Adventures with what3words in 2021

It's been a pretty unbelievable year at what3words, where our consumer usage has shot up around the world dramatically, and we’ve launched with so many incredible partners.?

Some TLDR highlights…

?? 50 what3words languages are now live

?? what3words was the top app in the app store for navigation in 67 countries

?? 39 different car (and motorbike!) models globally are now what3words-integrated

?? Our APIs were built into third-party mapping/navigation apps all over the world, now reaching well over 50 million users?through those apps in the app store

???? We hired our first team on the ground in India as we saw massive growth there?

?? Thousands of stories of what3words saving lives reached us - from Germany, Canada, Peru, Afghanistan, the US, the Ukraine, Mongolia, Australia and more

?????? Our what3words team is now at 150 people around the world

… and now for the detail!?

It’s been a pleasure to work with so many outstanding colleagues, partners and clients this year as we’ve achieved some huge things. I’m so grateful to everyone who has championed our cause or our team (and especially those who believed in us before we were famous!) - seeing what3words really taking off, in so many countries and so many different verticals, has been an absolute joy this year.

New partnerships everywhere?

We were joined in our journey this year by Ingka Group (owner of IKEA stores!) as an investor when they took a $16m stake in the company earlier this year, and more recently by the Times of India via a $10m stake, as our Indian adoption has really taken off in 2021.?

We became a standard feature up and down the UK in taxi and ride-hailing services, saw logistics and ecommerce companies up and down the country use what3words for deliveries, from Domino’s pizza or Lakeland’s cookware to Weezy’s 20 minute delivery, Supper’s fancy dining-in, and Oddbox’s wonky veg.?

Plus we’ve seen thousands of small and medium businesses signing up for our API and using our products this year. Simrat Randhawa has set up an incredible SME team and I love hearing about all the ways what3words is being used around the world - from UK blood bikers to Chilean delivery apps, US conservation charities to Kenyan taxi apps (and so much more!).?

39 different car and motorbike models

With many new car models launching with what3words this year, we’ve now reached 39 car models in total, so millions and millions of drivers can now input 3 word addresses as destinations in their car. Some launches I loved this year included Lamborghini’s Huracan announcement, Lotus’ rollout plans, Mitsubishi’s fantastic North American launch with what3words and in December TVS’ huge rollout in India.?

Mapbox built an incredible what3words integration for their auto product, Mapbox Dash, and we loved working with HERE, TomTom, Harman, Faurecia, and NNG to offer what3words for OEMs all around the world.?

what3words for Covid tests & vaccinations?

From Johannesburg to London, it was wonderful to see Covid vaccination centres and test sites using what3words to help get people to the right place this year. I’ve had the chance to use it a lot when coming back into Heathrow as ExpressTest now use what3words, and my Covid vaccine was at Guy’s & St. Thomas’ hospital, where 3 word addresses were used to guide us to the correct entrance (in my case, using my watch x Apple Maps!):

Huge organic user growth

We’ve had a huge uptick in our user adoption in the past year, seeing some serious organic/viral growth - our millions of users around the world are bringing other users in, convincing them and evangelising what3words in ways we’ve never seen before. We’ve seen so much organic peer-peer use of our app and people doing brilliant things we didn’t even know about until they told us (or we saw it in the stats!).?

Seeing what3words be used at the informal Burning Man this year was a particular highlight. We didn’t even know it was happening until this epic shared list appeared…

And this year TikTok fell in love with what3words, too! This excellent influencer perfectly described the what3words problem statement & the comments were full of people recommending what3words and even sharing stories of when it had saved them in emergencies.?

50 languages

Our incredible language, product and tech teams have now launched what3words in 50 languages. This milestone is huge - so much work, with thousands of linguists - goes into each language, and it’s incredible to see people using what3words all around the world in their native tongue.?

The year of the billboards

There’s something about seeing physical ads that always feels special. From other organisations showing off what3words - the UNDP put up billboards in the Ukraine encouraging use in emergencies, and the UKTI took over Times Square to show off what3words, while our incredible consumer marketing team made a first foray into Korean billboard ads, with great success (while our first Japanese, German and Korean TV ads have also gone down a storm this year!).

Plus we saw what3words signs pop up in all kinds of ways - beautiful wooden signs in parks in Ontario, signs on the Autobahn in Munich, on walking trails, next to rivers to prevent drowning, and so many others…

Travelling again

Once I was fully vaccinated and testing had ramped up, it was amazing to be back on the road. With the incredible support of Kate Horsfall and Amy-Jo Lynch, we managed to have rainy-outdoor-walking-meetings/coffees/dinners, and even some (often masked up!) real life meetings in meeting rooms - from Detroit and San Francisco to the IAA car show in Germany.

Learning about hybrid working?

When we did a hybrid return-to-the-office (in between Delta and Omicron waves!) earlier this year, we got to see our new 6 weeks of remote work policy in action. Our team can use 6 weeks each year to work fully remotely - and seeing what people did with it was fantastic. From Tunisia to the Ukraine or rural Scotland, people did all kinds of things - and I used the chance to spend time at my parents’ place, learning more about vegan cooking from my Mum and going on long walks. This policy is one of my favourite new things we’ve implemented, though it’s been an incredible year for our People team, with our spectacular Head of People Georgina constantly innovating & improving our policies, benefits and culture to help our team thrive.

And a final thought on 2021…

These startup/scaleup journeys are total rollercoasters - they’re such hard work, but they’re so rewarding too. In another year of Covid, it definitely has been really hard, not seeing our team, not being able to be together as much as we’d like, feeling everyone’s pain and worry for family and friends. But one morning this year, all the hard work and the painful things felt so worth it for me when we woke up to see this on Twitter:

One of the best things about working in tech with an app like what3words is that people can just use it. We didn’t know about this, or train anyone to use what3words in Afghanistan - it just happened, because the app is there, free to download everywhere in the world - and it helped.?

Our team has pulled off some epic things this year, yet again, and I’m so proud of what we’ve done together. And I’m so glad that in some way we’ve been able to help emergency services, NGOs and rescue workers in so many countries -? from Germany, Canada, Peru, Afghanistan, the US, the Ukraine, Mongolia, Australia and more - in a time when pressure on services is greater than ever.?

We’re going into 2022 so excited about the huge growth we’re seeing in the company and its impact around the world - I can’t wait to see what’s next.?

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On a personal level, I’ve been so lucky to be involved this year in a small way with two startups that are tackling climate change. I’ve loved seeing the incredible Tamsin Chislett grow her sustainable fashion rental business OnLoan so fantastically. And my spectacular big sister Cat Jones launched Byway, a flight-free travel company, which has gone from strength to strength. From days of sitting next to Cat and playing on a computer (image below!) to seeing her lead Byway and take Europe by storm has been an absolute joy. These are two startups you should be watching in 2022…!