Nearmap: Building a Global Property Intelligence Platform

AIR DATE:

March 12, 2026

LENGTH:

53:18 minutes

ANDY WATT (00:00):

Nearmap's celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. We're three years into this journey. Truth, we're only just getting started. And that's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of this, is that the opportunity just continues to unfold in our favor. We've got a great product. We've got great customers. We continue to invest in our business across all those key areas, and the market demand is shifting.

ORLANDO BRAVO (00:24):

Welcome to Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal. I'm Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner at Thoma Bravo. Today, Thoma Bravo's senior partner, A.J. Rohde, and Thoma Bravo principal, Peter Hernandez, take us inside the Nearmap deal, the Discover platform's largest investment to date. They're joined by Nearmap CEO Andy Watt, to break down why we leaned in, how we navigated an Australian take private, and how the company has evolved from a provider of aerial data into a global property intelligence platform.

(01:02):

Thoma Bravo first started doing diligence on Nearmap around January 2022. At the time, Nearmap generated roughly a hundred million in ARR and was growing over 20% annually. We saw great potential. Nearmap captures proprietary geospatial data, then layers AI and software on top of it to identify more than 150 attributes used by insurance carriers, construction firms, and governments. With the help of Thoma Bravo, Nearmap has accelerated growth and expanded their product stack. Through strategic choices and M&A, the company has scaled from about 40 million in revenue in 2016 to over 300 million in annual revenue today. We believe the sky is the limit for this company.

A.J. ROHDE (01:57):

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another fun episode of Behind the Deal. I'm A.J. Rohde, senior partner. I run the Discover Fund at Thoma Bravo. And once again, here with my main man, Peter Hernandez. Good to be with you, big guy.

PETER HERNANDEZ (02:10):

Yeah, good to be back.

A.J. ROHDE (02:11):

Today we're going to be discussing Nearmap, one of my favorite companies in the world and a company that I think a lot of the world could benefit from an understanding and appreciating the value proposition. So excited to be here talking with you about the company, our history, our run, our time with Andy Watt, CEO, who's here with us today. I can't wait to get in the studio with him. So with that, you want to get going?

PETER HERNANDEZ (02:34):

For sure. Let's do it.

A.J. ROHDE (02:35):

Why don't we start a little bit of memory lane, going back to the beginning? How did we find out about this company, how did you find out about this company, and a little bit about what the company represents, what it does, and the problems it solves for customers?

PETER HERNANDEZ (02:51):

One of the things that we have at Thoma Bravo that you set up for really all the Discover apparatus is you encourage us to go out and have conversations with CEOs, email them, call them, learn about companies. And so at the time, actually, you and I were doing a lot of work in insurance. This was probably January of 2022. And as a young VP, I was canvassing the public market indexes, which one of the things that I think is great about us is it knows no bounds. We don't just have to look at US companies, but we can also look at the Norwegian Stock Exchange, Australian Stock Exchange, the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(03:26):

And so we were looking at some different companies and I happened to stumble across Nearmap actually as part of some of the broader insurance work that we were doing. And I'd actually never heard of the company. I didn't know it, even though that Thoma Bravo has a deep history in insurance. I'd never really heard of it. And so I went to the website and it was amazing. All of their IR decks were really, really interesting. It talked about the market leadership of this company that was really doing geospatial imagery, growing really nicely. They actually put out their entire ARR bridge. And you could see not only were they winning customers and those customers were sticking and retaining really nicely, but the momentum that they had, particularly outside of Australia in the US, was really, really impressive.

(04:13):

And so I think shortly after finding it, I remember flagging it to you and saying, "Hey, have you ever heard of this company? It's 150 million Australian dollars. ARR going over 20%." They're not making a lot of money yet, not profitable, hadn't been profitable, but I thought it was really, really interesting. And I think at that point you told me that you actually had some history in the space and you're like, "Oh wait, this company is really cool and you should spend more time on it."

A.J. ROHDE (04:38):

Yeah. What's interesting is all good investments that we have here start with some quirky interpersonal relationship, I always find. And here, my next door neighbor at home up in Marin County is a guy named Peter Celinski. And Peter's brother, Tom, is the CTO of Nearmap.

(04:53):

And Peter has a Bernadoodle dog and I have a Bernadoodle dog. And we would occasionally see each other on walks, and he would always tell me about his brother's cool company. And I get a lot of ideas coming through day-to-day on these sort of things. I said, "Oh, that's cool." And one day he did it and I said, "I think that's the same company that Peter just met with, literally." And we could-

PETER HERNANDEZ (05:13):

I actually remember that moment vividly because it was like a Sunday afternoon. You had just been on a walk with Peter.

A.J. ROHDE (05:19):

Yep.

PETER HERNANDEZ (05:19):

You called me. I answered the phone. I was in the car with my brother. As I do when you call, I said, "Hey, I've got to take this call." Pulled over. And then you said, "Hey, what was that name of that company that you just mentioned?" I said, "Oh, Nearmap?" You said, "Yeah, yeah. I'll call you back in 10 minutes." And then from there, I think you-

A.J. ROHDE (05:34):

We're going to buy this company. But he clued me onto what was happening with his brother. Peter had actually made an investment in the company a long time before. And I said, "If your brother's half as smart and charming as you are and the company's half as good as we think, this is going to be pretty special."

(05:48):

So that sort of thing piqued my interest because I knew the market. We had a real fondness for Australia, actually Australian cultured companies that were coming to the US. And the insurance market is a market we had made a lot of investments in really successfully. So I'm always trying to find data and application software married together for the carriers. That was always an investment theme that we had. And so we figured out that those were [inaudible 00:06:13] with this company. It was viable. There were nice people running the company. They wanted to expand to the US. They could use our help. It was of scale that mattered to us. All those things, that's when things usually coalesce in a pretty good way.

PETER HERNANDEZ (06:26):

Totally, totally. The setup was a really good one for us because the metrics were certainly there from a top line perspective. We thought it was a company, to your point, that we could buy. What I thought was really interesting is that upon reaching out to the team, they emailed us back and they said, "Well, your timing couldn't be better because we're actually looking for a partner to go private. And we're not just looking for any partner. We need a partner that can help us scale this company in a global way," because the market around them was changing so rapidly. And they saw a big opportunity to be much more important to not only just large insurance customers, but commercial construction customers, government customers, than they were today.

(07:03):

And so really the timing worked out where they said, "Could you be our partner to help us go private, improve the operations of the company? Also, let's use this opportunity to accelerate growth." But really, what we all got really excited about was we could go do really strategic, transformative M&A. And that kind of set us down a journey.

