Life360 Blog

SAN FRANCISCO, June 15, 2018 – Life360, the leading location sharing app that protects and connects families, today announced the addition of Ben Kim as the Vice President of Product. Previously, Ben has held positions in mobile-focused roles such as Groupon and Gametime and will bring his expertise of the mobile consumer industry to Life360.

“Ben’s previous roles have given him a unique experience and understanding of the consumer psyche which positions him well to succeed and lead the team here,” said Chris Hulls, co-founder and CEO of Life360. “As a father and a long time Life360 user, he has a vision for the future of our product and how we can align ourselves with the modern family.”

In 2006, Ben joined Yahoo! as a Senior Product Manager for Yahoo! Search, Mail and Messenger, across mobile platforms – all before the adoption of the iPhone when users didn’t have said tools at the tips of their fingers. In 2010 he joined Groupon as a Lead Product Manager for the iOS and Android apps helping grow the company to hundreds of millions in annual revenue. Most recently, Ben held the position as SVP of Product at Gametime, a leader in mobile, last-minute ticketing, where he saw the company through Seed to Series B funding rounds while continuing to grow and build the company product.

As Life360 expands its premium offerings, like Driver Protect that includes crash detection and emergency response, weekly driver reports and extended roadside assistance, Ben will be responsible for mapping out product strategy and ensuring the company’s mission and vision are met through new updates and features.

“The way Life360 has adapted its products to give its users accurate, real-time information has been incredible,” said Kim. “This team is so clearly focused on bringing peace of mind to families and valuable products to its users’ daily lives – I’m excited to dive in and help Life360 grow to its full potential.”

About Life360

Life360 is the world’s leading location and driving safety service that helps protect and connect families by offering intelligent location sharing, coordination, and driving safety features. A leader in family tech, Life360 gives families peace of mind when they are not together. It’s available on iOS and Android. Founded in 2008, Life360 has raised over $90M in venture capital and is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.life360.com.

Media Contact

Yalda Rafie for SutherlandGold

415.275.6249

life360@sutherlandgold.com

SAN FRANCISCO, February 13, 2018 – Life360, the world’s largest network for families, today announced the addition of Brit Morin, the CEO and founder of the digital media giant Brit + Co to the company’s board. In addition, Life360 hired Ariana Hellebuyck, who formerly drove the brand strategy and marketing at NerdWallet and the University of Phoenix, as the company’s first VP of Brand Marketing.

“Brit is a digital pioneer with a proven track record when it comes to building out a brand and diversifying revenue streams,” said Chris Hulls, co-founder and CEO of Life360. “ As both a mom and brand builder, she understands our end user and how Life360 can become the center of a family and give them peace of mind.”

Morin founded Brit + Co in 2011 with the mission to inspire women and enable them to use creativity to shape their lives. She quickly established Brit + Co as one of the largest digital media companies for women. The company reaches an engaged community of over 175 million online and across its platforms. Her leadership and Brit + Co’s rapid rise has garnered awards and accolades that include Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Marie Claire’s The New Guard, Glamour’s Female Entrepreneur Innovator, and Fortune’s 10 Most Promising Entrepreneurs, among others.

“Life360 is an incredibly valuable tool for moms like myself all around the country,” said Morin. “Leveraging user data is invaluable in any digital business, but the scale and uniqueness of Life360’s data — paired with their target demo of women — makes me incredibly excited to join the team.”

Morin joins board chairman John Coghlan, formerly CEO of Visa USA and Vice Chairman at Charles Schwab, and members Chris Cheever, Partner at Fontinalis Partners, Alex Haro, President of Life360, Chris Hulls, CEO of Life360, and Ryan Swagar, Partner at Venture51.

Prior to joining Life360, Hellebuyck drove the brand strategy and advertising efforts for NerdWallet, the go-to resource for all of life’s financial decisions. She also served as the VP of Brand Marketing at University of Phoenix, a subsidiary of Apollo Education Group, where she launched the “I am a Phoenix” campaign, transforming the University of Phoenix into a household name.

“Ariana has deep experience building brands that consumers turn to for making important personal decisions – be it financial or education,” said Hulls. “She understands the central role Life360 plays in the lives of families and understands what it takes to grow a trusted, family-centric brand.”

“I’m excited to help grow Life360’s brand and to establish it as a household name,” said Hellebuyck. “When it comes to the family, no one has more credibility or insight than Life360, and I’m looking forward to building on their successes.”

About Life360

Life360 is the world’s leading location and driving safety service for families available for Android and iPhone in a convenient and secure mobile app. A leader in family tech, Life360 gives families peace of mind when they are not together. As the largest source of family driving data in the world, Life360 provides safety insights around driving behavior to better protect family members on the go via location sharing, day-to-day communications, driver updates, emergency response features, and more. Founded in 2008, Life360 has raised $76M in venture capital and is headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, visit www.life360.com.

