I Can See It In Your Face: Our Investment in Voxpopme and the Future of Market Research & Customer Experience
We are pleased to announce Origin Ventures’ investment in Voxpopme, an enterprise software company that allows brands to capture video feedback to measure customer satisfaction and gather market research. Voxpopme enables brands to use the power of video – featuring full sight, sound, and motion – to better capture consumer sentiment in real-time.
Origin Ventures led a $9M Series A financing. The company – whose name is derived from the Latin phrase vox populi, or “voice of the people” – has offices in Salt Lake City, the U.K., and Australia. Customers include Coca-Cola, Nestle, Microsoft, Colgate, Verizon, and Airbnb.
The Rise of Customer Experience
Voxpopme is operating in two very large software markets. The global market research (MR) industry is estimated at $76B, while the emerging Customer Experience (CX) market is estimated at $8B in the U.S. In a July 2018 story titled “Customer Experience is the New Brand,” Forbes magazine said:
“Be it customer service, product quality, or just the way the customers feel about the companies they do business with, customer experience rises to the top of whether or not the customer will decide to keep doing business with a brand.”
A Gartner survey of marketers found that 89% expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience, vs. 36% four years prior. Verticals like media & entertainment, travel & hospitality, and financial services deliver much of their user experience digitally, with less direct interaction with customers than ever.
Digital Natives and Video
The investment aligns with our thesis centered around Digital Natives, and the user behaviors of a generation that has enjoyed the Internet and a smartphone for their entire lifetime. Video consumption dominates Internet traffic. Cisco suggests that 80% of Internet traffic is video, while Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat combine for over 20 billion video views per day. In a post titled “Texting is Out. Spontaneous FaceTime Is In.”, a 21-year-old college student says “You’ve gotta see their face,” while a 19-year-old says “FaceTime was released in 2011, when I was 11. My peers and I literally grew up with it.” We believe a logical extension takes video from social media to communication directly with brands. Airbnb employs Voxpopme to improve voice-of-the-customer insights and help its employees develop empathy for customers.
The investment extends Origin Ventures’ interest in both video and customer experience. Investments in Cameo and ViralGains also have video at their core, while Seattle-based Apptentive helps brands like Starbucks, eBay, and Disney capture customer feedback on mobile devices.
We look forward to working with CEO Dave Carruthers and the global team at Voxpopme to build the leading software company for connecting brands and consumers directly via video, and the red button on their smartphones.
