Streetbees, the largest real-time repository on customers insights and behaviours
There are close to 2.5bn smartphone users in the world right now and some predict that this number will reach 6bn by 2020. On these devices, conversational interfaces have become the most ubiquitous apps. Thanks to our newly interconnected world, it has also been widely reported that 90% of the data available in the world today has been generated over the last two years. As information is moving freely and attention is scarce, companies are evolving in an increasingly fast-changing environment where it’s hard to stay close to your customers.
Streetbees is building the largest real-time data repository of customer insights, allowing companies to understand the needs, habits and behaviours of consumers globally. It allows consumers — which it calls bees — to participate in this exchange on a voluntary basis, while getting paid for the information they provide.
Today they are managing a community of more than 1 million bees across 150+ countries around the world. Thanks to the company’s innovative “conversational research interface”, these individuals can answer surveys on their smartphones to provide insights on what their consumer habits are. This allows Streetbees to complete qualitative market research at unprecedented speed and scale delivering results with unmatched relevance.
This is game changing for the market research industry. Now if you add the advance in machine learning, especially in NLP and computer vision in this case, you’re starting to understand why we believe Streetbees can become an iconic company. By leveraging machine learning to analyse the answers and rich media content the bees provide when completing the surveys, Streetbees can extract more insights than previously possible. If they ask you to take a picture of your lunch, they can understand what you’re eating in much greater detail. For brands as well, a picture can be worth a thousand words… And all of this information is elicited on a voluntary basis, with the participants being paid for the data they provide. In today’s world, we believe this is extremely powerful and Streetbees is now working for 9 of the 10 largest FMCG companies in the world.
LocalGlobe led their first round in the summer of 2015 and we are very excited to see Carolina and the team at Atomico lead the series A of such an ambitious company. We believe that Atomico’s global reach makes them the ideal partner to take Streetbees forward. Global product (i.e. Skype) is in their DNA and they have invested in countries like China and Brazil which are essential markets for Streetbees. Atomico is uniquely positioned to help Tugce, Oli and the team achieve their ambition.
The team… Hero founders are core to our investment thesis. Anyone who has met Tugce is amazed by her incomparable drive and ambition which are only matched by the grand vision she has for this company. Anyone who has spent time exploring the Streetbees community sees that Oli has built something extremely special in a very efficient way. Finally their engineering and product team has allowed brands to experience customer insights like never before. Their current investment into data science is going to turn them into one of the leading AI companies serving enterprises.
The space of market research took a long time to disrupt but we believe that the ubiquity of smartphones, the advance in machine learning and the increasing need for companies to better understand their customers directly create the right environment for Streetbees to shake up the industry.
More than disrupting the space, we think they are actually going to redefine what market research means. While I’m always cautious with the overused “Uber analogy”, I think Streetbees has a similar opportunity to increase the market they’re entering. By allowing brands to tap into customer behaviours in a frictionless way and at unprecedented scale, they are creating a platform that we believe industries across the world will use on a daily basis.
If you’re interested in participating in this journey, you can apply here for the 20+ jobs they are currently hiring for or you can join the community of bees (and get paid) and download their app here.
