The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
A post address is a very inaccurate thing. Even in an ideal big city with lots of order and no voluntary construction there may be 1 km of walking from one side of the building to the other. Yet the address is the same.
Geographic coordinates are ideally accurate but inconvenient. First you need to memorize that the necessary spot is 36 minutes and 47.4 seconds, then tell it to your counter-agent, and then pray that they don’t mix up and find themselves at 46 minutes 37.4 seconds – a different side of the metropolis.
What3Words, the English startup of the day, suggests coordinates that are convenient to remember. It divides the entire surface of the planet into 3x3m squares and names each with three words. This bit of sea is ‘city.grid.walk’ and the one next to it is ‘supercool.tearoom.plasma.’ The accuracy is practically 100%, and it’s difficult to mix up – ‘city.grid.work’ is thousands of miles away. You can’t get there if you misheard. And 40 thousand words is enough to name all the squares.
As a result, people are supposed to use these coordinates and businesses are supposed to coordinate employees and pay the startup for using its API. Unfortunately, this business model practically doesn’t work in real life. A point on a map in a mobile app is even better and even more precise – and free at that. That’s what everybody uses. Still, What3Words doesn’t give up for 10 years now and finds persuasive words for new investors. Overall, the company brought in USD 63M of investments.
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
