The following interview is a conversation we had with Snorre Jordheim Myhre, CEO & Founder of Plaace, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $6 Million Raised to Build the Future of Location Intelligence.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Well, it’s a pleasure being here.
Brett
We were just joking there in the pre interview that you have a very difficult norwegian name. So if you can go ahead and pronounce your name fully for us, that would be awesome to kick things off.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Snorre. That’s the proper norwegian way of saying it. But Snorre works well as well.
Brett
What about the rest of the name?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
You.
Brett
Think my mouth can move in that?
Brett
In that way?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
That’s hard. I mean, my middle name is actually Jonas. I used to use that when I was in high school in the US, which was, I think, the only thing that my american friends were able to pronounce. That’s what it is.
Brett
That’s awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about your background just to kick things off. So what was your background before you started Place?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Well, as you can imagine with this international name, I’ve been an international man of business for many years and I have quite an international background. I mean, I’ve gone to high school in the US and college in the US and studying in London and Singapore and been backpacking around the world and everything. So I always had a quite international outlook. Had parents who spent a lot of time outside of Norway. And I also studied both accommodation, political science and business before doing what anyone doing a business major without being able to decide what to do, end up doing consulting. And I started working for Accenture, which is a big american firm, also quite international, doing all the typical grunt work of going through Excel and making PowerPoint presentations and strategies and cost cutting and so on.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
And that took me over to work in retail where I worked for biggest norwegian grocery store chain at about half the grocery store market and doing the internal consulting gig, project management, business development, finding cost savings opportunities, innovation and all that. Then I always wanted to start something. I’ve been. I’ve had some entrepreneurial acclamations since I was 1516. So then I took the leap into starting something my own after being in the corporate world for about eight years and started what is now Place. And of course I can tell you a lot about Place, but I don’t think all the skills that I acquired as a consultant, both internally and externally, so that took me to Place where I’m now.
Brett
Let’s talk about timing. So I see you launched in March 2020. Did you launch at the beginning of March or the end of March?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Yeah, so we launched at the end of March. So two weeks into COVID, after Norway was shut down, probably same thing in the US. That was perfect timing for starting a company. Yeah.
Brett
It’s funny, the amount of founders I talked to where they had the same thing, it’s like they leave their job, they take the risk. What can possibly go wrong? I’m prepared for everything.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Exactly. Yeah. But actually, I mean, it wasn’t good time to start because both. I have two co founders, Peter and Tobias, and they’re extremely outgoing and social, so starting something in a lockdown was actually pretty good because there’s nothing else to do than just build a company and now. So we fared by well and living in Norway, where we have a huge state, which is not a socialist state, as some Americans might believe. It’s a state that tries to encourage as much value creation and capitalism and entrepreneurship as possible. So a lot of money was poured into startups, all the soft funding initiatives expanded. So it was a good time funding advice to start a company as well.
Brett
And Norway, if I have it right, is very similar. I don’t know if Norway wants to be compared that way, but very similar to countries like Saudi Arabia. Right. Where a lot of the country’s wealth comes from oil, but they’re starting to try to transition into technology. Is that a fair way to summarize what’s going on?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Yeah, although, I mean, comparing us to Saudi Arabia’s offense to Norway, because our societies are completely different in terms of democratic views and civil society and all that. But yes, it’s correct that the money came from oil. Although Norway was one of the poorer western countries, I think up until we found oil, it was still one of the richest countries in the world, relatively. We had a mixed economy before we found oil as well. Industrialized economy, whereas Saudi Arabia, I mean, was how much before they found the oil? So that’s a big difference. And even though now the economy is quite influenced by the oil sector, we still have a large manufacturing base. And still also a big service economy. So in that respect it’s quite different.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
What we’ve been good at is that the surplus of the government revenues coming in from oil has been poured into a sovereign wealth fund, which is now one of the biggest ones in the world. We have about 5 million people in Norway and our sovereign wealth fund is about 1300 billion us or so, which is ridiculous amount of money person. So there are some similarities but also quite a big difference.
