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Just about five years ago, Tracey Wiedmeyer made the move from consulting to a co-founder of a SaaS-based market research company: InContext Solutions. Today, he serves as InContext's CTO and is helping the company to push the envelope with its technology, specifically 3D technology. The 3D virtual stores that InContext provides to retailers and manufacturers have caught the attention of investors recently (they closed a $6.35 million round from local Hyde Park Venture Partners). Built In Chicago caught up with Wiedmeyer to hear about how this funding boost will affect the tech behind InContext this year:
Can you tell me about how your consulting background prepared you to co-found InContext?
I’ve done quite a bit of consulting over the years and as a consultant you’re always in a unique position to come into a project and usually save the day, but eventually the contract runs out and you’re on to the next project. You’re never around long enough to get completely vested in the product or process of the company your consulting for. As I’ve been in and out of consulting, that vested participation is something I’ve always missed and being at New Resources Consulting helped drive that point home for me. I enjoyed the time I spent working there and the team I worked with was top notch, but I found out that personally I’m always more happy if I can sink myself into something completely for the long haul, the ups and downs, and have a great influence in strategy and direction. I’ve never been afraid to take the weight to of the world on my shoulders and move it forward, bit by bit.
How does technology power your business?
Technology powers just about every part of our business and is what has allowed us to scale up our offerings. On our consulting side, technology automation has allowed our very experienced researchers to concentrate on driving value for clients, not doing menial tasks that are better suited for machines, whether that’s data analysis, reporting, or anything else. Our SaaS products are obviously heavily reliant on technology but there are a few trends we’ve gone all in on, one is cloud services, specifically Platform as a Service. I’m amazed at how easy it is to scale up and maintain our cloud infrastructure without having to hire dedicated personnel.
What technologies are you excited about?
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention 3D technology, it’s the heart and soul of our business. What was accelerating when we started 5 years ago, is continuing to accelerate at a faster rate now. Graphics computing power, video rendering, video gaming technologies – they’re all getting easier and more cost efficient to implement. Now we’re starting to see the marriage of cloud and 3D or cloud-enabled GPU compute power. It’s a magical thing and a wonderful enabler for our business. That also means competition is closer in our rear view mirror, but we’ve never been afraid to compute. We’ve built a world class team that’s allowing us to compete at a whole new level and do more with less – beyond our imagination.
What trends do you see happening in market research over the next three years?
I really feel the market research industry is a bit like the newspaper industry: the writing is on the wall, but quite a few of the incumbents refuse to believe it until forced change is right in front of them. There’s been a shift to online, mobile, etc. but the rate of technological progress is still outpacing the rate of adoption and pretty soon some of these old revenue streams are going to begin drying up. You either adapt and change or get passed by, we’ll gladly grab that baton and run with it. Companies want access to real time information, tools that make sense of all the data they have, not a four to five month decision via PowerPoint that puts them one step behind their competitor. We’ve simply refused to accept the status quo since day one, and we’ll continue enabling 3D solutions for a wider audience, there’s no question there. The only question in my mind is how fast we can take advantage of all the opportunities in front of us.
What sort of validation are you getting from your customers and others in the industry?
It’s pretty easy to see validation in the form of repeat clients. Over the last 18 months we’ve gotten a large amount of repeat business from our client base as we start to become a trust partner with them. Our ShopperMX platform is redefining retailer/manufacturer collaboration along that whole ecosystem, which includes packaging, display, agency, etc. When we’re able to allow these groups to collaborate, which they’ve always done, but do it in a way that really gives their business a competitive advantage, at the speed of business today, there’s nothing better. Being asked to jointly present how ShopperMX is changing the face of retailing at industry conferences doesn’t hurt either.
What tips can you offer young companies still honing in on what product's value is?
I’ve always said this, much to the dismay of Charles Forman, but going out and building something just because you believe in it rarely works. Yes, you need to believe in your product and yourself, but if you’re not validating early and often it’s very easy to get off track and at a small or pre-revenue company you better have a lot of cash if you’re going to take those chances. I’ve spent most of my career in the B2B space, where I think it’s harder to reach terminal velocity than a B2C company just cause you’re afforded very few chances to go through the pitch, validate, build, pitch, validate, build process, so you need to be very good at creating a value prop that immediately hits that emotional note. With B2C there’s always a few thousand more customers that will try your product.
What else do you want the Chicago startup community to know about InContext's tech?
We have built a really, really awesome team over here and are solving some really challenging problems. On the face of market research it’s easy to get lost in survey land, but if you look at our website and our openings you’ll quickly see the diversity of skills we’re looking for. It’s not hard to imagine the difficult and interesting problems we’re trying to solve by bringing 3D to grandma’s laptop and change the face of market research as it exists today. So many other technology companies are simply solving the same problem with new technologies or quickly become an exercise about scaling infrastructure. We’re actually treading new ground with everything we build, no one to follow, only the future to design. Come join us if you’re up for it, you won’t be disappointed.