A.J. ROHDE (07:23):

So with that, let's take a step back because we're talking a lot about the company as an abstract, but the reality is this is a super damn interesting company and it's one of the only companies we've ever bought that makes anything tangible. And so why don't we talk a little bit about the business itself?

PETER HERNANDEZ (07:36):

Yeah. So I think, to your point, this is a little bit of a different company than we typically make investments in because normally when you think about Thoma Bravo, it's heavy enterprise software systems. At its core, Nearmap is a data and analytics company. And really what it is today, which we'll talk about this journey, is it's a property intelligence company.

(07:55):

What does that mean? We primarily do three things. We capture data of properties. So think what the land actually looks like. Are there trees next to the home? Are there power lines next to it? Are there pools in the backyard? Inside the home, what does it look like? What is the flooring made of? What are the cabinets made of? So we capture all that data and we put it in one central place.

A.J. ROHDE (08:17):

And how is that data captured?

PETER HERNANDEZ (08:19):

And the data's captured in a very interesting way. So we actually, Nearmap has a history of being an aerial imagery company, aerial data company. And so they actually, in Australia, which is where most of our camera operations sit, there's a team in Sydney that actually assembles a camera in house and then we actually-

A.J. ROHDE (08:40):

A million dollar camera.

PETER HERNANDEZ (08:40):

A million dollar camera.

A.J. ROHDE (08:41):

Proprietarily built.

PETER HERNANDEZ (08:41):

Each system, which is proprietarily built and we have a lot of patents for. It's a camera that has actually attached to the bottom of an airplane that flies over and captures all of the ground imagery. So on the surface, at first it was a very different type of investment for Thoma Bravo because typically we tend not to invest in companies that have that much hardware or camera. But what we felt was really interesting was they were constantly using these cameras, these systems to capture all this rich ground truth data, which has such an important use case for all their end customers.

A.J. ROHDE (09:12):

And the flight operations are outsourced, of course. We don't own those planes. The camera we do own, which is a means to capturing the imagery, but it's a data company.

PETER HERNANDEZ (09:21):

For sure.

A.J. ROHDE (09:21):

And very data company that creates proprietary data has to figure out a way to get that data. In this case, they outsource the flight operations to a flight company, or drones now increasingly. And we built our own camera. And then on top of that imagery, we had a bunch of application software, automated decisioning, and that's the journey the company was already on that we helped just accelerate.

PETER HERNANDEZ (09:40):

Yeah. So I think about the core of what we do is we capture that data. The second thing that we do is we overlay ... Nearmap was actually way ahead of its time. I remember before AI was really in vogue and the way it is now, there was a whole team of data scientists and AI experts in Australia and Sydney that were overlaying all this machine learning and identifying attributes on the imagery. So if you think about capturing a large swath of land, then we actually take all this machine learning and we can identify at scale, okay, in the city of Miami, whose homes have pools? Whose home, what is next to light poles? Who's in a flood zone?

(10:15):

Now I think we have over 150 attributes that we're actually identifying, [inaudible 00:10:20] an image at a given point in time. And that is incredibly valuable to a whole host of folks. Insurance carriers, for sure, you can think about them trying to underwrite a whole portfolio at scale, super important for them. Similarly in construction, you're trying to identify where you want to build. And again, in government, it's primarily like a tax assessment use case.

(10:36):

And then the third thing we do is we provide workflow and insights on top of that. So we actually have now a software wrapper that sits around the data, which people actually spend a lot of their time in that application. And then we actually provide reports and insights through M&A, through what we've done. We've taken the journey now where we capture the data, which is what the company primarily did. With our help, we've gotten more into the AI and-

A.J. ROHDE (10:58):

And machine learning decision.

PETER HERNANDEZ (10:59):

And machine learning layer. And then the last thing is we're actually turning this into workflow and insights that people can act upon.

(11:04):

And maybe the last thing we'll do is just connect the dots because we serve a lot of different people. The data is very important. Where we are today is we're a property intelligence company. And so if you think about the lifecycle of a home, the lifecycle of a property, there's a build phase. You have to build that property. There's a construction firm that's actually assembling the four walls of the home. People use our data, that imagery to assess, is this where I want to build? What does it look like? How big is it? Plot. And they can use our software to actually see and almost draw. It's basically a modern blueprint of what that home will look like.

(11:37):

Then second, once the home is built, you have to assess it. If you're getting home insurance, people want to know, hey, does A.J. actually have a pool in his backyard? We can do that at scale for insurance carriers to help them underwrite policies. The government is actually going to assess your square footage of your home. We help with that. And then inevitably, hopefully not, but occasionally your home is damaged. There's a storm that hits and it needs to be repaired or you just have normal course-

A.J. ROHDE (12:01):

Siding, roofing, flooring.

PETER HERNANDEZ (12:03):

All of that. Everything from the inside of the home to the outside of the home, Nearmap can address all of those. So really, I would say where we are today from when we initially invested in the company, it was what was just predominantly aerial data capture. I'm really proud of the team and that we've built this broader property intelligence platform that really addresses the entire life cycle of a home.

A.J. ROHDE (12:22):

Agreed. Should we talk about how this deal went down?

PETER HERNANDEZ (12:25):

For sure. It's the best part.

A.J. ROHDE (12:26):

Taking companies private in Australia is always an enjoyable journey. So in the UK, the Crown countries, there is generally what's called a scheme of arrangement. So when you want to take a company private, you propose a deal with the premium to the board, and then the board approves what's called the scheme of arrangement, and then puts that opportunity to buy the company out to shareholders. And shareholders have to vote and you have to aggregate the votes up. In the case of Australia, it's 75%. But you don't know before you embark on that journey whether you're going to get your 75% vote. There is a board recommendation sort of. In the US, it's a much more ardent recommendation. In Australia, it's like, here's the deal that the board is putting out to shareholders. What do you think?

(13:11):

And in Australia, which is super unique, which is one of the reasons I love that country so much, its capital markets, is it is an extremely large and heavy retail investor base. And one of the reasons is because people in Australia, through their superannuation fund, own public stocks. And so people from a very young age, I think it's age 18, are like through their pension essentially, have access to public securities and they can trade securities and they can pick their own and they could choose which manager, which superannuation fund will manage that for them. So there is an enormous financial literacy across the country for individuals owning stocks.

(13:48):

And so everybody has an opinion on the public companies that are in Australia, so much so that when I was in Queensland with my family two years after we bought Nearmap and I'm hanging out on the beach playing cricket with my kids and some other dad was playing cricket with his kids, and we were playing together, he said, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm an investor in the US." And he says, "Have you ever invested Down Under?" I said, "Actually, we have. We have a company called Nearmap."

