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
Ask the market. Let people play. Decide with proof.
A question in Pikaboo becomes a mission on the street. Timbuk2 checks the evidence before it comes back to inform the next decision.
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“Where can you
find me?”
A buyer’s question Ask
Ask one question in Pikaboo. Define the place, the time and what would count as proof.
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The real game, on the street Play
People nearby play a mission, capturing what they can see with photos and context.
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From play to proof
- Place & time
- Photo & context
- Duplicate checks
Uncertain?
A person reviews it.Accepted evidence continues
Verify
Timbuk2 quality-checks place, time and proof, catches duplicates and sends uncertainty to human review.
- Back in Pikaboo
Know where.
Decide what’s next.- The question
- Where is the product available?
- The evidence
- Accepted observations, linked to their sources.
- The next move
- Plan a visit. Test a change. Check again.
Decide
Accepted evidence returns to Pikaboo. Choose the next move, then ask again to see what changed.
The next question starts with what you already know.
Illustrative buyer question; actual game screen. 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.
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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.
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Capture becomes ambient
Nobody stops and aims. They walk.
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Cost per answer collapses
More evidence per paid hour. Not free, far cheaper.
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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.
The people behind Timbuk2.
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Leads Timbuk2’s direction, connecting the field network, evidence engine and enterprise decisions.
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Leads business operations, coordinating the people and processes that keep delivery moving.
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Leads the technical work behind Timbuk2’s products and evidence systems.
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Shapes the product experience, connecting questions, field participation and evidence people can use.
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Focuses on growth, helping more participants and customers discover and use Timbuk2.
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Shapes how people interact with evidence, from field participation to clear, useful contributions.
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Connects leadership priorities with day-to-day execution across the team.
Board, advisors & legal
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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