Media Contact

John Bruno

415.275.6227

Life360@sutherlandgold.com

At Life360 we receive a lot of great stories from our users, from parents monitoring their new drivers to families staying connected while traveling across countries; the amount of different ways that people use our app has always been incredibly inspiring. Sometimes we receive more harrowing stories, ones that include locating drivers from accidents or loved ones getting lost in dangerous areas. This particular story is about a family rescuing their daughter from her abductor, which luckily, had a happy ending. The family has been gracious enough to let us share it with the Life360 community, in hopes that others will take strong precautions with their own family safety.

“To whom it may concern:

On behalf of my family, I’d like to express our deepest gratitude to your company and to all of the individuals who have worked to develop and maintain your Life360 app. Below, I’ve summarized our story of how your app saved the life of our precious sixteen year old daughter last month. We’ve heard from many who’ve obtained this app, once they heard of our harrowing experience. We realize that this post’s shares reached into the millions, many of which we earnestly hope will soon have become your customers. We’re so thankful for the opportunity to celebrate another Christmas with our family intact. Without your app, this would, most likely, never again have been a possibility.   Thanks to you, that chair that would otherwise have been empty at our Christmas table, is again filled with this beautiful, bubbly blessing whom we call Myleea.

– Roxanne”

Below is an abbreviated version of the story from Life360, to read the full story please visit the original post here. 

In late October of last year, 16-year-old Myleea was with her family spending their final hours together with her grandmother at a local hospital. Looking for some support, she decided to text a friend in the area that she had met at summer camp a few years back. They mostly kept in touch online, so she wasn’t very familiar with him in real life but was glad for the company. They stayed together in the lobby for a while until they decided to go for some coffee and fresh air. It wasn’t until they were in the car, driving further and further away from the hospital, that Myleea realized that this person whom she thought she could trust did not intend on bringing her back at all.

He thought he had disabled her phone—closing any contact with the outside world—but Myleea was smart enough to send her location to her parents using Life360 by briefly connecting to his phone’s hotspot. Gone for more than a few hours now, her worried and desperate parents got the authorities involved in their daughter’s disappearance. They followed the last known location of Myleea’s phone signal, which sent them to an extremely remote landfill, featuring nothing but acres and acres of desolate sand pits. They looked for hours late into the night with the police until they had to call the search off. Not to be deterred, the family went back to the location themselves after regrouping, searching deeper and deeper into the darkness. Finally, their flashlight reflected on a far-off, seemingly abandoned car. Upon closer inspection, they opened the door and found the man that had abducted Myleea!

They held the man at gunpoint while Myleea got out of the car, badly shaken but alive, and waited for the authorities to arrive. While they could hear sirens in the distance, all they could think about was how their daughter was returned and safe. Myleea and her family were able to spend that Christmas together as a family.

It’s stories like these that remind us that we’re not just building an app, we’re helping families and friends stay safe.

Could your family use peace of mind with Life360? Or do know one that could? Share this article with them today.

Chris Hulls, CEO & Co-Founder of Life360, the world’s leading location and driving safety service for families

For the last decade, the handheld computers we carry with us everywhere have drastically improved our lives — from transporting us where we need to go, allowing us to see a doctor digitally, managing our bank accounts and even saving our lives by calling 911 for us when we get in a car accident. We are in a world where we are spending an average of five hours of our day on our phones (that’s 2,617 interactions with our phones on average!) — even families are opening the Life360 app over 12 times a day.

You might say we’ve reached the limits of what we can do while on-the-go, but this is only the beginning of the mobile revolution.

In the new year, we will see innovations in mobile technology continue to improve lives in even more fundamental ways. Take the safety and security space: the connected home security industry is on track to reach $15.6 billion globally by 2021 with more and more companies introducing advanced alarm systems, doorbell cameras, etc. But all of these innovations have the same problem: they are limited to only protecting your actual home and what is inside it.

Meanwhile at Life360 we’ve been connecting families on-the-go, bringing them peace of mind and security beyond the home for years. Millions of families use our services across the world and in the U.S. alone, and Life360 has doubled its size in the last 12 months making 2017 our biggest growth year.

And today, with the official launch of ADT Go, this vision of leveraging mobile technology to better serve people in their daily lives is even more of a reality with ADT’s use of our entrusted, proprietary location tracking technology and driver safety services to arm their users on-the-go. Together we are redefining the concept of personal security with a shared goal to allow families to feel safe and synchronized beyond the front door, no matter where they are.