(14:13):

He goes, "Nearmap. Everybody loves Nearmap. MapBrowser, we all know it, we all use it." And I'm like, "Well, what do you do?" He's like, "Well, I work in the consumer industry making consumer goods." I'm like, "Well, how do you know aerial imagery?" He goes, "Everybody knows that."

(14:29):

And the Reddit blogs in the country are rife with people opining on stock. So it was a really interesting dynamic because we had to make a case to the public, essentially, why this was a fair price and why ultimately we'd be good owners. And it's one of the reasons why I think it could be a nice jurisdiction for us someday as well to enter back on and be a public company back in Australia, but we'll cross that bridge later.

PETER HERNANDEZ (14:54):

I was always blown away by how iconic of a company it was in Australia. It's like, to your point, everybody knew it. Still, when we go down there for board meetings and we'll wear our Nearmap swag, people will pull us over on the street because at one point in the country of Australia, it was effectively like their Google Maps.

A.J. ROHDE (15:08):

Yes, yes.

PETER HERNANDEZ (15:09):

So there's a really, really strong following. And then to your point, so much so that the actual vote was really, really close when we took it private.

A.J. ROHDE (15:16):

It wasn't like you have a bunch of votes from big institutional sellers. You just one by one by one, "Peter, Sally, Mary, are you guys going to vote for it?" So a little bit touch and go there at the end, but we're happy we did it.

(15:27):

So now we own it. We've owned it for a while. What has changed since that journey? We talked a little bit about strategically, but maybe what hasn't changed and what have we done collectively with management since then?

PETER HERNANDEZ (15:44):

When we invested in the company, we talked to hundreds of customers as part of our work. And the resounding thing that we heard was Nearmap has the best capture program, most frequency, and the best culture of innovation of everybody that was also in this market. So customers loved it. The feedback from customers was so, so phenomenal, probably some of the best we've ever seen.

(16:05):

And so coming into it, I remember talking to you and you said, "Hey, we have to preserve that. No matter what we do, customers are at the forefront. We have to keep innovating. That has to be like our North Star." And so that is for sure something that we never wanted to change.

(16:17):

But when we talked to management and they were looking for a partner, and this is pretty common in a lot of our take privates, the conversation quickly went to, "Well, what if we could just help you do everything faster?" Like you guys are trying to do this, you're kind of managing, you're trying to do that while navigating being a public company, managing quarterly earnings.

A.J. ROHDE (16:37):

Aggressive US expansion.

PETER HERNANDEZ (16:39):

Totally. Well, amidst a very time where you're just growing very rapidly. So let's do all this, let's do it in a private setting, let's do it faster. And their eyes, I remember Andy's eyes just lit up when we told them that we could help them with that.

(16:49):

And so after a long period of diligence, we take the company private. It was really important for us to help streamline some of the operations of the business. So from an org chart perspective, as they were growing both in the US and in Australia, they started to have almost like organizational sprawl. And so we knew-

A.J. ROHDE (17:08):

A little bit of a matrix org.

PETER HERNANDEZ (17:08):

A little bit of a matrix org, kind of like if you looked at the geos and then the functions of the company, setting that up across the US, across Australia by vertical insurance, commercial and government, we said, "Hey, we think that actually we can show you what some of our other software companies are doing that'll allow you to scale and continue your growth, not come at the expense of growth, not come at the expense of innovation, but do this in a way that scales really well for a multi-decade journey as a very important company."

(17:34):

And then we started on the M&A program. So the first thing that we wanted to do is we wanted to go invest in a company that could be the front end of the data imagery. We had MapBrowser, but in terms of an enterprise app that we could really give to insurance carriers to use, we didn't have that. It was a big gap. And we were actually selling our data to some of these other companies and they were turning around and selling that for many multiples of what we were selling it for. So we said, "Hey, we are actually the more valuable."

A.J. ROHDE (18:00):

[inaudible 00:18:01] data.

PETER HERNANDEZ (18:01):

The owning that data is so valuable. So let's go actually buy that. So we bought a company called Betterview, which was co-founded by a gentleman named Dave Tobias, who's still with the company today.

A.J. ROHDE (18:11):

Yeah, head of product.

PETER HERNANDEZ (18:14):

Yeah, our CPO. And that went really, really well. I think we materially outperformed what we expected to do there in a matter of months. And then there was a business called itel, which you actually had a long, long-

A.J. ROHDE (18:25):

I tried to buy several times over my career.

PETER HERNANDEZ (18:27):

And we love this company. I mean, itel is the market standard for everything that's building materials pricing data, really. So if you think about when you have an insurance claim and you're trying to understand what is the cost of the flooring and what does the cabinet cost, an insurer needs to price all that accurately, not too high, not too low. It's very important as somebody who owns a home, you've bought that, you want to get reimbursed the right amount. So itel is the market standard, has been doing it for, gosh, almost 40 years, I think. They have all this proprietary data.

(18:55):

And we, to your point, looked at it before. And as we thought more about Nearmap and where we were going and what we were building, we knew it could be really additive because we had all the exterior view of the home, but we didn't have any of the interior data. And so for us, it was this very transformative moment to say, okay, now we can really add this third leg of the stool to our property intelligence platform.

A.J. ROHDE (19:15):

Underwriting and claims coming together.

PETER HERNANDEZ (19:17):

True, true. And that too. Yeah, underwriting, bring it together, underwriting and claims. And then I think about now we have all the data on the outside of the home, inside of the home, we're starting to get the walls. So it's everything in between, which is really, really powerful and we're seeing a lot of momentum with our customers.

A.J. ROHDE (19:28):

I love it. I love it. How does an enjoyable partnership between us and management affect how you think about running the company, how you think about how long we want to stay with the company and building value together? I think those things are really important.

PETER HERNANDEZ (19:42):

This was actually the first investment that I was really primary deal lead at Thoma Bravo. And I remember-

A.J. ROHDE (19:46):

It sure was.

PETER HERNANDEZ (19:47):

We had a conversation early on. You said, "I need you to close your eyes and just imagine what board meetings are going to be like with these guys, one month in, six months in, a year in, two years in." And I remember doing that and I was like, wow, they're incredibly-

A.J. ROHDE (19:58):

They're really enjoyable.

