RJ Pittman and Dave Lippman were astounding mentors to me in my time at eBay and along with my Brand team, their vision for the Brand, Design and Product was exceptional. So when RJ took the role of CEO, and Dave CDO at Matterport I knew I wanted to find a way to get involved.
Matterport was the highest fidelity and most well-known 3D camera on the market. But the speed of mobile development meant that a lower fidelity version would soon be available on a smartphone. But, more interestingly Matterport wasn’t just a camera company it had accumulated the largest set of spatial data of the built environment in the World.
We had to find a way to re-position the company for success in this shifting and growing category.
While looking at market adjacencies it seemed that Matterport was a better fit within Prop-Tech rather than the 3D Camera category. The fidelity needed to map a space for building specification, insurance or development would be beyond a smartphone.
The concept of the ‘digital twin’ had been a focus of RJ since arriving at Matterport. A digital twin or digital copy of a real-world place or object is a dimensionally accurate 3D digital model that can be updated quickly to reflect changes with its physical counterpart.
This concept created potential access to many other parts of a building’s lifecycle.
Matterport’s superior Fidelity and end-to-end solution, (Camera + Professional + Mapping Technology + Interface) created clear differentiation from the competitors. The market would likely open up to lower-fidelity cameras, leaving Matterport’s accuracy untouchable. But there was a final aspect to the positioning, accessibility. Matterport’s camera’s are professional equipment and so need professional operators. But as the Category of Prop-Tech grows, the demand for professional operators would also grow. Matterport needed to make its system as intuitive as possible for new users to meet the projected demand.
We expressed Matterport’s new positioning as ‘Indexing the built world.’
Matterport isn’t a 3D camera company, it’s a high fidelity data company. A building is an investment and is full of unrealized potential, Matterport helps convert the potential of any building across its full life-cycle and creates an index to understand relative value.
As the built world isn’t fixed, from planning, to construction, to marketing, to residence to repurpose, this life-cycle isn’t linear. Mapping and indexing the built world, like mapping the natural world helps manage the potential over time.
The positioning allowed us to connect the dots between product, market and business strategy. If buildings are an investment, Matterport could be an investment platform.
Matterport could enable anyone to manage a portfolio of buildings. Matterport could become involved in non 3D surveying of buildings or the real time identification of building use. Matterport could get involved in city zoning, architecture or civil engineering. Matterport even could help manage the performance of an entire city.
The final piece of the puzzle was the Shared Belief. A way of connecting the company’s ambitions with the needs of the end-user, professional and client. REALIZING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF THE BUILT WORLD unites the parties in a mission to understand and utilize existing resources to their maximum potential.
RJ included ‘Indexing the Built World’ in his next large press statement. Dave and his design team then took the Brand Tenets we’d created against this positioning and built a new site, with new information architecture and retooled the identity for the company.
Matterport went public on the NASDAQ, just 2 years after the repositioning. This is a testament to the vision and energy or the Matterport team and their ability to recognize a shifting category and rapid changes in technology as an opportunity to grow.
Matterport is trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol MTTR.
Team
RJ Pittman – CEO
Dave Lippman – Chief Design Officer
Marc Shillum – Brand & Design Strategy
The market seemed to be shifting in two main directions:
Solution Each competitor Is offering a greater part of the overall PropTec solution.
Fidelity The price point of cameras is dropping and lower quality tech is flooding the market.
Matterport had already begun the broadest leap from cameras to a set of solutions mapping across real-estate, travel & hospitality, insurance & restoration, industrial/facilities management and AEC.
Matterport has also layered in multiple fidelity inputs
A quick mapping of the competition shows that many competitors are heading for the bottom right quadrant. Matterport has permission to define the top right quadrant.
A third dimension to the market, accessibility. Traditionally higher fidelity solutions are inaccessible to most, solving this opens up market demand and solves a user need.