This new kind of personal security is just a taste of what’s to come for the mobile space, as major industries including health, insurance and finance shift to mobile-first innovation. Imagine a world where these industries turn to advanced location technology to improve their services for their users. The future of mobile will be a 360-approach to securing everything in your life, not just in your home. We are excited to be a part of it.

Thank you for trusting us with your family’s safety. As the year comes to an end, we find ourselves reflecting on all of the things that we accomplished to help shape a great 2017; we hope that your’s was just as memorable for you and your loved ones too. This year we were honored to:

• Welcome over 3 million new Life360 families
• Add more than 30 million new Places to your maps
• Send over 5 billion Place Alerts
• Monitor over 5 billion drives

We’re excited for an even bigger 2018! We have new things in store that will make staying connected with your family and friends an even better experience. We can’t wait to share it with you all.

It’s almost our favorite holiday of the year at the Life360 office: Halloween! From costumes to candy and pumpkin spiced lattes to spooky decorations, we pull out all the stops.

We know how fun this time of year can be, but we also know the worries that come from letting your family have their freedom to trick-or-treat, party, and gorge on candy.

To give you peace of mind this October, we’ve put together a few ways to stay safe on Halloween using Life360, as well as some general safety tips every parent should know.

Map A Trick-Or-Treat Zone

Map a trick-or- treat route with the family. Create a Place Alert for this area so you will get a notification if your children step outside of the zone and into unknown territory. To set up your trick-or-treat Place:

1. From the menu, hit ‘Places’
2. In the Places screen, hit ‘Add’ in the top right corner
3. Name your Place ‘Trick-or-Treat Zone’
4. Enter an address or move the map below to the desired zone
5. Slide the bar at the bottom to make the area smaller or larger, depending on your family’s route
6. Save the Place
7. On the next screen, make sure you turn on notifications for this Place
8. Click here to try adding a Place alert here

Halloween Party Arrival Alerts

Know your children have arrived safely at a party with Life360’s Driving feature. Driving events, like top speed, are listed in the app whether it is your teen driving or they are riding with a friend. To view Driving Behavior:

1. From the map, click on a Circle member’s picture
2. Click on a ‘Drive’ to view details
3. You can see the time, location and distance of the drive, as well as the Top Speed reached during the drive
4. You can also turn on Driving Alerts by taping Driving under the menu. By toggling alerts on, you can receive an alert after each drive to monitor top speed, phone usage and other driving events.
5. Click here to turn on Driving Alerts

Check Battery Levels

Make sure your teen leaves home with a fully charged mobile phone! Life360 shows battery levels on Circle members, so nudge your family to charge up when they’re running low on juice. Being available in case of emergency is important. To view a Circle member’s battery level: From the map, look to the right of a Circle member’s name for their battery percentage

Make Sure Your Trick-Or-Treat Route Is Safe By Checking Crime Alerts

It’s always a good idea to pre-plan your trick-or-treat route so you can make sure you know where you’re family is going, and not run into any unexpected bumps in the night. Keep your family safe by knowing about areas high in crime with easy-to-find hotspots on our map. Click each dot to view details of theft, burglary, vandalism, and registered sex offenders in your neighborhood. *Note, this is a US, Premium feature only.

Other Important Safety Tips

• Remind your child of everyday safety tips like looking left and right before crossing the street.
• Kids should stay on sidewalks at all times. Taking shortcuts through yards or on streets can lead to accidents.
• Establish a pre-planned route (and curfew if you have teens without supervision).
• Use reflective tape on costumes to make your child easy to see in the dark.
• Give your child a flashlight with fresh batteries.
• Tell your child to go only to homes with outside lights on.
• Make sure your child carries their phone and has Life360 set up!

Happy trick-or-treating!

Starting today, users can now receive family location notifications through their Alexa-enabled devices. Our newly launched skill for Alexa (beta) is among the first to offer opt-in notifications for Alexa, enabling families to ask for real-time updates sharing loved ones’ whereabouts and to receive alerts that family members have arrived or departed designated places like school, work or soccer practice.

“Our app makes it incredibly simple to see where your loved ones are and know that they’re safe throughout the day. We’re excited to introduce the Life360 skill with notifications for Alexa so that our users can receive updates about their loved ones’ whereabouts while at home even when their hands are busy with another task or their smartphone is in a different room,” said Alex Haro, co-founder and President of Life360. “This new integration extends how we deliver peace of mind to the millions of families who rely on our technology to stay connected.”

You must first enable the Life360 skill for Alexa and opt-in to notifications. Family location alerts delivered through the Life360 app will then also be delivered to Alexa. When there is new information to retrieve, users will be alerted by a chime and a yellow light ring on their Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Echo Show device. Users can simply ask, “Alexa, what did I miss?” to retrieve Life360 alerts such as “Julie arrived at school,” “Julie left soccer” or “Dad left work.”