PETER HERNANDEZ (19:59):

Incredibly smart people. They definitely were coachable. I was like, I knew they could ... They effectively are an extension of our team. And so I knew they'd just be a joy to not only solve business problems with, but hang out socially. And that's proved to be true in spades. I mean, it's like you and I, we bounce around. We'll talk a little bit about business, personal, we laugh, we joke, we're self-deprecating. These guys are totally that. They're not afraid to give us a hard time when they think we're being difficult, whatever it might be. So the journey with them has been absolutely incredible.

A.J. ROHDE (20:29):

Performance oriented, take their job seriously, but not themselves too seriously.

PETER HERNANDEZ (20:33):

Plus the benefit of getting to go to Australia-

A.J. ROHDE (20:34):

I agree.

PETER HERNANDEZ (20:34):

... a couple times a year and the enjoyment that we've gotten out of just spending time in that culture.

A.J. ROHDE (20:40):

I agree.

PETER HERNANDEZ (20:40):

Which is totally new to me.

A.J. ROHDE (20:40):

I agree. I agree. What a wonderful country. It's amazing, too. For you, being in Miami, eight hour time difference, I still see your eyes light up when you get to work with them, despite the inconvenience of the time management sometimes. So I appreciate that a lot.

PETER HERNANDEZ (20:51):

Well, they meet us halfway. I've got to give Andy a huge shout out because I think he wakes up at like 5:00 AM to hop on calls with us.

A.J. ROHDE (20:56):

Global company running from Sydney is not an easy job.

(20:58):

What are you most proud of so far? And when you look out to the future, when you look back and we're an owner for a very long time of this company is my hope and expectation, what would you like to look back and say, we did good work on here?

PETER HERNANDEZ (21:12):

It's a great question. I think in one word, it's just the ambition that we had around the opportunity. I think about every stage of the investment in Nearmap, and it's probably the ambition and the willingness to embrace a high risk tolerance to build something special. The initial investment, taking a company private in Australia, we'd never done it before. We didn't know if it could work. Prior to COVID, we never even really bought a company outside the US. So it was a massive step, big investment for our fund, and that went really well.

(21:38):

Then it's going well, we decided to buy Betterview. Then that's going well. And we step back and itel comes around and that was an opportunity where we said, "Hey, we're kind of halfway through the whole ... Doing something like this is really transformative and we're really recommitting to the journey." And it's like, we have to all sit around the table and ask ourselves, is that what we want to do? And for this company, with this team and this market, we both unequivocally said, "Of course."

A.J. ROHDE (22:04):

We could build this company for 20 years. We're just getting started.

PETER HERNANDEZ (22:07):

So the ability to always be thinking about that, to be thinking collectively like, how do we build something really special in a market that we've never done? I put all that together and I feel like that's so Thoma Bravo. For us to want to embrace that and do that is just-

A.J. ROHDE (22:21):

Behind good people.

PETER HERNANDEZ (22:22):

... it's really special. It's been fun. What about you?

A.J. ROHDE (22:25):

Yeah. I think this is a company that probably needed a little bit more of a global, and does need more of a global understanding of what it does. I think the old perception was it was a camera company and a flight ops company with MapBrowser in Australia. Now, we saw something a lot more and I think this company could be the dominant global property intelligence data, AI, analytics, and software company across the US, Europe, mature markets, emerging markets, commercial, government, and insurance.

(22:58):

Now, those are a lot of things wrapped into that statement right there. And so we need to be thoughtful capital allocating into that framework. But as I think in my career and your career, we don't get many opportunities to business build behind good people for a decade plus. And when you see something like that that sells to really great customers that are resilient, thoughtful, care about IT, or thoughtful about their AI journey, this is something that you don't want to let go of.

(23:25):

And so we do have to be thoughtful eventually about how we think about monetizing our company and position, but I do not want this to stop. In fact, so much so that, as you know, when we bought itel, we more than doubled our investment in the company. So we went from X to more than 2X our equity commitment in this company, for one simple reason is that this is a team that you'd back to the end of the earth to go do that. So I'm psyched to keep going on that. I don't know when that'll ever end, but for now I just see so much room.

PETER HERNANDEZ (23:58):

Oh, totally. I just think about the board meeting we just had 20 minutes ago and there is so much opportunity in each of these individual end markets to all the geos that you mentioned. So I just think that the runway and opportunity when you have a team this good is you just keep going.

A.J. ROHDE (24:14):

I agree, man. Last question for you, which I think is on everyone's mind right now and certainly the public market's mind as it relates to software and data. Domain knowledge, domain specificity, ability to walk customers through this AI journey. This company to me has all that and what's unique is it creates its own proprietary data, which is really hard to find.

(24:40):

How as a vendor can you help walk your customers through that journey, knowing that the way customers might interact with systems may change over time? They may use Claude, they may use a different language model, they may value compliance and security and other things more than they do today. There are just a changing world of what the value proposition is to these systems. Why is being such a domain specific, customer bear hug kind of company important in that journey, in your opinion?

PETER HERNANDEZ (25:08):

Of course. Yeah. I mean, and this is where we were probably on the right side, and in hindsight, we were probably just lucky in that we invested in Nearmap. And what I've come to appreciate now, having sat in the board meetings and gotten to know the company better, is the data is so valuable. And all of what Nearmap does, again, I come back to the fact that we're capturing our own proprietary data. It is an incredibly valuable and scarce data asset, and we sit on all of it and we refresh it constantly. So we're constantly providing and creating new data for all of our customers. So the-

A.J. ROHDE (25:46):

The data goes stale every day.

PETER HERNANDEZ (25:47):

Exactly. Because you're thinking about your home, like if the moment somebody adds an annex onto their house-

A.J. ROHDE (25:52):

Totally.

PETER HERNANDEZ (25:53):

... it's now that-

A.J. ROHDE (25:53):

Or another weather event or whatever.

PETER HERNANDEZ (25:55):

Exactly. So the fact that at the bottom, if you just think about the base layer that we're constantly refreshing, we're capturing that and then we're serving that up into our embedded software workflows, we're overlaying our own AI on top of that, and then we're serving it to customers.

(26:09):

I think what we've had a tremendous amount of success with is when you walk a carrier customer through that, when you walk a government customer through that, commercial customer, everyone appreciates, wow, fundamentally I can't get this data anywhere else. Or to your point, even if I do, it's now stale the next day. So that in a world where things are moving fast and things are always changing, having the ability to sit on [inaudible 00:26:31].

A.J. ROHDE (26:32):

These are also, Thoma Bravo has made our whole career selling into customers where Five9's accuracy of our systems is paramount. If systems break, if they go down, if they're not accurate, which is a big problem in today's AI and agentic world still, maybe not forever, but still, you can't have those fail rates. And so those mission-critical markets, I think these types of systems are important for.

