Introducing Radar

We're ten years into the smartphone era, but building products and services with location is still too hard. We're building Radar to change this.

Radar is the location platform for mobile apps. Our mission is to help companies build better products and make better decisions with location data.

The problem

Suppose I'm building a travel app. I want to know when users are traveling and make recommendations. I need to:

• build background location tracking that is accurate, battery efficient, and consistent across iOS and Android, through lots of trial and error
• request location permissions and build foreground, in-app location context
• acquire place data and set up geofences for cities, neighborhoods, airports, and other points of interest
• listen for location updates or geofence entry and exit events, and determine when to send push notifications
• store massive amounts of event data to build user segments and recommendations

Or, suppose I'm building a delivery service. I want to know where my couriers are, send status updates to customers, and optimize routes. I need to:

• again, build background location tracking that is accurate, battery efficient, and consistent across iOS and Android
• geocode and set up geofences for deliveries and service zones
• build dashboards with Google Maps or Mapbox integration
• listen for location updates and determine when to update delivery status and send push notifications
• store massive amounts of location and event data for analysis

The solution

For similar problems like analytics, payments, and communications, there are great platform solutions like Amplitude, Stripe, and Twilio, respectively.

Why not location? My co-founder Coby Berman and I began to explore this question. We realized that many teams were struggling to build location context and tracking. Not just for enterprise and on-demand use cases, but also for consumer use cases. And not just for background use cases, but also for foreground, in-app use cases.

Radar makes location simple. You can get started with just three steps:

1. Track users. Add the SDK to your iOS and Android apps to start tracking user locations with just a few lines of code.
2. Create geofences. Create unlimited geofences, representing places or regions, via the dashboard, bulk import, or the API.
3. Receive events. Receive geofence entry and exit events client-side or server-side via webhooks. Or, export events for analysis.

What might take weeks to build on your own can take minutes with Radar.

At a higher level, think of Radar as a machine that transforms customer-provided triggers and location data into events and insights. We're starting with location data from smartphones, geofence triggers, and geofence events, but that's only the beginning.

The value

Done right, location can be used to build better products and services, thereby increasing revenue, increasing engagement, or improving operations.

Pre-launch, we've already worked with great customers like Raise, Wine n Dine, and Via. We're just getting started, and we can't wait to see what our customers will build next.

Radar is the location platform we've been waiting for.

— Ori Klein, VP of Growth, Via

Thanks!

Want to learn more? Visit our home page to get started.

We're also on Product Hunt today. We'd love to hear your feedback and answer your questions!

We wouldn't be here without the support of our investor, Expa, and our advisors, Mike Katz and Mike Singleton. Special thanks to Eric Friedman, Brendan Lewis, and Naveen Selvadurai for reviewing drafts of this post.

Update: Thanks to VentureBeat and TechCrunch for covering our launch!