The Life360 skill for Alexa can also deliver near real-time family location updates on-demand. When users are at home, they can ask “Alexa, ask Life360 where is my family?” or “Alexa, ask Life360 where is Julie?” Life360 will deliver family members’ location information to Alexa so that users hear a response such as “Julie is at 500 Main Street and Dad is at work.” If a family member is driving at the time of the location request, Life360 will deliver that information to Alexa, as well, so the user hears “Julie is driving and near 640 Park Avenue.”

When users have set up geo-fences, called Places, in the Life360 app around favorite locations like school, work, or soccer practice, the location alert from Life360 will mention that place by the name the user has assigned it. In the absence of a geo-fenced place, Life360 will provide the nearest street address when delivering a location update to Alexa.

Click here to read more.

Please note, this notification skill is still in beta.

Apple’s new iOS11 comes with new features and changes. Some of these changes will directly affect Life360, and we’ve been working for months to ensure that everything works seamlessly when you and your family update your devices. That being said, we’ve written down a couple of key things that you should know regarding the update so you can have the best possible app experience.

1. Life360 requires “Always Allow” vs. “Only While Using” location permission.

When you install Life360 as a new user, iOS11 asks for a new tier of location permissions. They grant apps access to your location only while the app is being viewed on your screen.  While this might be enough for many types of apps (such as gaming or shopping), this level of permission is not enough for Life360 to work properly. The Life360 appneeds to be able to access your family’s location even when they don’t have Life360 open. This allows us to make sure everyone’s location is up to date and accurate at all times (and not just when the app is open on your device). If you can imagine: you would like to view your son’s location, but he does not currently have the app open on his phone, so you will not be able to see where he is.

As a result, for Life360 to work properly, it is essential that every one in your Circleselect the “Always Allow” location permission. If you’d prefer not to share your location all the time, the best way to do so is by toggling location sharing directly on or off within the Life360 app itself. To reiterate, Life360 only works with location permissions set to “Always Allow”, otherwise location accuracy will be intermittent and broken.

2. Do not disturb mode while driving.

iOS11 has introduced a new feature that allows you to mute notifications while a vehicle is in motion, so you can stay focused on the road. When your phone is in this state, you won’t be instantly alerted with Life360 notifications (or any notifications for that matter). While this is ultimately a safety feature, please be advised that Place Alert notifications will not appear during this time, but should show up and be available to you once you stop your drive.

3. Overall app performance should be the same.

Assuming you select “Always Allow”, Life360 will work the same on iOS11 as it does on iOS10. Remember, in order to have the best possible location accuracy regardless of iOS version, make sure everyone in your Circle keeps their Wi-Fi on. Turning on Wi-Fi on your device dramatically improves location accuracy, even if you are not actively connected to a Wi-Fi network. Your device uses the Wi-Fi sensor to detect nearby Wi-Fi base stations and narrow your exact location based on that information. With Wi-Fi on, your device can quickly locate you within the bounds of a building, but with Wi-Fi off your location accuracy can be off, as your device needs to rely on less precise location inputs (like the location of cell phone towers).  

This month we saw the devastation that occurred in many parts of the world brought on by natural disasters: Hurricane Harvey and Irma in the US, floods in South Asia, and the recent earthquake in Mexico. They all contributed to very dangerous situations for local residents. While there is nothing worse than a family trying to contact loved ones in times like these, we at Life360 try to be a useful tool to help with communication, connection and peace of mind. Here are some ways you can use Life360 to help before, during and after the next emergency.

1. Check in: If you ever need to give a status update to your family, simply tap “Check in” and you share your location with your family, letting them know that you’re safe and sound.

2. Help alert: Incase of an immediate emergency, send a “Help Alert” and we’ll notify your emergency contact list with your location via email, in-app notification, text and a phone call. Often during these times phone lines may get jammed as families try to contact one another, but Life360 uses such a small amount of data that your location and safety status gets through to our system so we can keep sending out your info until everyone in your family gets it. Make sure you’re prepared by setting up your emergency contact list now.

3. Monitor battery life: In addition to location, Life360 also lists the battery life of users and notifies circle members. When your phone goes into low-power mode, it turns off certain GPS functionalities that degrade location accuracy. Stay charged!

4. Increase location accuracy by keeping your Wi-Fi on: Turning on WiFi on your device dramatically improves location accuracy, even if you are not actively connected to a WiFi network. Your device uses the WiFi sensor to detect nearby WiFi  base stations and narrow your exact location based on that information.  With WiFi on, your device can quickly locate you within the bounds of a building, but with WiFi off your location accuracy can be off by more than a mile, as your device needs to rely on less precise location inputs (e.g., the location of cell phone towers).