Locality Seeks to be the Kayak of Local Services

Locality (formerly Centzy) is a startup founded in NYC that recently announced a $4.3M Series A funding round led by Matrix Partners.

Local search remains a problem because there isn't a simple, scalable way to get information for millions of small businesses online and keep it all up to date.  Locality is the first company that's simply willing to call these businesses and manually collect this information, repeating this process several times a year to make sure everything is up to date.  "Local search represents 43 percent of all internet searches, but less than 10 percent of businesses post their menus, prices, and hours online," says co-founder and CEO Jay Shek.  The company cleverly focuses its efforts on high-frequency-of-use services, or "errands", such as nail salons, dry cleaners, and preschools.

Two-thirds of Locality's 1.5M monthly unique users access the site from mobile devices, despite the fact that the company has yet to introduce native apps.  The high-intent nature of local search makes Locality's user base particularly attractive to merchants.

However, a large challenge for Locality, and startups tackling the "local" category in general, is merchant fatigue around trying out new technology products and services.  This is an obstacle that the company is continuously trying to overcome as it seeks to bring unconnected small businesses into today's digital era.