PETER HERNANDEZ (26:56):

Totally. And it's like, I think about the problem that they're solving for the end customers is valuable, and it can be revenue generating, it can be cost saving. Think about an insurance carrier, right? 20 years ago, you'd actually have to send somebody to a home, put a ladder on the side of the home, climb up on top of the roof, bring out a tape measure, measure it.

(27:16):

Now you do all that with Nearmap. The amount of time and savings and the ROI that we're giving back to our customers, and we hear this from people and we heard it in diligence, is incredibly valuable. So I think it's an incredibly fun place to be in, to be invested in. And we're just at the, I feel like at the bottom of the first inning in terms of where we can go from here in terms of the additional solutions we layer onto it and what else we can build, especially with this kind of thing.

A.J. ROHDE (27:37):

I agree. Look, it's so fun being here with you, man. I feel like we're just doing this on my couch in my office or on the whiteboard in Miami. And these conversations just have always felt natural and always enjoyable. And this is our biggest investment in the funds that we run together with Hudson, Georgia, and Matt. And I think there's a reason for that. It's because this sits at the intersection of great people, domain specificity, great growth, and obviously a really nice financial profile.

(28:04):

And so to talk about all this in hindsight is pretty easy. And to talk about the future here, this is a special one in the sense that I think you and I and Andy can continue to build a really, really interesting company together. So honestly, I could talk about this for 10 hours a day in a complicated world. So I appreciate you coming in, being with us, being with me and talking about it and reminiscing a bit. And I can't wait to get Andy in here.

PETER HERNANDEZ (28:30):

Yeah, let's get-

A.J. ROHDE (28:31):

Let's bring in Andy.

PETER HERNANDEZ (28:31):

I think he's outside.

A.J. ROHDE (28:32):

Cool.

PETER HERNANDEZ (28:33):

Let's get him in here.

A.J. ROHDE (28:33):

Sounds good.

(28:37):

As promised, the man, the myth, Andy Watt here in the flesh, all the way from Down Under, making his usual 16-hour trip like I would drive 30 minutes to pick up my kids at tennis practice with ease, coming to see us. So thank you for making the trip all the way out.

ANDY WATT (28:54):

It's a pleasure.

A.J. ROHDE (28:56):

It's great seeing you, buddy. We just had our board meeting, so it was an opportunity to have you guys all here today and do this with Peter here, of course. Andy, tell us about you, your background, how you got from Scotland into Oz, how you found your way to Nearmap, and what the Nearmap journey has been like so far.

ANDY WATT (29:16):

Yeah. So as you like to call it, the accent gives me away. I'm not from Australia originally, but I'm from Scotland back in the day, but moved from Scotland to London. Scotland's a great place to grow up, but there's not much in Scotland, funnily enough. It's quite a quiet place. So you have to go looking for things. And that's kind of a thing that I learned at a young age. You've got to go looking for excitement, for things to do. And so there's a natural progression for me to go from Scotland-

A.J. ROHDE (29:40):

Career.

ANDY WATT (29:40):

Yeah, career, exactly that, then to London. And then really cut my teeth from a career perspective and from a personal perspective in London, got married there. But from a career perspective, found a disruptive technology called [inaudible 00:29:51] and they were doing really cool things with their technology, disrupting a very traditional marketplace, and loved it. And that was my indoctrination and my engagement was-

A.J. ROHDE (30:01):

And what function were you in when you started?

ANDY WATT (30:03):

So I started in the finance function. And so I was a CPA and moved into finance function. [inaudible 00:30:10] was going through huge growth. I went through IPO and I was a heavy part of that process. So that really got me excited about disruptive technology, fast-paced business, SaaS models, all the things that are cool. And then through that, got an opportunity to move to Australia, which was never on the life plan.

A.J. ROHDE (30:25):

How did that happen?

ANDY WATT (30:25):

That happened, a phone call, a random phone call. I took it at work. One of those ones, you pick it up and you laugh about it. Went home, told my wife, and said, "Hey, guess what? [inaudible 00:30:33] I got a phone call saying, do you want to come to-"

A.J. ROHDE (30:35):

It's only an 18 hour flight.

ANDY WATT (30:37):

Become a CFO in Australia. I'd never been to Australia. And three months later, I was on a plane with two young kids, my wife, and packing up house and home. And said we'll be there for two years, but fell in love with Australia. Great place, great people, great lifestyle. And great working. Australia's a great place where people test things and try things out. So again, from that technology perspective, was able to have a look around and see what was in market. And Nearmap was at a very early stage back then, but I could see they were doing-

A.J. ROHDE (31:04):

So that was the call you got.

ANDY WATT (31:06):

It wasn't that, but I assessed the landscape and Nearmap popped up, and made that decision to jump in. Nearmap was, what was it back then? It was 40 million of ARR. My first-

A.J. ROHDE (31:19):

What year was that?

ANDY WATT (31:20):

That was 2016. So we're talking about 10 years ago now. And one of my first things I had to do was work on a plan is should we exit the US market? We just started in there a couple of years before. We were testing a few things. It wasn't really worth landing. So really kind of got in deep with the business. And from then on, look, I can talk about the-

A.J. ROHDE (31:37):

Thank God you didn't.

ANDY WATT (31:38):

That was a wise move, let me tell you.

A.J. ROHDE (31:41):

Starting that, it's hard, though.

ANDY WATT (31:43):

It's hell of hard. It's hell of hard. And look, the US is the graveyard for so many Australian companies. They either go ahead of time when they're not ready or they think they can repeat the Australian business model in the US market. And guess what? Neither works. And you've got to really find the sweet spot of when you go and how you go.

(31:59):

And we made mistakes. We tried to copy a business model that worked in Australia in the US, but there were incumbents here. There was a more mature demand profile. And we had to really tailor our approach to the market that was in the US. And so thank God we did. We learned our lessons very quickly. And then from then on, we've really used the springboard for success. So it's been a hell of a ride since, but I loved every moment of it.

A.J. ROHDE (32:20):

So you started in finance.

ANDY WATT (32:21):

Started in finance, that's right. Took the CFO gig at Nearmap. We were listed at the time, but really it was kind of that company where you just get your hands dirty, you really [inaudible 00:32:31] your hands up. And so very quickly got into the operations of the business, dive deep into what's working, what's not working, how's it all working, how's it all coming together.

