Analysis

May 25, 2021

Citymapper’s almost £200m valuation: does the crowd know better than VCs?

Citymapper has a much-loved product. But has for years struggled to find the right business model.


Katja Staple

6 min read

In 1907, the British statistician Sir Francis Galton attended a festival contest where people attempted to guess the weight of an ox. He observed that the average of all guesses was closer to the ox’s actual weight than any individual expert guess. This observation is the basis of the ‘wisdom of crowds’ theory: an idea that crowds are collectively smarter than individual experts. 

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Katja Staple

Katja Staple writes about the business of startups for Sifted

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