Agreed, for example Uber pay Google Maps for all of the data which powers the location services in the application and no one minds about that.
Ā£150,821,907 - total joke of a valuation. I doubt this co will ever become profitable. I see it is backed by George Osborneās brother
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Interestingly W3Wās came in and did a presentation about their product for a startup I used to work for. They plan to use the service worldwide - their use case was interesting in the fact that postcodes werenāt very reliable, and they used an example of a village in say Kenya whereby the usual postal system meant that one postcode could mean a quarter mile of an area with hundreds if not thousands of inhabitants. Utilising their system, that postal person could deliver to the correct house within a 2 metre range. In the same way as new builds or confusing office blocks etc, you can use the system to pin point an exact location.
That is not to say I will be investing, however this was the case they stated. Once you put that in perspective as a world wide product, itās quite interesting.
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Already at 92% of their Ā£1,000,000 target with 1031 investors with 29 days leftā¦
Given the information presented to me and their evaluation?
Bonkers. 
[EDIT] - Hit target, now 117%ā¦ at 10.50am.
No financials in the pitch deck which is very curious - usually a company provides the current year and the next 3-5 years showing path to profitability. Plenty of threads posting asking for the details. Suspect a lot are investing now to avoid missing out, then will take the 7 day cooling off period to review in more depth and consider keeping their investment or pulling out.
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Super high level thoughts off me at moment:
For:
Improved granular location service, firms like Mercedes, Ford etc already picking up for their in car GPS, plus emergency services & others. No data connection needed to work, improved mapping in cities & countryside areas with poor signal.
Several rounds of VC investors already demonstrating external parties believe in the product
Against:
No financials in pitch deck, company currently making loss, not sharing path to profitability (threads asking for this, so may change status to plus dependent on information received)
Investors will receive ordinary shares, prior investors have received preferential shares in the event of a loss
High valuation/share price for a loss making company
No potential exits outlined
No details on growth in API use showing user rise or fall
So a few red flags at the moment, dependent on further information being received - at the moment they simply arenāt providing enough information to make an educated decision IMO
None of this is advice btw just my thoughts out loudā¦
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Iām going to give it a miss. Iām not sure what the potential exit is going to be. Itās unlikely to IPO IMO. More likely exit is a sale to a larger company.
With a current pre money valuation of Ā£150M + to get a decent return you need a really big company to pay a lot of money for it
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I agree. A decent exit to make up for the risk would require the business to exit at Ā£2bn+ considering the likely need for further funding further down the road.
Having said that, it is an interesting company that may well be worth Ā£300m - Ā£500m at some point, but even then the return for my money wouldnāt be enough for the risk of the company never getting to that level.
Am I missing something? How would the company be worth Ā£2bn and who for? Google? Microsoft to improve its maps?
Iāve been a big fan of crowdfunding for many years but this W3W raise feels very odd. Thereās tonnes of quality questions stacking up on discussion board, all very relevant which are just being swatted aside with same generic answer.
Feels very much like a smash and grab. Theyāve almost raised Ā£3m and I see the potential if they become the definitive tech used in industry. But this raise to me is deliberately lacking in transparency so Iām out
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This is on a par with Nutmeg for vagueness? Smash and grab indeed!!
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At this point they are literally copying and pasting the same answer 
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W3W is rendered (or should be rendered) completely useless for emergency situations by Advanced Mobile Location - Wikipedia, which is standard on all common mobile phones. The emergency services should already know where you are when you call, far more quickly than you can explain yourself.
I have extreme dislike for W3W being pushed as an inferior alternative.
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Im just gobsmacked to see the level of interest and investment they have been able to pull together given the lack of any data whatsoever - no user figures, no app data, no financials - and then to top it off the revelation that the current share price has been the same for the last three years!! This crowdfunding is technically part of their Series C which started in 2017ā¦Mercedes invested at that time at the same share price as is being offered today in 2020 - that just seems incredible - 3 years of growth, market adoption, new customer acquisition opportunities etcā¦ and still the share price is the sameā¦
The crazy thing is I absolutely LOVE the idea and the concept and would love to invest but just cant justify it given the quality of the crowdfunding information and responses to investors on the discussions
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AML / ELS gives them an indication of where you are but it isnāt guaranteed to be accurate. It might indicate youāre within 500 meters of a point. It might even give the wrong location; some older low spec phones sometimes give GPS coordinates which arenāt even in the country.
If they get a location from your phone automatically they will still verify it with you and W3W is an option for that verification. Just not a good option in most cases.
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Thanks for the informative post.
I dug out some location stats for AML; itās not quite the same accuracy youād get from a 3x3 square (granted if youāre relying on GPS to get your w3w address youād have the same issue)
Also, letās not forget that -as far as I know- the location details are sent to emergency services as GPS coordinates, which still presents the problem of communicating this between parties (responding officers, etc), as the coordinates are 15 digit numbers.
I donāt think W3W is an inferior alternative, I think it could complicate AML quite well.
But even if W3Wās doesnāt have a use-case in emergency services, I think it works great as a national standard addressing system in developing countries where traditional addresses donāt cut the mustard (thinking of brazilian favelas, etc). And these markets alone are a massive opportunity.
I echo what everyoneās saying about transparency though, makes their crowdfund a non-starterā¦!
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Iāve dropped my investment from a reasonable chunk to just above the minimum based on their lack of transparency and unwillingness to share even a minimal graph showing projections of finances, sales or adoption. Keeping a toe in purely because I think its an interesting concept and may kick off but unwilling to gamble significant amounts if they arenāt willing to communicate beyond cut n paste answers.
I get companies donāt want to share masses of confidential information - I work in information security too so I REALLY get that, but sharing projections are very standard investment decision tools and donāt need to provide anything that would assist a competitor. (Not to mention they claim to have no competition which is fubar)
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Trouble is they donāt need to be transparent, everyone has piled in anywayā¦
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AML/ELS provides an accuracy reading from the phone to the receiver, this accuracy margin is definitely accurate enough to be used with confirmation from the caller IMO.
I really donāt think phones with inaccurate GPS that canāt tell itās inaccurate are still widely in use, and if they are then that would render W3 useless as well 
. The key benefit of AML/ELS is itās autonomous, so able to function even if the caller is unable to provide verbal location.
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Those are some interesting stats. I agree with the GPS point, accuracy should be irrelevant because both W3 and AML draws itās location source from the same mechanisms (They should both be as-accurate at any given time).
As for communicating GPS locations to responders, I would expect the location to automatically be transferred to the personnelās in-vehicle consoles - Iām pretty sure thatās how it works for verbally given locations, at least in most UK ambulance services.
I donāt really have an opinion on W3ās use for non-emergency use cases, I just strongly disagree with it being pushed as a āhereās what you should do when you call 999ā when itās purposes is already served by a system that is on most phones. I can just imagine people trying to panic-download the app 
.
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All phones can give inaccurate GPS coordinates at times. Maybe youāre indoors, especially in a basement. Even clouds reduce the accuracy.
W3W lets you pick a spot on a map, so you donāt necessarily need working GPS. It only uses GPS to show you near your current location so you donāt have to start out at a world-level zoom.
If a caller does give a W3W address then itās good if the responder can understand it, but I would hope it isnāt encouraged during a call. Of course W3W will include it in their marketting though because they lack genuinely useful cases.