A New Way of Communicating Location // Interview with Chris Sheldrick what3words
what3words CoFounder/CEO Chris Sheldrick
Batch 1 Mobility Alumni Startup
What is what3words? what3words is a really simple way to talk about location.We have assigned each 3m square in the world a unique 3 word address that will never change. For example ///filled.count.soap marks the exact entrance to what3words’ London headquarters. 3 word addresses are easy to say and share, and are as accurate as GPS coordinates. 51.520847, -0.19552100 ←→ /// filled.count.soap Our vision is to become a global standard for communicating location. People use what3words to find their tents at festivals, navigate to B&Bs, and to direct emergency services to the right place.(Source: https://what3words.com/about-us/)
*This interview was done via Zoom Call as Chris is based in the UK.
Yue: What has your entrepreneurial journey been like?
Chris: I actually did a classical music degree and ran a music business for 10 years. I was going to be a piano player but I had an injury to my wrist so I decided to become a music manager… then as a music manager, I was traveling the world for 10 years. Then I sort of realized there is a struggle to fact that addresses do not work because my job is to get the musicians to the events at the right place at the right time. So I think It was that having done that for a while I then realized there is an opportunity to make a global address system.
I tried to get into London Music Business to use the GPS coordinates, Latitude Longitude, and typos that go into apps and cause… actually people are really bad at it. People struggle to type in an eight-digit latitude, comma, an eight-digit longitude, and not make any mistakes. So I chatted this through with a friend of mine who is a mathematician and I asked — — how can we compress this big long number into something much simpler? — — And that’s how we had the idea that there are enough combinations of three words that you can name every three-meter square in the world uniquely with just three words.
Yue: Did you know you were going to be an entrepreneur from the get-go?
Chris: I think I always wanted to run my own business but I didn’t quite know what and how… but I felt that I had the drive.
I was 32 when I first launched what3words and It has been 6 years.
We now have 120 people in our team — Engineers, language department — developing languages takes a lot of resources, Marketing, Operations, Sales, etc
We operate in over 190 countries in the world — We always say “global first.” We’ve built our product to work globally even in the oceans. We do our best to support the various businesses and consumers that are using us across the world.
Oh and we offer 40 different languages!
Yue: When and why did you enter the Japanese market?
Chris: A year or two ago, we understood that Japan is a huge country in terms of the automotive market — and we’ve partnered up with Mercedes Benz — our tech is fully integrated into Mercedes Benz cars via the onboard infotainment system. We knew this would be a great market to get into both for consumers but also to get builds into Japanese made cars.
We’ve done several Plug and Play programs — and we have always had a really good experience. We knew that It was a great way to meet people that are our target customers. We were keen to join the program when we figured out that there is a program we could join in Japan.
It was incredibly helpful, especially when we first started working in Japan as you guys have given us many opportunities to connect with the relevant people from your partner companies.
Yue: What has your experience in Japan been like?
Chris: We found Japan to be incredibly receptive towards what3words — I think that people understand the issues around difficult addressing A lot of Japanese addresses are non-sequential so It is easier for westerners to get lost but also for Japanese people to get lost. We had built a Japanese version of what3words using the hiragana script to make sure it is incredibly clear which words we are using. We also wanted to get support from big branded companies so we got investments from Sony — In November 2018, we announced that we have received investment from the Sony Innovation Fund, which is dedicated to engaging with promising, innovative startups in areas such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies.
Also from Alpine Electronics and Subaru. And that’s given us enormous credibility to get in touch with everybody else in the various markets across Japan.
We have been running Japan operations remotely from the UK but I think the next step is to hire people who deeply understand the Japanese market and build out a team based on the ground.
Yue: I’ve seen your commercials running in taxis in Japan — anything you can share with us around that project?
Chris: We are working with S.RIDE which is a new taxi service in Japan. They are educating consumers about what3words by running sort of an explainer video in the back of the taxis. That’s great because people are incredibly captive when they are sitting there and they know that the next time they take an S.RIDE they can book it with a three-word address for their destination or their pickup.
We like to leverage the reach of our partners to educate people on what3words… that’s always been our model. It’s anyone who integrates with what3words API that meets the integration on it and we are very keen to work with them to spread the word.
Yue: Any new developments you can share?
Chris: We just launched our partnership with our first motorcycle manufacturer yesterday (2/12)… with Triumph Motorcycle which is a huge global brand, and the world’s first motorcycle manufacturer to adopt what3words.
We would love this to pave the way for more motorbike manufacturers to follow suit. There’s potential for safety improvement for bikers along with the accurate address benefits for navigation. It could be really helpful for motorcyclists to be able to tell emergency services exactly where they are if they are involved in an accident. In the UK, biker groups are already talking about how helpful our app can be in these scenarios: https://www.bmf.co.uk/news/show/very-clever-idea-what3words-for-bikers
I know there are a lot of motorcycle manufacturers in Japan so we are very keen to replicate what we have done with Triumph. Not just cars, motorcycles, ride-hailing apps — bringing what3words to all of the mobility sectors in Japan would be a real focus for us.
Yue: I know you guys are moving up rapidly and working on many projects… What is your vision for what3words moving forward?
Chris: We are focused on growing the number of consumers that use our tool in their daily lives and number of businesses who support what3words’ entry — and that’s cross sectors. It’s about mobility and expanding into e-commerce, logistics, travel, and even thinking about things like UAVs (Unmanned aerial vehicle) and how drones are going to be specifying where they are going to go. So for us, It’s about becoming a truly global system and even expanding on the number of languages further so that everyone in their world can use it ideally in their native language.
