A game, played on real streets, settled by evidence.
The game that makes physical markets visible.
Every play turns real-world movement into verified market evidence. Timbuk2 compounds it into a living intelligence asset for the enterprises deciding where to move next.
How it works
The question becomes a game. The game becomes intelligence.
Enterprises frame a decision in Pikaboo. People answer what they can see through play. Timbuk2 settles every accepted signal into evidence the enterprise can act on.
- Demand signal verified
- Location evidence linked
- Uncertainty separated
- Ask
Frame the decision
The enterprise starts with a consequential question in Pikaboo, bounded by place, time and the proof required.
- Play
Turn it into play
The field network converts the question into a simple mission people can answer from what they can see.
- Verify
Settle the evidence
Timbuk2 quality-checks place, time and proof, de-duplicates every record and sends uncertainty to human review.
- Decide
Move with confidence
Pikaboo returns the accepted evidence as a decision surface that can be refreshed and measured again.
One protocol now crosses South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire. Every accepted signal strengthens the same governed evidence asset.
Brands can measure every click. The street still needs proof.
Formal datasets map addresses and transactions. They still can't see the street.
- Meta
- Google Ads
- TikTok
- Amazon
Market intelligence should compound.
Each accepted observation refreshes the same governed evidence layer, so the next decision is faster, more defensible and less dependent on a one-off research project.
From South Africa to Côte d’Ivoire, the evidence engine travels.
One game. One verification protocol. A growing intelligence asset across markets.
-
The record said Formal datasets missed most of the informal businesses trading on the ground.
We found The game turned everyday movement into verified, place-linked evidence, and got cheaper as more people played.
87 % of informal businesses were missing from the digital record -
The record said A new country, a new language, and no prior operating footprint.
We found The same game and settlement rules catalogued an urban outdoor-media market in one afternoon.
25 % of duplicate submissions intercepted before review
verified evidence points accumulated across markets
A growing cross-border record that becomes more useful with every mission
Every generation costs less and sees more.
Clipboards, camera cars, phones, shelf scanners. Each generation saw more for less. Ours runs on the phones people already carry, pays them to play, and is walking toward glasses.
Capture becomes ambient
Head-worn capture removes the last deliberate act of collection. Movement itself becomes evidence. Proof of concept now.
From more than 50,000 verified evidence points today to a million-point intelligence asset. December 2026 target, not a result.
Niantic sold the game for $3.5 billion and kept the map.
Niantic put a phone in hundreds of millions of hands and turned play into a world-scale spatial asset. The enduring value was not the interface; it was the map. Timbuk2 applies that model where formal datasets are thinnest: a game creates the evidence, and the evidence compounds into infrastructure.
“We are building the ground-truth layer for Africa's informal economies. One day, we'll feed it into your model.”
A precedent, not a partnership. No agreement is claimed.
The world already moves. We turn that movement into intelligence.
-
Capture becomes ambient
Nobody stops and aims. They walk.
-
Cost per answer collapses
More evidence per paid hour. Not free, far cheaper.
-
Africa is the proving ground
South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire show that the protocol can cross markets, languages and operating conditions.
Designed to cross continents, with a million verified evidence points targeted by December 2026. A target, not a result.
Bring us the market decision you need to defend.
Four ways enterprises buy the same verified evidence.
- Precision Marketing Plan, measure and prove out-of-home campaigns with independent, field-verified audience measurement. For media owners, agencies & advertisers
- Field Execution Know where to deploy field teams — and prove what happened. For distribution, financial services & field-force leaders
- Retail Media & Activation Turn retail and township demand into verified, brand-funded sales. For brands, FMCG & retail media networks
- Audience Intelligence On-demand, ground-verified location and audience data for any geography. For brands, enterprises, public sector & researchers
A game became an intelligence asset.
timbuk2 began with a simple idea: the people closest to a market can reveal what conventional data cannot see. We turned that knowledge into play and paid participants for verified evidence about the world around them.
That evidence became the ground truth behind Pikaboo, proven in production at national scale. Today, every accepted signal strengthens the cross-border intelligence asset used by brands, banks and public bodies to move capital with greater confidence.
Geospatial data scientists and creators who built this before, for Shoprite and Takealot.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Board, advisors & legal
- Nyimpini Mabunda Executive Chairman Ex-CEO GE Southern Africa · ex-CE Vodacom Consumer
- Andrew Firman, CFA Strategic Advisor Managing Partner, Kaleo Ventures · ex-J.P. Morgan
- Tim Henshall Legal & IP Founder, Henshall Attorneys · UK & SA qualified
Trusted & procurement-ready
Built for enterprise deployment.
- AWS
- Ninety One
- Endeavor SA
- Exxaro
- Kaleo
- Shoprite
- Takealot
- WhereIsMyTransport
- African Union
- POPIA-safe
- B-BBEE Level 1 · ESD
- AWS-backed
- InfoSec summary
- Fixed-scope SOW
Featured in Fast Company · Bizcommunity · Africa Tech Festival
The first deployment
Where should your teams move next, and what evidence will defend that decision?
One priority market, fixed fee. No retainer and no platform to adopt: a scoped, verifiable proof you can take to your executive committee.
- Scope Priority market
- Timeline Rapid mobilisation
- Commercials Fixed fee · fixed scope
- A field-verified market map
- A ranked deployment priority list
- Photo, GPS & timestamp evidence for every point
- Field notes captured on the ground
- A clean data spreadsheet you keep
- A recommended first move, argued from the evidence