2021 – Theta’s Year in Review
By all accounts, 2021 was a year like no other. At the start, we were nearly nine months into a global pandemic, and businesses were attempting to settle into the oft-maligned talked about “new normal.” While clients and prospects grappled with shifting priorities and business models, we saw some interesting challenges befall both consumer-facing corporations and the firms that invest in them. Fortunately, we also saw some incredible new opportunities that helped shape some businesses for the better, including our own.
Heading into what promises to be an exciting new year, it’s always good to first take stock of where you’ve been. So, with that, let’s take a look at Theta’s greatest hits of 2021.
Expanded Focus. Expanding Team.
Theta experienced significant growth over the course of the year in both capabilities and headcount. Recognizing that success starts at home, we began by expanding our scope by building on our foundation as a Customer-Based Corporate Valuation (CBCV) company to include more tactical Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) applications. Now, in addition to providing strategic insights on customer value, we also help our clients make more tactical decisions, such as determining which customer types they should focus on acquiring, who they should seek to retain, and promising opportunities for customer development. These capabilities perfectly complement our original CBCV offering, thus enabling clients to maximize the value of their customer base and total corporate valuation. We also dedicated effort toward improving our models to ensure the highest accuracy of predictions across the widest variety of business settings and sizes. Whether you have 10,000 or 100 million customers, our models can handle it.
Of course, meeting the needs of these new capabilities meant we needed more brilliant minds to help us deliver the exceptional results our clients expect. So we upped the ante on our recruitment and team retention efforts. Theta invested heavily in more active recruiting – finding new sources of talent and building comprehensive internship opportunities. We also set out to make Theta a great place to work, fostering a culture of collaboration, support, and professional growth and development. By the end of the year, we doubled the size of the team and increased the organization’s geographic footprint, with staff from Los Angeles and Seattle to Austin and Houston to Boston and Miami.
Predictions, Perspectives, and Insight Where it Counts
Staffed up and ready to deliver, 2021 saw Theta helping a range of companies of all sizes – from private equity firms to corporations – including Hershey’s, Tory Burch, and Provenance, and many more whose names we cannot share due to client confidentiality. Our work spanned four different countries and a variety of industries, from consumer goods to gaming to financial services.
We were successful in helping consumer-facing businesses better understand their customer value, what drives it, and how to improve it. We offered deeper perspectives to investors to help guide their investment decisions and augment their due diligence by providing perspectives through a customer lens. For example, in the private equity space, we helped one firm quantify the impact of Covid on their target company’s customer value and compared customer value dynamics in areas that were affected by Covid to varying degrees. These are critically important insights to evaluate company resilience during the pandemic. In another instance, we worked with a gaming company to identify its highest value customers, which is crucial in a space where a very small percentage of customers generate real value. These are just a few examples of how our customer value insights can help investors and corporations make better and bolder decisions.
All in, we successfully analyzed 100 million customers with over 700 million transactions, demonstrating Theta’s ability to provide predictive analytics and insight at scale. And in the end, our customer satisfaction rates have been stellar, garnering the highest marks for our expertise, accuracy and quality of work, actionability of insights, and collaboration. As a result, we saw a healthy share of repeat business in 2021 in addition to our strong client acquisition effort.
Besides our standard course of business, we also took some time to do a deep dive analysis on a hot IPO ticket. In September, we published a CBCV analysis of Warby Parker timed to their hotly anticipated IPO. We provided a predictive view on the true value of Warby’s business and revealed how the high valuation wasn’t entirely justified. The analysis forced Warby to re-file its form S-1 disclosure to correct issues we identified there, and further demonstrated Theta’s own value and capabilities in full view, resulting in news coverage from CNBC, Forbes, Bloomberg, and others.
Fresh New Look. Bright New Future.
Of course, with all this growth and momentum building throughout the year, we felt a bold new look would better represent Theta for the masses. In October, we unveiled a sleek new logo and visual identity along with a great new website. The visual effort helps us to elevate and distinguish the brand across all channels, including social media, while the website allows us to more effectively convey our capabilities and tell the Theta story to clients, prospects, and employee candidates – all setting up the business for further growth and success.
From broad expansion to deeper, more accurate analysis, 2021 proved to be a year of validation for Theta. We’ve spent the past year building a strong foundation while delivering on our mission to provide our clients with unrivaled analytics and insight, and we’re excited by the potential that 2022 holds – we have some very big new product announcements coming, so stay tuned! For corporations and investment firms who trust in the power of predictive customer analytics, we’re here to help you reach your full potential. Contact us if you’re ready to get started.
Here’s wishing you and yours a very advantageous and prosperous new year!