Thomas Walle

Founder & CEO, Unacast · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

12statements → 5claims → 2claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.83/5average debate potential →

1 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Thomas argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Walle notes 9,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2019, a record high

“9000 stores have been closed in the U.S. As of today, it's the highest number ever”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 9:54 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted

Walle: Unacast location data is used during California wildfires to track evacuations

“Our data is being used to understand are people like trapped inside certain places because we can deliver data pretty real in real time, but also when people evacuate.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 13:52 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1

none yet certainty 2

none yet certainty 3

100% certainty 4

0% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

274 words/min while actually speaking · 28 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Thomas Walle: only 1 usable question→answer exchange on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,717 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said12 Episodes1

Everything Thomas Walle said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure

Walle: Unacast rejects location data requests for political campaigns

“And we have, ah, we have kind of a lot of cases that we don't do. For instance, political campaigns.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 9:10 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Walle: Location data is not mature enough to predict corporate quarterly earnings

“So to put it this way, we, I don't think we are ready yet or anyone are ready yet to sell to hedge, hedge funds that want to use this data to predict quarterly earnings for stock listed companies. But if you want to understand retail analytics and real estate,…”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 24:01 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Opinion

Walle: Real estate investors spend very little time analyzing property data

“Like real estate investors, they spend very little time, ah, really digging into, should I invest in this property or that property?”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 11:20 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Walle: Unacast's anonymized dataset covers roughly 10% of the US population

“So we spent like four years in building up a data set to, yeah, roughly 10% of the U.S. Population, so it's an anonymized data set, and that's the basis of all the insights that we can build.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 20:09 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Walle: Mobile location data is highly inaccurate compared to CRM data

“So it's a very inaccurate location data, data set in comparison to other data sets that, that we are used with like online data, CRM data, transaction data, which actually tells a very, very precise story.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 4:47 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Walle: Unacast entered Europe during GDPR rollout while others fled

“We went into Europe when everybody fled Europe because we wanted to be GDPR compliant, and we have figured out a way to maneuver that space.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 8:25 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Walle: No current location tech can accurately scale vertical floor tracking

“We can't. No, it's, there's no technology today that's sufficiently accurate and scalable to understand yeah, what floors you are in certain buildings.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 18:58 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Walle: Location data for 100,000 users costs $400 to $500

“I would say there's like the market for buying that kind of data today is for a 100,000 four or 500 dollars. Yeah. So you usually kind of acquire that, that data on a CPM level. So you kind of buy, you pay four or five dollars, sometimes two dollars, sometimes…”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 21:36 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Supported

Walle notes 9,000 U.S. retail stores closed in 2019, a record high

“9000 stores have been closed in the U.S. As of today, it's the highest number ever”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 9:54 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Contradicted

Walle: Unacast location data is used during California wildfires to track evacuations

“Our data is being used to understand are people like trapped inside certain places because we can deliver data pretty real in real time, but also when people evacuate.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 13:52 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Unacast has raised $30 million with engineering team in Oslo

“Roughly 40 people in Norway and Oslo, so our engineering and data scientist team is based out of Oslo, and we raised thirty million to date”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 1:12 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Disclosure

Thomas Walle was part of Tidal founding team before Jay-Z acquisition

“Prior to Unicast, I was a part of the founding team at Tidal, which you might be familiar with. It was acquired by Jay-Z, the rapper. So the company wasn't started in the U.S. It was started out of Norway, next to Spotify.”

Thomas Walle Nov 13, 2019 ▶ 2:00 The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
The Power of Location Data // Thomas Walle, Unacast (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)	Nov 13, 2019	18m

Thomas Walle

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Their most notable contradicted claim

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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