Geofeedia expands its role in pioneering location-based intelligence

Geofeedia burst onto the Indianapolis tech scene in 2014 with a couple of employees opening a satellite office for the then three-year-old Chicago-headquartered location-based intelligence company. Just 15 months later, 38 of the company’s 63 employees are based in Indianapolis playing pivotal roles in Geofeedia’s rapid growth, the development and launch of new software products, and a strategy to reinvent the way we think about data.

“We are inventing a new way to organize the world through location data,” said R.J. Talyor, vice president of product management for Geofeedia.

“It’s challenging and interesting because we’re not building a better mousetrap — we’re not all that interested in trying to do something someone else has already done better. We’re building something brand new in an emerging field that enables people to predict, analyze and act based on real-time, location-based data and I think that’s a unique opportunity for Indianapolis.”

Beyond Social Media: The Location-Based Data Frontier

Geofeedia initially promoted itself as a social media intelligence platform. Its software enables marketers, public sector, corporate security, and media companies to gain real-time, actionable intelligence through social media monitoring based on publicly available location tagged social media posts. Geofeedia’s platform complements other major social media listening software brands like Radian6 (Salesforce), Hootsuite, SproutSocial, Attensity and Sprinklr, adding vital geographical insights that would otherwise be lost.

For example, the NCAA used Geofeedia’s location-based intelligence platform in conjunction with a traditional social media monitoring tool during the 2015 Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis to engage with its 1.7 million combined fans and followers. By drawing perimeters around popular locations like Lucas Oil Stadium, FanFest, White River State Park, Georgia Street, and Monument Circle — a feature Geofeedia calls “geo-fencing” or “dropping a lens” — the NCAA was able to discover, engage with, and analyze thousands of social media conversations that did not include their official handles or hashtags. From welcoming fans to town to answering customer service questions, sharing user-generated content and addressing security concerns, the NCAA was able to respond in real-time and deliver superior fan experiences.

While social media is and will continue to be a critical part of the platform, Geofeedia’s R&D and 14 patents (13 in the U.S. and one in Canada) allow for location-based intelligence from all manner of data that include location signals, hence the shift from marketing the company as a social media intelligence platform to the broader location-based intelligence platform.

In addition to social media, Geofeedia’s platform will help businesses make sense of dynamic location data from sources such as video cameras, drones, apps, crime and weather reports, and custom integrations like point-of-sale information; as well as more static data like utilities, roads, property shape files and physical assets.

“There are companies out there that can tell you where all of a company’s retail locations are located but they can’t put structure to it like we can with real-time, high volume location data to help you run your business better,” said Justin Fite, chief revenue officer at Geofeedia.

“People are getting buried in dynamic information but our platform can turn it into something powerful that offers competitive advantages that improve customer experiences, increase sales, mitigate risk and keep people safer.”

Rapid Growth and a Patented Competitive Edge

Geofeedia grew its revenue by 200 percent, doubled its average contract value, and signed its 500th customer in 2015. The company’s customer base is global and diverse within four primary markets — public sector, corporate security, marketing, and media. Locally, Geofeedia works with recognized leaders like the aforementioned NCAA and health insurer Anthem, and nationally and globally lists major brands like, Marathon, Mall of America, CNN, Mashable, Fox Sports and the BBC as customers.

Geofeedia does have competitors and will likely see new challengers as the company expands into non-social media location-based intelligence circles. However, Geofeedia’s database of 1.7 billion geo-tagged posts offers them a serious edge in trend analysis and year-over-year comparisons. According to Talyor, Geofeedia has more location-based social data than Twitter and all of the social media platforms out there because they have publicly available data from 10 different sources. New agreements outside of social media will double Geofeedia’s location data sources to 20 this year.

“Our patents cover the aggregation and display of location-based social intelligence,” said Talyor. “Because of our patented algorithms, software and database infrastructure, we can pull up actionable insights in about 1.3 seconds whereas competitors would take up to 10 minutes to load anything useful.”

The company is funding its growth and expansion with a $17 million investment led by Silversmith Capital Partners with participation by existing investors. In total, Geofeedia has raised nearly $25 million in capital including $3.5 million from Hyde Park Venture Partners and a tax-credit deal with the Indiana Economic Development Corp worth up to $4.4 million if they grow to 336 employees by 2020.

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