Brett
Yeah, I think the only similarity I was thinking of is like being an oil nation or a lot of the wealth comes from oil and trying to make that transition, but very different Places I can imagine lets switch gears and lets dive a bit deeper into the company at a high level.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
What problem does Place solve in general? I mean our vision is to create vibrant streets and cities and the problem resolving is to retail and restaurants and service companies, or physical weather presence on the ground floor in the city typically, or a mall help them from going bankrupt. Overall problem than river solving is if you’re a retail company, better take better location decisions. By that I mean how do you know where you should open a new store if you’re a retail chain? In order to maximize revenue based on the customers that are present in an area, and if you have a network of restaurants or of retail stores, finding out how you can increase operations and increase the profitability from them. We also have those companies that rent out to retail companies, so typically commercial real estate companies.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
And then we help them understand what type of tenant mix would be suitable for a given area based on the customers that are there. Make sure that they increase or maximize the rent that they can deduct from their given properties.
Brett
What was it like selling into this market in the early days of the pandemic? Let’s just zoom in on the first three to six months. What were sales like those first three to six months?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Actually, the way we started the company, were part of answer d and l answer. So their take is that they bring in people that are stuck in the corporate world and want to start something on their own. So MIT Cowbounders, were part of the first cohort that they did around in the program that they ran in also in early part of 2020. So it was pre COVID and we quite early on took an interest in what’s going on the ground floors of retail. And given my retail background as well, to work with big data sets, going below the cards, transaction data internally. And then we started thinking out, there must be a lot of this data, must be available for companies on a higher level, on a city level as well. So we started sketching up what this could look like.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
But in order not to be too biased, went out and interviewed. I think within a month or so, we interviewed almost 50 different companies, everything from Starbucks in our way to the small restaurants just on the corner, mom pop shops and so on, and try to understand how they did their expansion planning and how they located from new locations. In this process, we, at the end of every interview, also showed them some sketches of the business idea that we had, and most of them just really triggered on it, and they were so enthusiastic. So when we got the initial funding from Ansler and started to build the MVP that we. We had defined or wanted to define, then we asked a handful of the companies that we talked with or interviewed if they wanted to be a part of the product development effort.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
And they were super enthusiastic, especially with the commercial real estate companies, even though COVID had hit a lot of work to do, but they still prioritized taking part in the product development. So that’s basically how we got them triggered and hooked on being a part of the Place. And then eventually, most of them ended up being first pilot customers and then paying customers. So one of the customers, I mean, that came in during that first initial interview phase, I mean, they’re still our biggest customer. And it’s a mall company, mall operator, 40 plus shopping malls around Norway, and now almost the whole organization. Are they using our tool?
Brett
So, yeah, it makes sense in those interviews that you could get small business owners to meet with you, but how do you get someone like Starbucks to sit down and have a conversation like that? Is that coming through antler? Is antler the connection point there? Or how do you get Starbucks to talk with you and your founder who just have an idea at that stage?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
That’s a good question. Combination. Of course. We leverage the network of Anthra. And Anthra was started by a bunch of ex machines, our business school people. So they had a really good network here, both in Norway and internationally. So some of that was beneficial to us, but we also just used our own network and also just tried to hunt down the right people. And then, because what we suggested was so interested for many of them, they accepted meeting us. So it wasn’t really hard finding those 50 meetings, and I mean, walking 50 meetings in a month. I was, in itself, quite an effort. So, yeah, what’s the market category?
Brett
Is it property analytics or how do you think about the market category that you operate in?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
There’s also good questions, because how do you define exactly what you do? And we’ve been present in several categories, I would say, but the one I think we’ve narrowed it down to is location intelligence. Location intelligence is all about how you put different data layers on the spatial level, usually with a map as a starting point. And if you look at the location intelligence business, it started probably in the eighties with ArcGIS, which is a huge american company, like a big legacy enterprise software. And then you have a company called Carto that has taken over a bit, but they’re more all around type of tools, whereas I think our main competitors, if you look at this internationally, in the US, you have a company called Placer AI, which is location intelligence company with base of pitfall data.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
So looking at where people move, and then they have a lot of supporting data set as well. In here in Europe, you have a company called my traffic that’s also got a really big. I think both of these companies have something around $100 million in funding. They’re both unicorns and have been growing massively, but they are also kind of defining the category of location intelligence again. And then we are taking our take. We have our own take on it as well. So we introduced the term collaborative analytics. Our tool is more centered around, you have the same access to understanding an area going in, look, the people, movement, transaction data and all this.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
But we made it into a collaborative tool where you capture different insights and graphs you want and you build your report, and then you include your internal and external stakeholders in this so that you are able to make actions out of the insights that you have. So collaborative analytics, I think, would be the new category that we are defining.
