How to connect to maps & search services and optimize for ranking

About PinMeTo

Daniel: I founded a company called PinMeTo. We work only with what we call enterprise multi-location businesses. We’re based out of a small country in the Nordics called Sweden, but we are a global company. We have customers in over 120 countries, most of which are in retail. We have clients like H&M and IKEA, which are Swedish companies, but we also have other large enterprises from other countries.

What our customers can do on the platform is to make sure they have the best possible online presence and local SEO, and to start with, they usually make sure that all their stores are set up properly through Google and Google business profiles. Google search, Google Maps, Apple Maps, all the in-car navigation systems, and all the social media. They can have all the conversations needed with customers through those local platforms. The biggest problem we’re trying to solve is to help our customers win over their competitors and make sure they go to them and buy whatever they want.

PinMeTo best features

Daniel: The core product is called business listing, which is the first thing you must do to ensure you have all your locations set up on all the maps, platforms searches, and so on. Once that is done, we can pull data from all those local presences in Google Business profiles, Facebook pages, etc. We built other tools, one is a social media tool where you can do one post, but it gets posted to thousands of locations if you have that. And the other two tools one is for review management, and the other is a customer service tool called Conversations, where you can do all kinds of customer dialogues.

The most interesting feature is a backend feature that our customers really like. We call it access management systems. Because our customers are enterprises, they have different people around the world responsible for different regions. They can set this up however they want. For example, one team handles only the locations in the US, and this team operates locations in Sweeden. This person has an app just to use for their store, so it can help their whole organization get organized around handling their entire online presence. The average pricing for us is a thousand dollars, but then we have tiny customers that pay around $200, and we also have huge enterprises, so I would say the average price is around $1000.

How do you differentiate from your competitors?

Daniel: We have competitors in this space, mainly in the US. The most significant player in this space is on Nasdaq called Yext. Also, SOCi is a competitor, and I would say Birdeye is too. The most crucial difference between them and us is that they provide technology for chain businesses and small SMBs. We have focused only on enterprise multi-location businesses. Our whole technology stack map, our entire organization, is built only on helping larger companies with manual locations.

Starting PinMeTo

Daniel: We started it eight years ago and did something completely different. We tried pulling location data from Google and Facebook to create a video where we wanted to show other locations where you can go in tra to travel. Still, when we tried to do that, the location data was so poor in different places. We said someone needed to build a sheet for map service and social media about locations, so we pivoted into PinMeTo. Right now, we are 102 people, and we raised around $5 million. We aim to keep growing and ensure we are the go-to technology for global multi-location enterprise brands. We are growing very industry-wise, so we are developing one industry at a time, globally focusing on that.

What has been the best growth strategy?

Daniel: I think the best thing we’ve done is to separate the SDRs and sales managers from customer success, so as soon as we close a deal, they leave it to our customer success team. No one in sales sticks around with becoming a key accounts manager in any way, and they focus on getting new brands in. I think this is the best tactic we have done to separate different parts, especially taking away the responsibility from the salesperson as soon as the deal is closed and giving it to customer success so that salesperson can go back and get new customers.

What is your story, Daniel?

Daniel: I’m 47 years old, so I’ve been around for a while. I was a musician for a time, and then I went to the university where I  studied psychology for four years, and then it was fun. Then I went back to being an entrepreneur, and I started a few companies in my teenage years because I didn’t know what VAT was. For a while, I was selling skateboards and snowboards, which are my interests in life. After my studies, I returned to marketing and started several marketing agencies and other startups. PinMeTo is probably my 12th company, there have been different companies, but all were related to marketing somehow.

What’s your best piece of advice for founders?

Daniel: Don’t listen too much to other people, especially not your investors. They’re not there every day to see what you do and what you want to achieve. They can come up with something good and give some advice, but only take them to heart if you feel that it’s the advice you feel in your gut. Don’t expect too much from investors because they are investors. Some founders think everything will be sold when you get your seed investment, so be careful there. Most people are not entrepreneurs, so don’t listen too much. They’re not entrepreneurs for a reason; they picked the safe way in life.

Ego has no place in building companies

Daniel: I met an old friend I hadn’t met for 15 years. He built a factory, sold that, and we had too many beers, and then he said – maybe I should join you. I thought that perhaps the beers were talking, but we spoke the day after, and he invested in the company and a few other investors. Then he became the company’s chairman and quit his old job.

Then he became operational, and we were kind of Co-CEOs for a few years. Afterward, I felt he was much better for CEO in the scale-up phase than I am because I am more of a founder kind. We still work as Co-CEOs, but I’m the CSO now, just to call me something. I do many strategic things, and I’m helping out where help is needed, as I think every founder should when you grow over a hundred people. The lesson from this is that ego has no place in building companies.