What3words
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| Founded | 2013 |
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| Founders |
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| Headquarters | Westbourne Studios, London |
| Website | what3words |
What3words (stylized what3words) is a geocoding system for the communication of locations with a resolution of three metres. What3words encodes geographic coordinates into three dictionary words. For example, the torch of the Statue of Liberty is located at "toned.melt.ship". This differs from most other location encoding systems in that it displays three words rather than long strings of numbers or letters. What3words has a website, apps for iOS and Android, and an API that enables bidirectional conversion of what3words address and latitude/longitude coordinates.
Founded by Chris Sheldrick, Jack Waley-Cohen, Mohan Ganesalingam, and Michael Dent, what3words launched in July 2013. Sheldrick and Ganesalingam originally conceived the idea after Sheldrick struggled to get equipment and bands to event locations on time due to inadequate addressing while working as a concert organizer. The company was incorporated on March 5, 2013 and a patent application for the core technology filed on April 19, 2013.
In November 2013, what3words raised $500,000 of seed funding, and in March 2014 the company raised a second seed round of $1,000,000. On November 3, 2015, what3words closed a $3.5 million Series A funding round led by Intel Capital, with Li Ka-shing's Horizons Ventures participating. On June 29, 2016, what3words closed a $8.5 million Series B round led by Aramex.
what3words uses a grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3 metres by 3 metres. Each square has been given a three-word English address. what3words has named the world's landmass with three words in various other languages. As of December 2016[update], what3words addresses (as well as web and iOS app user interface) are available in Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish; the iOS app also supports Swahili (Kiswahili). With announced plans for 14 more languages to launch at the start of 2018: Chinese, Indonesian, Zulu, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi. The company has also mentioned Greek, various languages of Nigeria and India, including Bengali, Farsi, Hindi and Urdu.
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