(32:38):

So took on flight operations, took on the business operations side of the overall business, as well as finance and investor relations. You just learn the business. You just learn the business really well. And from then I actually moved on to a more COO, actually chief growth officer role as well. So took on sales. So I had that business understanding. I then took on that customer demand aspect of it all. I already had the investment side of things. So I had that broad sense of how the business worked and the stakeholder ecosystem and how it all played together. And then was fortunate enough two years ago when you guys came along to step into the CEO role. So I loved that journey.

A.J. ROHDE (33:16):

That's where this guy comes in.

PETER HERNANDEZ (33:17):

Yeah, totally. Well, we spent so much time getting to know you, getting to know Seth. And you were at a spot where you were such a linchpin for the growth and all of everything that was happening in America. And we recognized that. And we saw that that was ... While Australia was super important and still is, we recognize America was very much the direction of travel and we needed to invest a lot in the US go-to-market, and you just had so much experience in that.

ANDY WATT (33:42):

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah, we put a heavy focus on the US market. As I said, the Aussie business was spinning out cash, but wasn't growing rapidly. It's still growing, but we knew that the US was the heartland. We needed to crack the US. And so we put a lot of focus on the US.

(33:56):

And there's a point, just as you guys were coming along, where we had that inflection. The US business overtook the Australian business in terms of size. And so of course every dollar I was spending goes into the US business. But changing our business from being SMB to enterprise, you need a different sales cycle. We were going from being broad across multiple verticals and use cases to really narrowing in on a few use cases. And so when you came across us, and we could talk about that moment, but then when you guys found us, we were at that point of trying to work out exactly how to double down and supercharge that growth engine. And the timing was beautiful. I would suggest-

A.J. ROHDE (34:29):

But as usual, you hired the right people and you still do today. You hired Tony, you hired Weigel, you had good people, just like the people in Australia, close to the business, super thoughtful. So having the right people when you're going into a frontier market or any market is so important.

ANDY WATT (34:42):

100%. We have a very strong, stable base out of the Australian market. Still our technology hub. Our CTO Tom Celinski's been with us pretty much since I joined. Same with Seth Efron, our CFO now. He's grown through the ranks as well. But to your point, we had very strong leaders on the ground here and having that local expertise was really important. We tried to run the US from Australia previously. That was one of the first mistakes, as you can probably tell. But then really learning from that and getting the right people. And as the business evolves, you need different capabilities as well. So making sure you're constantly evolving who those people are as well.

A.J. ROHDE (35:13):

I agree. You want to ask him about us?

ANDY WATT (35:17):

Here we go.

PETER HERNANDEZ (35:18):

So let's put you on the hot seat here. No, I'm always so curious. It's always so interesting for A.J. and I. What were your initial perspectives of us when we first reached out, when we started doing diligence? And then maybe talk a little bit too about how that's evolved over our time together.

ANDY WATT (35:31):

Yeah, absolutely. Are you sure you want this?

PETER HERNANDEZ (35:35):

Yeah.

ANDY WATT (35:35):

Okay. You asked for it. No, look, it's three, four years ago when we first connected, we at Nearmap were at a point of inflection. Like I said, we were trying to supercharge our growth, but there's certain aspects that meant we were slowing down. We just couldn't quite deliver on what we're delivering on. And we recognized that we needed much more of a US presence, both from a customer perspective, but from an investment perspective as well. And it was just hard being in Australia, building a global company, but not having enough of the boots on the ground over here from that angle.

(36:03):

So when you guys knocked on our door, it was one of those beautiful moments where we were open to doing something pretty dynamic and disruptive. You guys came in with a very clear sense of what you were wanting to do. And the great thing about how you engaged with us was you listened. You listened to who we were, what our vision, our mission was. You were really locked in on that, and then you took that, and then you worked with us on what that plan might look like. And that was incredibly important.

A.J. ROHDE (36:29):

Do we still listen?

ANDY WATT (36:30):

Yeah, mostly. Sometimes, but now ... Give you the benefit of the doubt. No, you do. And that's the beautiful part here, is this is a partnership. There's a lot of financial and emotional investment in Nearmap. We're a very proud Australian company. We've grown a lot. We're expanding a lot into the US.

(36:46):

And so the next chapter of our growth, we needed to make sure we're working with the right people to take us on that journey. And we needed help. We knew that as well. So finding that group could help. So when you guys came in, Peter, you were the first knock on the door.

PETER HERNANDEZ (36:59):

Oh boy.

ANDY WATT (36:59):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. But super impressed. Who is this young guy coming in, telling us that he can change our destiny and drive us-

A.J. ROHDE (37:07):

Full of fire.

ANDY WATT (37:08):

He was full of fire.

A.J. ROHDE (37:08):

Still is.

ANDY WATT (37:09):

But backed it up, backed it up with, but with an approach and a style and a humility of, as I say, listening and understanding, and then way more than that, supercharging everything that we're talking about. So really buying into the Nearmap story and showing us and helping us to define the path that would define success. So that was the early stage. So it was that commitment, that clarity, that cooperation that really got us excited. Hopefully that got you guys excited as well.

(37:34):

And then from then, look, it's been a phenomenal journey. I think the trust that we have is great. I think the fact that you guys still listen, which it's not just do it our way, here's the playbook. There are certain things you give us really strong advice on, which is hugely beneficial to us. But you let us get on with it. You give us guidance, you tell us where we're maybe doing things right or not doing things so right, and then you give us course correction advice, but it's the Nearmap business. It's for myself and the executive team to run, and you trust us and we trust you, and that relationship, those relationships are great. And just so happens, we have a bit of fun over here as well.

A.J. ROHDE (38:06):

We have a ton of fun, man. This is our biggest investment, as you know. And we doubled down to make it our biggest investment. Doing that required a lot of trust in you guys mutually as well, but also the belief that this is a company that we can build over 20 years, literally. And so where are you in your thinking of that ambition? Where are we as a company today? And how do you think this unfolds over the next five, let's say?

ANDY WATT (38:32):

Yeah, Nearmap's celebrating its 20th anniversary next year. We're three years into this journey. Truth, we're only just getting started. And that's the beauty of it. That's the beauty of this, is that the opportunity just continues to unfold in our favor. We've got a great product. We've got great customers. We continue to invest in our business across all those key areas, and the market demand is shifting, right? The use cases we solve for continue to evolve and grow.

(39:00):

And we're not just providing a supply solution. We're not just giving customers something. We're actually shaping demand. I think that's incredibly powerful. The use cases, the customers want a single source of certainty and truth, and we can deliver that. So the exciting thing is genuinely that we've got a huge runway of opportunity ahead of us. Sure, we've got to make the right decisions and folks in the right areas, but I truly believe that we've got, as you say, this is a decade long investment or longer, if you want, because of this huge upside that we can still deliver.

