The Story of Place: Building the Future of Location Intelligence

Sometimes the worst timing turns out to be the best timing. When Place launched two weeks after Norway’s COVID lockdown in March 2020, it seemed like terrible timing to start a location intelligence company. Instead, it became the catalyst for rapid development and innovation.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, founder Snorre Jordheim Myhre shared the journey of how Place evolved from an idea into a platform that’s reshaping how retail businesses make location decisions.

From Corporate Consulting to Startup Innovation

Before Place, Snorre’s path followed a familiar trajectory for business graduates. “I started working for Accenture, which is a big american firm, also quite international, doing all the typical grunt work of going through Excel and making PowerPoint presentations and strategies and cost cutting,” he explained. This led to an internal consulting role at Norway’s largest grocery chain, where he worked on “project management, business development, finding cost savings opportunities, innovation and all that.”

But entrepreneurial ambitions had been simmering since his teenage years. After eight years in the corporate world, Snorre and his co-founders Peter and Tobias took the leap through Antler’s startup program.

Finding Opportunity in Crisis

The pandemic lockdown created an unexpected advantage. As Snorre explains, “starting something in a lockdown was actually pretty good because there’s nothing else to do than just build a company.” Moreover, Norway’s startup-friendly environment provided crucial support: “living in Norway, where we have a huge state, which is not a socialist state, as some Americans might believe. It’s a state that tries to encourage as much value creation and capitalism and entrepreneurship as possible.”

Building the Product Through Customer Collaboration

Place’s development was deeply rooted in customer needs from day one. Through intensive customer research – interviewing 50 companies in their first month – they validated their concept and built their initial customer base simultaneously. This approach led to their first major customer, a mall operator with over 40 locations across Norway, who remains their largest client today.

Creating a New Category

While the location intelligence market was already established, Place saw an opportunity to create something different. “We introduced the term collaborative analytics,” Snorre explained. Their platform moved beyond traditional location intelligence by enabling users to “capture different insights and graphs you want and you build your report, and then you include your internal and external stakeholders.”

Looking to the Future

Place’s vision extends far beyond their current success. As Snorre outlines, “Well first of all, I think if you look at this 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.”

The company aims to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue within three years while expanding to at least 20 markets. But more than just growth, they’re focused on transforming how businesses make location decisions. As Snorre puts it, their vision is to “create vibrant streets and cities and the problem resolving is to retail and restaurants and service companies, or physical weather presence on the ground floor in the city typically, or a mall help them from going bankrupt.”

This combination of ambitious growth targets and meaningful impact exemplifies Place’s approach: using technology not just to build a successful business, but to help create more vibrant, sustainable urban environments. For founders looking to make an impact in PropTech or location intelligence, Place’s story shows how starting with deep customer understanding and having the courage to define a new category can lead to meaningful innovation, even in the most challenging circumstances.