Guest Post From Locomizer

 This is the full post that Alexei Poliakov, co-founder of Locomizer, was recently asked to write for the Telefonica blog, which you can see here. 

Recently, we had a very interesting group discussion at the startup networking dinner hosted by Telefonica in San Francisco on “What is the future of maps?”. Since my startup, Locomizer, deals with a lot of location data on a daily basis, I would like to share my thoughts regarding this topic with a broader audience.

First, let us touch on some key trends that are redefining our notion of location and maps. We must admit that the era of persistent location is upon us as we speak. For better or worse, our whereabouts are tracked, analyzed and recorded on a constant basis. The abundance of mobile phones makes it easy to access personal data such as location. For example, cell-tower triangulation tracking generates tons of location data as the nearest cell-tower signals are determined every seven seconds. Moreover, the reality is that personal location data is not confined to just telecoms as it is being generated across multiple verticals. It is imperative for governments and business organizations to obtain customer consent and be more transparent about their usage of personal location data to avoid controversies like the NSA surveillance program.

Despite all these concerns, let’s face it - persistent location is here to stay. Location is our identity – the places we visit in our daily lives define our real-life preferences and interests. Consumers are warming up to the idea of personal location sharing as shown by the increasing usage of Facebook’s Nearby service. Last December, Facebook reported that 250 million users were tagging posts with location on a monthly basis which roughly corresponds to 800 geo-tags a second.

The explosion of personal location data creates a rewarding opportunity for organizations to gain a better understanding of their customers and their needs. However, the challenge is not in data availability but in how it is translated to retrieve the data-driven insights about customer behavior around certain places. To start winning in this space, one must own the “geo-stack” as famously described by Chris Dixon. Nevertheless, controlling the functional layers of geo-stacks, including geography maps, point of interest data, and customer geodata, may not be enough. Industry players must create a winning proposition showcasing a clear benefit for consumers to use their services AND to be at ease whilst sharing their personal location data.

So, to answer “What is the future of maps?”, I would like to paraphrase Fred Wilson and say that the future of maps is in understanding maps with people in them.

Alexei was working for big corporate names in the mobile and wireless domain until he co-founded a startup called Locomizer in February 2013. Locomizer is an enterprise location data analytics platform that enables audience discovery for relevant targeting. In June 2013, Mashable included Locomizer in their list of 25 Top UK startups.

Guest Post from Seeker on Big Data

One of our startups, Seeker, were invited to an Ogilvy Lab Day yesterday, where the entire event was focused on Big Data. Tielman de Villiers, the co-founder and CTO at Seeker Industries, went along to find out just how big the debate is around big data. He was particularly keen to hear opinions surrounding just who owns all of this data, is it possible data can become too “clever” for its own good, and is there really that much value in “big” data? Here is his report, for those of us who missed the event.

Photo by @nicoleyershon

"There are currently many unanswered questions concerning the creation of big data, it's ownership, and it's accuracy.  Let's go through some of the issues discussed at the Lab Day.

Matt Bayfield, head of data practice at OgilvyOne Worldwide, asked what is the role of advertising, if brands start knowing everything there is to know about you? It’s not only the ownership of the underlying data, but also of the data on top the data, as Dr Trevor Davis, consumer products expert at IBM, mentioned.  For example, if you start making predictions using Facebook’s Opengraph or Google Trends, where does the legal responsibility start and end?

And what if all that personal data is actually a bit of a lie? So, even if Google, Facebook and Amazon captures, processes, segments, and targets everything users are willing to share, how “truthful” and representative is it really? Liri Andersson, co-founder of This Fluid World, spoke of examples where the “real” data is still outside of the “system”. For example, product recommendations often occur in forum-based discussions, which influence our decisions about purchases. In other words, how useful is the big data really with regards to predicting future behaviour?

Then there’s the slightly “scary” part of big data, when data analysis algorithms become so complex and relied upon by corporations that plain old human common sense goes out the back door. Stan Stalnaker, founder director of Hub Culture and the brains behind the Ven currency, warned of becoming too reliant on machine driven algorithms. Just look at what is happening in the world of corporate finance with programs driving and controlling sales in financial markets. What happens when this happens in the world of digital marketing, with the most personal of our personal data?

Big data also seems to be big grey voids. Spotting the little clusters of data with significance inside the masses of greyness (ie, “sparse” data), and doing it in “slow time” (ie, looking back at long historical trends, as opposed to right here, right now) is something which Dr Davis used to “predict” fashion trends. For those left wandering, it’s steampunk."