PETER HERNANDEZ (39:28):

Yeah. I was going to ask, actually, when you think about the journey from 40 to over 300 million at top line now, maybe what stuck out to you the most in that? And then to A.J.'s point, as you think about that next, going from 300 to the lofty aspirations that we have, how do you see AI folding into ... Two parts there, but I'd love to get your thoughts on that.

ANDY WATT (39:50):

Yeah, no, great questions. The evolution of Nearmap is we were an aerial imagery company. So our cameras, other people's planes capturing urban areas multiple times a year. That's the heartland of Nearmap. We still do that, by the way. That's still a key part of our solution, but that geospatial data set that we create through aerial imagery, through 3D models, through elevation data, we now put an analytical layer on top of that. So we provide intelligence to our customers. We're able to find building condition, predictive risk scores on top of that as well. You add to that buildings' materials data. So we're able to price, prepare our risk scenarios for our customers as well.

(40:27):

And so when you take all of that, and AI is a huge component of that. We invested in our own organic AI platform eight years ago. I think we started that investment. And of course, part of our acquisition strategy has been to double down on that through acquisition of Betterview as well. That's been the force model player. That's the game changer in our business. We don't just offer that horizontal play, as I say. We're offering this vertical stack, this vertical solution that feeds into insurance, underwriting, and claims workflows. It serves construction and engineering and government use cases as well. And we're only doing this in Australia and the US and Canada and New Zealand.

A.J. ROHDE (41:03):

Really? No Europe yet today?

ANDY WATT (41:04):

No Europe, no Asia. So the opportunity is really, we can go deeper into the verticals that we serve. Insurance being obviously the driver there, but we can do this across other verticals, across other geographies. We can continue that technology innovation and evolution of our own business. And as I say, I think the market's evolving in our favor. Customers want a single source thing. They want to cobble together solutions, they want certainty, and we can bring that to them.

A.J. ROHDE (41:29):

In a world where customers are using their own language models or renting someone else's, their own agentic tools, we create information for them. Working with those tools, talk a little bit about what that's like and how you see that value proposition evolving as those tools become more pervasive. And where do we sit in that landscape?

ANDY WATT (41:52):

Yeah. It's such a topical question, such a topical issue. If you think about it, I say we don't just supply customers. We could just simply say, "What do you want, customer?" And we can give that to them. I say we're trying to work with our customers to help them understand their business better and provide them with solutions.

(42:07):

And you say that agentic AI tool that we can and will begin to offer. Think about an underwriter. At the moment they have a book literally of their policy rules and documents. And then underwriters have to go through, understand every single item within that, and then every time they're assessing a property, make sure they understand how that-

A.J. ROHDE (42:24):

The workbench. The workbench, right?

ANDY WATT (42:27):

And it's a very manual, human-led operation and they make mistakes as part of that. Well, you think about what we can do. Because we understand the property characteristics of pretty much everything that's on the ground, we can provide them with the attributes and the conditions and the property attributes, we can take that policy document, underwriter manual, put that through our system, map the two together, and then you've got a virtual underwriter. You've automated a process that for decades has been incredibly manual.

(42:56):

So look, there's things you got to think about with compliance and risk, and we understand all of that. So working very closely with those companies and how we manage that, but that's the evolution of the business. And we're not just helping those insurance companies solve their policyholders' problems and giving them better underwriting solutions. We're actually solving the insurance carriers' workflow solutions as well and optimizing their business model. So they get a double win in that space.

(43:22):

So that's where we're changing demand. That's where we're getting the inbound. That helps us then define where we invest our dollars in terms of future growth. So it's so exciting, right?

PETER HERNANDEZ (43:30):

No, it's incredibly exciting. And one of the things that always stuck out to us when we were evaluating the company was the amount of talent that you had in AI, in data science in Australia, in Sydney, really way ahead of your time. I would love for you to talk a little bit about maybe the folks in Tom's organization, the data scientists. We have some really, really high horsepower individuals that work down there and have just so much good domain expertise. Talk about the build out of that and just the intellectual acumen some of those folks have.

ANDY WATT (43:58):

Yeah. And giving credit to Tom Celinski, our CTO, back in the day, he saw this. He saw AI as this opportunity, and we hired Dr. Mike Bewley. You're going to learn there are more PhDs at Nearmap than there are-

A.J. ROHDE (44:10):

That's true.

PETER HERNANDEZ (44:10):

Certainly [inaudible 00:44:12].

A.J. ROHDE (44:10):

Certainly at Thoma Bravo in general.

ANDY WATT (44:15):

It's a very intellectual company, apart from the CEO unfortunately. But yeah, look, we've been invested heavily in that AI capability for many years now. And I think we got ahead of the curve and that's served us a huge benefit. So we built this organic model ourselves where we were able to provide customers. We were really the vanguard of that kind of AI evolution on top of our imagery, and that's a really important point. The data is ours. We don't give that away. You can license our content obviously, but the data is ours.

(44:42):

So every time we capture an area, we run our AI models on top of the imagery, and that just gives us such a rich dataset. So we've continued to invest in that area heavily. As I say, that's the inflection point of our business really, accelerating growth, was when we got that AI use case into insurance and saw that land.

(45:02):

And that gave us the confidence to continue to invest both in terms of that AI team based out of Sydney, but also we were partnering with some cool companies that were doing cool things with our data. Betterview was one of those companies. And Dave Tobias and David Lyman were early users of Nearmap and they were building their own AI engines into insurance-

A.J. ROHDE (45:24):

Kind of living on top of our imagery.

ANDY WATT (45:25):

Living on top of our imagery. And we liked what they were doing. And there was an inevitable point that we were either going to fall out of love or get closer together. For a short period, we did fall out of love, but we recognized that they were doing great things. So that acquisition that Thoma Bravo obviously enabled as well allowed us to then supercharge even further our AI capabilities and we've continued ever since.

A.J. ROHDE (45:45):

One thing that's always impressed me, and we would not buy a company if this weren't a true statement, you as a public company had consistency of hitting your numbers. Now the market sometimes will tend to evaluate, they'll get overly rational and sometimes they get overly bearish and that's the market. But I would say the consistency, you are a small listed company, to get a following, you have to be consistent performing.

(46:14):

And when a private equity firm comes and we have these big goals and big ambitions and we put over a billion dollars into the ... I mean, those things matter a lot. And what I've been so impressed by, we've been together now for almost 16 quarters, something like that, the consistency at which you forecast, guide, beat, raise, manage expectations, thoughtfully build buffer into your business, both in the revenue side and the cost side, as an operator, as a financially literate operator, I have a lot of respect and admiration for the way you guys do it. So maybe just talk a little bit about how operationally you set up your culture, how you guys think about the discipline and some of that.

