Lightspeed (company)

Lightspeed was founded by Dax DaSilva in 2005, with its headquarters in Montreal, to provide point-of-sale and e-commerce software to retail businesses. In 2014, it expanded its customer base to include the hospitality industry.[2][3] It has its offices in Silicon Valley, Olympia, Washington, New York City, Ghent, and Belgium. It provides services to 23,000 businesses worldwide, including Adidas, Harman Kardon, Frank & Oak, and STORY. The company is backed by iNovia Capital and Accel Partners.[2][4][5]

In 2005, DaSilva laid the foundations of Lightspeed in Montreal, Canada. The company was founded to bring the ‘Apple Store Experience’ to retailers through the creation of inventory-centric point of sale systems.[2]

Accel Partners led a $30 million investment round in 2012 and from 2012 to 2013, the company observed a 120% growth in annual transactions. It acquired MerchantOS, point-of-sale software developer, and Lightspeed Retail, an HTML5 web-based product that can be used from any computer in 2013. Lightspeed's customers processed $7.5 billion in 2013. At the time, the company had more 15,000 store locations.[6][7][8][9][10]

On June 18, 2014, the company added Advanced Analytics to Lightspeed Retail’s feature roster. In September, Lightspeed closed a $35 million investment round led by iNovia Capital. The same year, it expanded its reach into the restaurant and hospitality industry in 2014 by the Belgian startup POSIOS. Lightspeed was serving 21,000 businesses and its per year transactions increased from $6 billion to $8.2 billion.[11][3][12][13]

The next year, its client base increased to 23,000 businesses in more than 30 countries. In September 2015, 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. The next month 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. SEOShop’s eCommerce platform would be rebranded as Lightspeed eCom and further refined to offer complete integration with the company’s retail POS software.[11][14][15][16]

In October 2017, Lightspeed POS Inc. raised about C$200 million ($160 million) in a new round of venture-capital funding.[17]

In April 2018, Lightspeed added Patrick Pichette, the former chief financial officer at Google, Paul McFeeters, the former chief financial officer of OpenText, who has also served on the boards of Hootsuite and Blueprint Software Systems to its board of Directors. Lightspeed POS, Inc. Lightspeed unveiled Retail Success Index Tool in October. Later that year, the company announced Lightspeed Loyalty, a platform for customer engagement. The technology was a result of the company’s acquisition of Toronto-based ReUp, a digital platform that allows business owners to build a branded loyalty program.[18][19][20]

On January 30, 2019, Lightspeed Payments rolled out.[21] In March, the company went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol LSPD.[22]

As of 2014, Lightspeed has over 700 employees in Montreal, Toronto, Ghent, Amsterdam, Olympia, London, and New York.[7][3] As of 2020, the company generates revenue of $120.6 million with 478.4 million assets.[23][24]

On January 7, 2020 Lightspeed POS Inc. Announces the Acquisition of Gastrofix.[25]

In August 2012, Lightspeed was named winner of the 5th Annual Innovative Award - Software Applications for their product.[26] In the same year, Profit ranked Lightspeed number 61 on its list of "Canada's 200 fastest growing companies.[6]

• Official website