Place’s Playbook for Location Intelligence: Why They Chose to Create a New Category Instead of Competing Head-On

Entering a market dominated by unicorn companies with $100 million in funding might seem daunting. But Place saw it as an opportunity to create something entirely new.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Snorre Jordheim Myhre shared how they carved out their own category in the crowded location intelligence market, turning potential competition into irrelevance through strategic positioning.

Understanding the Existing Market

Place entered a well-established market. As Snorre explains, “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.”

The modern market was dominated by well-funded players: “In the US, you have a company called Placer AI, which is location intelligence company with base of pitfall data… 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.”

Creating a New Category

Instead of competing directly, Place created a new category they called “collaborative analytics.” This wasn’t just a marketing term – it represented a fundamentally different approach to location intelligence.

“We introduced the term collaborative analytics,” Snorre explains. “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. 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.”

Building Product Differentiation

Place’s differentiation went beyond marketing positioning. They built their product to be fundamentally different from traditional business intelligence tools. As Snorre notes, “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.”

Network-Based Growth Strategy

This unique positioning enabled a different go-to-market approach. Rather than competing for keywords or ad space with better-funded competitors, Place grew through network effects. “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,” Snorre shares.

The strategy worked. Place tripled their annual recurring revenue from $150,000 to $450,000 last year, demonstrating that creating a new category could drive significant growth even in a crowded market.

Future Evolution

Place isn’t stopping with their current category definition. Looking ahead, they’re planning to evolve their platform further. “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,” Snorre explains.

For B2B founders entering markets with established players, Place’s story offers a valuable lesson: sometimes the best way to compete isn’t to compete at all. By identifying an underserved need within your market – in Place’s case, the need for collaboration in location intelligence – you can create your own category and avoid direct competition with better-funded players.

The key is ensuring your category creation is backed by genuine product differentiation and solves real customer problems. When done right, this approach can help you grow significantly even in markets that might initially seem too crowded to enter.