Ex-Googlers Raise $5.8 Million to Help Retailers Track Foot Traffic

Euclid Elements is hoping to be the Google Analytics of the physical retail world.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company helps brick-and-mortar retailers track shopping behavior by putting sensors in their stores; the sensors pick up Wi-Fi signals from smartphones.

Euclid has raised $5.8 million in capital, led by New Enterprise Associates with Harrison Metal, Triple Point Capital and other investors also participating.

Euclid’s CEO Will Smith said the system tabulates anonymous foot traffic and collects the data on a dashboard, where retailers can track loyalty by a phone’s unique user ID.

Challenged with the suggestion that most people turn off Wi-Fi on their devices to save battery life, Smith disagreed. “It’s accurate,” he said, adding that the sensors can even tell whether someone is entering the store, or just walking by.

The system cannot collect any information on a person and can’t communicate with them. But it can track whether the same person visited a coffee shop in the morning and returned for lunch in the afternoon.

The company’s COO, Scott Crosby, is the co-founder of the original Urchin team that was acquired by Google in April 2005, and which became the basis for Google Analytics.