An entrepreneur’s journey
ElioNarciso, CEO and co-founder of Measurence, loves technology and is on a mission to build an intelligent IoT cloud to make offline analytics as rich as web. Being passionate about the mobile-centric world, Elio started and successfully exited other two companies, one in the mobile content space and the other in mobile advertising. An MIT Sloan alum, he is also an advisor and early stage investor to great entrepreneurs. Apart from being a Tech-Enthusiast, Elio is also a runner, triathlete and a music lover.
Elio always liked to travel, let it be for work study or just for fun. He believes, traveling helps to become flexible, adaptable, resilient and increases curiosity of oneself. Elio shares his experiences of traveling – if you travel, you have to take on risks that you don’t take if you stay at home, as well as opportunities that you may not see…and managing risk while pursuing opportunities is a key skill of someone creating a company. I also was helped by great parents that give me confidence and trust, as well as great education, especially my MBA at MIT…that gave me the confidence that I could do anything I wanted!”
Leadership
Measurence, under Elio’s leadership, is building an offline analytics platform to understand ROI of marketing investments as well as human behavior in physical commerce locations. As the CEO, Elio is responsible for setting the company’s strategy, finding customers and partners that are going to help them grow, managing a great, talented team, and fundraising.
Elio is a perfect example of an extrovert: he loves to spend time with people, and to have a good conversation. “But I also love to get things done and can get a bit impatient when things don’t happen at the pace I need.”– asserts Elio.
The idea behind Measurence’s inception
Elio and his cofounder Federico, observed that e-Commerce retailers have been benefiting from insightful analytics for years, while their physical counterparts mostly had to rely on instinct, hunches and trial and error methods.
Basic visitor’s data, traffic, conversion rates and how those dimensions are impacted by marketing and promotional activity are scarcely available or poorly actionable for most physical commerce businesses; Elio and his cofounder wanted to change that, and that has stayed the mission since their inception.
“My cofounder and I were itching for this! We come from mobile and online backgrounds, and in those industries having data is a given thing. Understanding traffic, conversion rates, visits, funnel, segments, and how marketing activities and the ROI of those is measured and managed in order to better understand customers’ needs and optimize company performance. But those same data and insights are missing in offline — and if you think that 90% of commerce is still offline…well the idea really came from there!”– says Elio.
Differentiation is key
Measurence Scout is the core product of Measurence. It is a plug-and-play sensor kit that generates insights about flows of people in or around physical spaces, as soon as it is plugged in. The Scout kit is extremely mobile and it takes very less time to setup.
Measurence was named by prestigious “CB Insights” as one of the top IOT companies in retail.Even though Measurence faces healthy competition from companies like Retail next or Euclid, the solution that they have developed is quite unique. Their sensor solution is the only plug and play kit in the market, it is flexible and can be used easily, in many different use cases, and at a fraction of the cost of alternatives.
But Measurence is differentiating in other ways: for instance innovating on data visualization – for them is not just a matter of putting data on a dashboard, but it’s a matter of what people do with the data and how they collaborate with it.
Clear positioning and differentiation of your offering, says Elio, is important for any company to create a base and gain client’s faith. But especially at the beginning of any startup, when you have very little to show for, you need to be able to articulate your vision very well, in order to convince others that, one day or other the vision will become a reality, so that they can contribute to take risks with you.
Looking forward
Despite the growth of e-commerce, 90 percent of total retail sales are still generated offline, with about 1.1 million stores in the US alone. Taking this as an opportunity, Measurence has set a goal to become a $100M company within the next five years.
Measurence vision is to create a network of physical locations interconnected by their sensors even in the long-tail of stores and retailers. With such a large network, developers will be able to build in-venue apps, marketers and brands will advertise their products on-site, and at that point the basic location analytics will be free, people will only pay for access to the network, and we will share ad-revenues with venues and stores.