Guest post with insider tips from Sokratis Papafloratos

Recently the Collider startups were given a private workshop with Sokratis Papafloratos, who took them through the experience of being acquired by a large brand. This is something that Sokratis has personal experience in as in 2006 he co-founded TrustedPlaces.com, one of the first user-generated review sites in the UK. He managed to raise half a million pounds in 2007, with even more funds in the following year. Things continued to go well for TrustedPlaces as the user interface received high praise and awards, including the Best Startup in the UK in 2009. In 2010 a positive outcome was realised when Yell Group/Hibu acquired the company. Read on to see what insider tips he shared.

"Last week I had the opportunity to discuss the lessons I learned from exiting my first startup (TrustedPlaces to Yell Group/Hibu) with a bunch of startups at the Collider accelerator.

Here’s a list of points I shared with them about the exit process:

Preparing from the start

1. The process starts from day 1 Don’t interpret this as building to flip or being in for the wrong reasons. It may take one year from start to exit, it may take ten. Be thorough on on every transaction and contract, keep your documentation in order and always have exit as an agenda item in your board meetings. (You may not spend any real time discussing, but having it there will focus you and your board).

2. Build relationships early

Selling your business will often be the result of a personal relationship, which you cultivated over a number of years. Don’t hesitate to reach out to competitors and incumbents in your space early on.

3. Skill up You will be dealing with pros on the other side. They know the tricks of the trade and have done this before. You haven’t. The key skill to master is negotiation, which is useful in running your business anyway. I loved ‘Secrets of Power Negotiating’ for its playbook approach and would highly recommend it.

4. Manage your cap table and funding terms This is the hardest one to get right, but you need to be aware that the capital you raise and type of investor you raise from will often dictate possible/desirable outcomes. Watch out for liquidation preferences with >1 multiple and make sure you understand what ‘participating preferred’ means.

Preparing just before the first real conversation

You will rarely get someone calling up saying ‘I want to buy your business now!’. Chances are you will have a few informal chats with someone at the right position, you will receive and send the right signals and at some point things will get serious. The transition from flirting to getting in bed can happen quicker than you think and you need to be ready for it.

5. Think deeply about the outcome you want It seems obvious, but it’s very easy to let this one slip or not think deep enough. As a friend had told me ‘you’ll only sell your business once’. Make sure you get what you want out of the exit.

6. Align with your investors You won’t get the process to work unless everyone is behind it. Have a very clear common outcome agreed with your investors and get as much help from them as you can. Howzat Media (Hugo, Sascha and Lars especially) were incredibly helpful. However, I should have done a better job getting more help from them by preparing better and doing more of the following.

7. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse It may sound silly, you will cringe, but just get it done. Run through the playbooks, visualize the meetings (who you take with you and who will be there from the other side), how you respond to their offer…get as much prep as you can afford and get your investors to help you with it.

Managing the process

8. Understand the journey Here’s what a typical one looks like.

• First conversation
• Deliberations
• Verbal offer
• Emailed offer
• Deliberations
• Final offer on email
• Heads of Terms – this is where things get real. Anything else is foreplay.
• Due diligence and negotiating of documents
• Completion

It took us nearly two months from heads of terms to completion and a similar amount of time for the previous steps.

9. Prepare your lawyer and accountant Give them as much warning as you can so they can be prepared. Talk to them to fully understand the different types of acquisition (asset vs equity sale) and their respective tax implications. Go back to your articles of association and firm up their understanding before conversations get real (points 5 & 6).

10. Get acquirer to agree to cover legal costs if they walk away They should be happy to do this if they’re serious. Agreeing the specifics will be the first hurdle you need to negotiate and agree. Have fun! You only have a million more such points to cover.

11. Negotiate the highest sounding title you can get away with. It will matter when it comes to getting things done in your new organization.

12. Keep everyone focused on the business Not all acquisition conversations end up in actual acquisitions. The biggest mistake you can make is lose focus and distract your team. An aborted acquisition can hurt morale so make sure you share with the people you need to, when you feel the time is right and set the expectations at the right level.

13. Take care of yourself Stay healthy and in shape. Responding to an email the next day won’t kill the deal and most things that seem huge and massively important are often not. Being relaxed and composed will help you run a smoother process and get a better deal in the end.

I have made mistakes on most points above, which I hope the post helps you avoid. If you’ve picked up any lessons yourself or would like to go deeper on anything mentioned here, hit me up on twitter or leave a comment below. This is just an overview on the points I feel are the most important for a first time founder. At some point I’d also like to cover the negotiation and management of the post-acquisition phase and expand on how to create competitive tension before and during the acquisition period."

Thank you Sokratis for letting us share your tips, and for more information, you can visit his site here.