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ED: Very clever idea, in a modern day where shipping internationally is an everyday occurrence it is incredibly difficult to ship to another country with a different addressing scheme (or completely broken scheme) than the one you are used to and in a language you can’t read or speak.
Only a few weeks ago I had to ship a very important hardware shipment to 地址：广东省深圳市南山区华侨城创意园北区A5栋227室（华侨城东部工业区内） 交通： 行车至恩平街或文昌街；驶入华侨城东部工业区停车场 地铁侨城东站下，A出口，从恩平街入去即可 公交站：康佳集团东或警校站下.
I can’t read or write Mandarin, my apologies to my Chinese readers if I have screwed this up.
So you can imagine my very real concern that there was every chance my parcel was wrongly addressed and would end up in a market stall somewhere.
The biggest issue is that this is such a massive global adoption play, I hope they have the funds to see it in to widespread adoption and they suitably protected from an IP perspective.
I would really like to see a VC or Angel write them a big cheque as I believe this idea deserves to live.
| Startup Name | What3words |
|---|---|
| What problem are you solving? | 75% of the world suffers from inconsistent, complicated or no addressing systems. This means that around 4 billion people are invisible; unable to report crime; unable to get deliveries or receive aid; and unable to exercise many of their rights as citizens because they simply have no way to communicate where they live. It means that in remote locations water facilities can’t be found, monitored and fixed; and schools, refugee camps and informal settlements remain unaddressed. Even in countries with advanced systems, people get lost, packages aren’t delivered and businesses aren’t found. Poor addressing is costly & annoying in developed countries, but limits growth and threatens lives in developing ones. |
| What is your solution? | Our algorithm is a geocoder that turns latitude, longitude coordinates into 3 words addresses and vice versa. Using words means non-technical people can find any location accurately and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with less ambiguity than any other system (e.g. street address, landmark based descriptions, postcode or lat,long) |
| Why is this a great opportunity? | What3words is a global grid of 3mx3m squares where each square has been given a 3 word address. It means everyone and everywhere now has a simple and easy to use address. |
| Target Market | Marketers, logistics, GIS, addressing, navigation, location, ecommerce, retail, Microfinance, aid, humanitarian, travel, tourism, ngo, charity, social impact, philanthropy, airlines, travel guides, |
| How will you make money? | Subscription’s |
| Founders Names | Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen |
| Website | What3Words |
| What type of funding has the company received | Bootstrapped/self funded |
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