ANDY WATT (46:56):

Well, the CFO back in 2016 was a wise guy. He really set the foundations.

A.J. ROHDE (47:00):

A wise guy or a wise guy?

ANDY WATT (47:00):

Both.

A.J. ROHDE (47:03):

Yeah, exactly.

ANDY WATT (47:05):

But no, in all seriousness, look, as you say, when you're in the public glare, you have to have that discipline. You can't afford to miss. You get one quarter and you're gone. So we had to be really, really focused on, again, understanding the engines of our business and what really we could bank on, what we couldn't bank on. And again, you can't just think about the quarter ahead, you've got to be thinking longer term as well.

(47:25):

So we had that discipline inbuilt from an early part of our evolution, if you will. As we've got bigger, obviously it becomes harder. The law of big numbers makes that a more challenging part for us. And because we've got more than one product line now, it's not just that aerial imagery, it's the AI components, it's serving to multiple verticals. It's all these things-

A.J. ROHDE (47:44):

Sold through different modalities.

ANDY WATT (47:45):

Sold through different modalities. So the challenge with that is there's more, but I guess the beauty of that is we now understand what each of those engines are. So as long as you understand the component parts to those engines, what makes them tick. And each engine has a different set of requirements. So we call it the run rate business, which is that kind of demand gen where we make sure our marketing leads, our SDR leads, our sales leads are at a certain level, gives us that pipeline coverage and we can prospect and generate all the activities through the process and that generates a fairly predictable number.

(48:15):

But now we're more of an enterprise sales engine as well. So that's a different motion. You've got a different muscle you've got to flex there. So you've got to have different tools and skills to manage that as well. So it's really being able to decompartmentalize that business model and understand what makes it tick and then of course put all that together.

A.J. ROHDE (48:31):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ANDY WATT (48:31):

So I'm glad to say that Seth has taken that on and done-

A.J. ROHDE (48:34):

You guys are such good [inaudible 00:48:34].

ANDY WATT (48:35):

And that group that he runs through our revenue operations team. But in conjunct with Ray Savona, who's come in the last 18 months and really given us a new discipline and a new focus that we needed from a sales perspective to really focus on the ... Having those hard [inaudible 00:48:52] conversations on a weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. You don't want to [inaudible 00:48:55]. If not, why not? What are we going to do differently the next time around? And that's a game changer for us as well.

PETER HERNANDEZ (49:00):

One thing that I'd love to get your perspective on, Andy, when you think about the future and everything that's ahead of us, again, we've got to go back to going from 40 million of ARR, a decade later we're over 300 million. It feels like there's so much opportunity in our customer base with the different products that we have. What gets you most personally excited? Is it ... We talk a lot about AI. Is it the people?

ANDY WATT (49:18):

I think there's so many things that we talked about at the board meetings there. The board meeting we had today, and I look back 12 months ago, our world has shifted so much for the better. The acquisition of itel, we've got this huge new opportunity that we're still at the early stages of really ramping and getting moving as well. The market has continued to evolve in crazy ways, and AI is everywhere. And so it's both an existential threat and an existential opportunity.

(49:41):

We see it as an opportunity. We see because of our model, that data stack, that data ownership that we have and the stack that we've built on top of it, I just think that is going to take us into places that we probably haven't even thought about all the way through truthfully. As long as we're focused on discipline, I think that we're, again, just at the cusp of something incredibly exciting.

(50:00):

At a time when the market is moving at a rapid rate, if you don't keep up, you're going to become irrelevant very quickly. And we're not just relevant, but we're just going to become increasingly more so as well.

A.J. ROHDE (50:11):

Yeah, I agree. So a final question. If you could tell the world one thing about our company, customers, future investors, what would it be and how would you tell people about our place in the world and your vision for the company?

ANDY WATT (50:29):

Just an easy question to end with. So thanks, A.J.

A.J. ROHDE (50:33):

Not a softball.

ANDY WATT (50:35):

And that's a great question. And look, our ambition is to be the source of truth that shapes our livable world. We want to make a real difference to our customers. We're not just here to transact. We're actually here to partner and we're here to grow. And we are an enabling force as the world changes. The world is changing at such a rapid rate, whether it be socially, demographically, technologically. And to keep pace with that change is hard. It's hard as consumers, it's hard as companies, for companies as well.

(51:02):

But we offer a solution to that as well. We're part of that evolution and we shape how our partners, our customers are shaping the world for good, for better, right? We're helping the insureds get better coverage for their properties at a time when there's climate change all over the place, and it's sometimes hard to be underwritten. We're helping the carriers to provide their customers with better outcomes and services and help solve their problems that they have with their workflows we've talked about earlier. We're helping with urban planning and making sure that green spaces are an area of focus for town planning and where they can and shouldn't think about putting forests and parks and so on.

(51:39):

So we actually make a real difference to the world. And that's something that's really important. So really important to Nearmappers. It's something that we are all passionate about because we're not just doing this because it's a transaction and [inaudible 00:51:51] forget. We're in it because we're actually doing the right thing. And it's something that we've built a business on. It's a cultural part of what we've been doing as an organization. And it's something that we feel really strongly about driving forward into the future as well.

(52:02):

So we're excited. It's an exciting place to be at Nearmap, where we're always testing the boundaries of what we can and can't do. It's innovative, it's disruptive, but always, as I said, with that end goal of really shaping the lived world for the better.

A.J. ROHDE (52:18):

It's visual too. I mean, I get to look at your product every day and I get to look at stadiums and infrastructure projects and bridges and roads and homes. And that is for us, who usually buy companies who sit behind the scenes of a network infrastructure, to be able to see the tangibility of the information that we create and produce and then what people can do with that has always been pretty cool for me.

ANDY WATT (52:40):

It's cool. No, it really is cool.

A.J. ROHDE (52:41):

Yeah. Andy, such a pleasure having you here, man. It's been so great. I can't wait till next week, so we're going to do Beyond the Deal, and that's when things get really spicy. So thanks for coming in.

ANDY WATT (52:51):

Welcome.

A.J. ROHDE (52:53):

Okay. And tune in next week for another bonus episode of Beyond the Deal. There, we'll go deeper with Andy Watt, CEO, learning more about his background, his approach to leadership, and how he found his way out of Scotland and into Sydney, Australia.

ORLANDO BRAVO (53:08):

Listen to Thoma Bravo's Behind the Deal Season 4 on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.