Brett
And when you say that, do people get it? Do your target customers and prospects, when you say collaborative analytics, get it?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
I don’t think maybe not as a phrase, but when they start working with the tool and see what we’re doing, then they definitely get it. Yeah, there’s something completely different from what is out there. I mean, if you take data, typical business intelligence tools like power bi or tableau and so on, you make dashboards, and you look at the dashboard we’ve made, you able to the user go in there and just exactly get the type of data that you want and then work on it. And that’s fine. It’s completely novel, the way I see it. So this show is brought to you.
Brett
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Brett
When it comes to your marketing, how would you describe your marketing philosophy so far?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
It’s been pretty network based, so we get some press and attention. In Norway, we’ve got about 50 paying customers and it’s more word of mouth based use LinkedIn, and we don’t do much on search engine optimization and so on. So it’s more so as a traditional marketing. But we just hired our first head of marketing. So I think now we’re going to improve drastically and start turning this more into a product led marketing effort, where we try to pull as many potential users as possible into testing and using the product.
Brett
How much of your time do you spend on marketing and sales today?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Me personally, I used to spend a lot of time on typical founder led sales, but now we built up the sales team. So I spend almost just a few hours per week maybe on sales. So I’ve downscaled it quite a lot. But as a team, I mean, we have about, I think 25% of the resources internally are sales and commercial at the moment. And we’re planning on increasing that too, a bit more.
Brett
What was that like making the transition away from founder led sales? And the reason I ask is that’s something that I’ve seen a lot of founders. It’s hard.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
What was that? I learned a lot. I could probably talk an hour about all the learning points. First of all, the main learning point is that you raise money with a plan where you have excel rows, saying that you’ll have this and this person, this role starting this month, and then everything is fine. And this being Norway, where the labor market is slightly less flexible than the US, and especially hiring during a pandemic where every field is booming, it seems it took a lot of time getting the right people to the right cultural fit, the right team fit, the right competence fit and so on, to actually build the commercial team. So there was a bit of trial and error there, but once we got that up and running, I think it’s been fairly successful. I would say album and it’s been really successful.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
But it’s a bit, from a founder perspective, it’s a bit rough when you are the one in charge of talking with the customers all the time. You are the one driving being that bridge between the customer needs and taking over to the product side and holding everything together in a way to transition away from not being operational. I think in a way it’s been pretty smooth and it’s also been a bit of a learning experience from my site as well. Not being too micromanaging and letting loose. And I think the good thing about it is now where we’re standing is that I almost feel a bit like I don’t really have that much to say, but it seems like the whole cop this is running by itself and everyone’s doing what I think they should be doing.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
So in a while, I think we’ve done well on that transition.
Brett
Just so we understand the scale that you’re operating at today, are there any numbers or metrics that you can share?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Yes, we’re still early phase. We tripled our revenue, our annual recurring revenue last year from 150,000 NAR to 450,000. And we’re looking at tripling this again. Got our first pedal sales and salesperson on the team about a year ago. So almost all that sales was driven by that salesperson. And then at the end of the year we had four people on the sales team. So now we’re ready to scale. And we also expanded to what our probably offering across the Nordics. Yeah, we’re still seeing stage, I would say a bit after seed stage.
Brett
We’re depressingly already, what, over a month into 2024. So I’m sure you’re done with your 2024 planning. What’s the top priorities for 2024 and what’s keeping you up at night, apart from doing podcasts like this at.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
At night while reaching the sales targets. So the main plan now is to get more customers across nordic and then also plan an expansion outside of the Nordics that either be large markets in Europe or the US and be able to attract some really solid, seriously, investors at the end of the year. And what’s keeping me up is that we basically have about a year’s time of runaway, so we need to hit these commercial targets to be successful. But the good thing is that I’m sleeping well because the team is doing really good and we keep landing major contracts. So I think we’ll get there.
