeed raises $35M, debuts new payments platform". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  10. ↑ Sarah Lacy (June 11, 2012). "Accel Invests $30M in Lightspeed, and the Top VC Was the One Doing the Wooing". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  11. ↑ "LightSpeed for iPad Wins 5th Annual Innovative Solutions Award at RetailNOW 2012 | Business Wire". www.businesswire.com. Retrieved 2016-05-13.
  12. ↑ "LightSpeed To Open First U.S. Headquarters in NYC". Reuters. 2013-03-11. Retrieved 2016-05-13.
  13. 1 2 Anthony Ha (July 24, 2013). "You Don't Have To Love Apple To Use Lightspeed's Retail Software, Thanks To Lightspeed Cloud". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  14. ↑ Joseph Czikk (June 18, 2014). "Montreal's Lightspeed Retail Adds Big Data Analytics To Its Cloud-Based POS System". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  15. 1 2 Teresa Novellino (July 24, 2013). "Let there be Lightspeed Cloud for retailers without Apple devices". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  16. 1 2 Terry Dawes (June 11, 2014). "Room At The Top: How Lightspeed Retail Became a Dominant Player in Mobile POS". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Montreal's Lightspeed Retail Adds Big Data Analytics to Its Cloud-Based POS System | BetaKit". betakit.com. Retrieved 2016-05-13.
  18. ↑ Russell, Jon. "Retail Software Startup LightSpeed Now Caters For Restaurants After Buying Belgian Startup POSIOS". TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  19. ↑ "Montreal's Lightspeed to cash in on changes to outdated U.S. card security". The Globe and Mail. April 27, 2015. Retrieved June 30, 2015.
  20. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid. "Lightspeed POS Raises $61M To Boost Its Retail And Restaurant Sales System". www.TechCrunch.com. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  21. ↑ Billings, Mike. "The Daily Startup: Lightspeed POS Grabs $61M for Retail, Restaurant Platform". WSJ. Retrieved 2016-05-13.
  22. ↑ Dawes, Terry. "Montreal's Lightspeed launches eCom platform for North American market". Cantech Letter. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  23. ↑ "Lightspeed Takes on Shopify with Launch of Ecommerce Platform". Techvibes. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  24. ↑ Ha, Anthony. "Retail Software Maker Lightspeed POS Acquires SEOshop For E-Commerce Push". TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  25. ↑ Jason Magder (September 16, 2014). "Lightspeed software company growing in a hurry". Montreal Gazette. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  26. ↑ "Montreal's Lightspeed targets U.S. as credit card security rules shift". Financial Post. May 25, 2015. Retrieved June 30, 2015.
  27. ↑ Steven Jacobs (October 22, 2014). "Wooing Restuarants,(sic) Retail Software Startup Lightspeed Buys POSIOS". Retrieved December 7, 2014.
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