Geospace data increasingly valuable to businesses: mapquest founder aims to connect companies with chatter aggregator.

• Author: Sukin, Gigi
• Position: TECHNOLOGY

AS MASS MOBILE access has grown ever more ubiquitous, location and time have become invaluable data points for businesses to vie for a place in the market.

Perhaps that explains Perry Evans' most recent startup success. The founding executive of Colorado-based companies including Mapquest, Jabber and Local Matters, launched Closely in 2011 and secured $3 million in Series A funding led by Joe Zell of Grotech Ventures in March.

"What we've seen over the last three to four years is that businesses can no longer rely on a simple formula for marketing," Evans said of his platform, which helps small businesses navigate the social media landscape and connect with business providers. "You can't just put an ad in the paper, list in the Yellow Pages, maybe a little direct mail and call it good."

Closely--based out of the Denver-based mixed-use campus TAXI--helps businesses track marketing and messaging from their local competition with Perch, its social monitoring app for iOS and Android devices launched last year.

"Perch was created to help both sides of the equation," Evans said of the chatter aggregator, which won the Appy Award for "Best Business App" of 2013 at South by Southwest and was called a "must-have for small businesses" by Forbes. "For the small-business owner, it's a single platform that both helps manage their social media channels and keeps track of what the competition is doing--all with the purpose of making their own online marketing more effective."

As of June, more than 60,000 businesses had downloaded Perch, which also recommends tech-based products and services to business owners based on data it collects from its competitors' operations. Evans described his target audience as the average small business owner "overwhelmed" with the volume of technology to integrate into their day-to-day management.

"Smartphones present the ideal opportunity--we can fit into your life without intruding," Evans said. "We've built relationships with multiple channels--Yelp, Foursquare, Instagram, etc.--and aggregate that into a simple way to keep you in-the-know. You select businesses that you want to follow and get a low-noise, high-signal view of what's happening in...