Brett
With a name like Snore, I feel like you better sleep well. You have to, it’s in the name if we look at funding. So we talked about you’ve raised $6 million so far. What have you learned fundraising throughout this journey?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
I mean, thats the most obvious one, I think that most of the founders you talk with will probably agree to is that theres a bit of a herd mentality when it comes to investors and you need to learn how to deal with that herd. And its definitely all about keeping the momentum up and making sure that you have enough interest in all fields because its a bit of a house of Carter building whenever you’re trying to build a bit of a syndicate or get a lead investor. And they’re all kind of sitting on the fence up until the first investor comes in with a term sheet. So it’s just about how to run that game and understanding your relative strength in it.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
It’s easy to say that going into there’s a lot of prep work you can do and so on, but that’s basically what it comes down to when they’re evolved. Sometimes they know exactly what to look into and how to play it back. So I’m happy we have answers, an investor and a really good supporter. That’s the process.
Brett
Where do you want to be one year from now in terms of countries that you’re operating in?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
I think a year from now we’ll probably still be in the Nordics, but if you’re looking two years from now, we’ll have a market presence in around ten different countries. We have in three.
Brett
What would that be like when you break out of the Nordics? Is that a totally different world for you? Is it much different from like. Yeah, in the US, it’s like if were to expand from California to Washington, that’s very easy. If you go from Norway to Germany, what’s that jump like for you as.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
A much larger jump, I would say so. Europe is so much more culturally diversified, as you know. And one thing is the language is for us having a data product, we need to source data in new countries as well, even though we have some cross border datasets. So in many ways it makes a lot more sense to go directly to the US where we could integrate with one or two data suppliers. So we will get the service up and running across the US, especially given our product led growth PlG focus. So we’re actually in the middle of a strategy process now to determine the sequence of what countries to go into. It makes more sense to go to the US than the UK, but then at the same time it’s extremely costly to the US, so we need to.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
It kind of depends on the type of investor and the risk picture they want to buy into this. Investors and the next year’s around.
Brett
Yeah, that’s what a lot of founders have told me is the US is a big market but it’s expensive to play here and there’s a lot of funded startups, luckily or no? Not luckily, but unfortunately for them. I guess a lot of the startups that raise absurd amounts of money are also in trouble right now. So could be to enter the US market.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Definitely.
Brett
Lets imagine I were to come to you and say hey I want to start a prop tech company. Its not a competitor but I do want to sell to a similar customer base. Based on everything you know about the space, based on everything you’ve learned over the last few years, what would be the number one piece of advice that you’d give me?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
I think its the same thing here. Start with a bigger market because the prop tech market is quite national and its hard to jump from one market to another. You would definitely get a competitive advantage by starting a larger market and then getting broadly market fit in a larger market where you can scale internally domestically.
Brett
Final question for you, let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What else can you tell us about this big picture vision that you’re building?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Well first of all, I think if you look at this five years from now, we’ve continued developing probably to be 100% self served. So leveraged both BLG and collaborative analytics to cater to other companies than just a normal enterprise. Large capital companies and more SMBs. And by that getting much larger. Piece of the cake. And I think we should be somewhere 100 million us in ARR and have 3400 employees and be present in at least 20 markets.
Brett
We’re getting ready to launch a podcast that only interviews founders who are generating 100 million in revenue per year. So in three years we’ll have to circle back or hopefully do another episode to report back to us.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
I’m looking forward to hopefully two years. Well realistically three years.
Brett
I’ll check it every year just for an update.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Perfect.
Brett
Amazing. Well we are up on time so we’re going to have to wrap. This has been a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed it. I know the audience is going to really enjoy it as well. If there’s any founders that are listening in and they just want to follow along with your journey, where should they go?
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Place co find my email address, book a meeting and I’m happy to share my experience so far and hear what you’re building.
Brett
Amazing.
Brett
I love it. Thanks again for taking the time.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Well, thanks for having me, it’s been a pleasure.
Brett
No problem. See you in Norway someday I hope.
Snorre Jordheim Myhre
Yeah, definitely. You’re more than welcome.
Brett
All right, cheers.
Brett
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