Premise, the platform that democratizes how actionable data is sourced and used, acquired Native, a pioneer in market research, on November 12th, 2021. Like Premise, Native leverages the global gig economy to connect those who have questions that locals can provide answers to by capturing the data they need.
"The market for a signal that cuts through the noise is significant," said Drew Drake, VP, Strategic Investments at SAP, a Native investor. "Native has built a marketplace that does just this, by linking the enterprise with a fleet of locals, providing ground truth to enable higher confidence decisions. The merger with Premise represents the opportunity to put this shared vision into the hands of every business and organization that needs it."
With a retail landscape containing millions of highly fragmented, independently owned retailers scattered across each market, legacy market research providers have struggled to provide timely and actionable insight. "With this acquisition, we're going to be able to accelerate the disruption of crowdsourced insights, all on one platform," says Maury Blackman, CEO of Premise.
"With this acquisition, we're going to be able to accelerate the disruption of crowdsourced insights, all on one platform," says Maury Blackman, CEO of Premise.
Founded in 2017, Native's core focus has been on addressing the challenges and importance of a brand's continued presence in the lives of its consumers to the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. "What rideshare did for transportation, what food delivery has done for hospitality, is what we are doing for market insights," said Matt McNabb, who served as founder and Chief Executive Officer of Native will become Premise Chief Strategy Officer. Native works with various brands and products such as The Coca-Cola Company, its bottling partners, and Mars Inc. Premise is bringing in Native's full team and then plans to build on Native's existing traction in the industry. Premise also plans to bring expanded access to tasks, or jobs Contributors complete, to Premise's 3.5 million global Contributors.
"Local insight is often neglected when making critical decisions," says Daniel Hanks, General Partner at Lavrock and an early investor at Native, "and quickly tapping into the reality on the ground is an increasingly crucial part of the decision-making for leaders in any industry. We think that it's part of what makes Native so powerful, and with this merger, we expect the combined entity to lead the category by democratizing local insight at scale."
For the past year, Premise's corporate mission has been to become the first name any organization thinks of when they want to use data to their advantage. The Native acquisition brings them one step closer to accomplishing this goal.
On average, a consumer will spend between three to four minutes inside these shops to decide which product to purchase --and the performance of a brand may live or die based on decisions made in those few minutes. Whether a product is in stock when a customer visits, how prominent its visibility before checkout, and the competitiveness of its pricing are just a few critical factors that determine success. With the outbreak of COVID-19, the longstanding trend towards proximity purchasing --visiting stores nearest the consumer --has only accelerated and increased the importance of measuring and improving these factors in store.
McNabb, said of the merger: "Despite billions invested in ways of capturing data by remote control, some things you can't know unless you are there, but being there has always been too slow, too expensive, and too cumbersome to do at scale. In the specific markets it has serviced, Native set out to change that. With this merger, the combined Premise will further define and own this entire category of data: sensing the world from the ground up. We couldn't be more excited to create that reality together."
About Premise
"Premise is a crowdsourced insights company. Our technology mobilizes communities of global smartphone users to source actionable data in real-time, cost-effectively, and with the visibility you need. In more than 125 countries and 37 languages, we find Data for Every Decision™. To know more, visit www.premise.com"