Venturis - Business Location Intelligence

Venturis helps founders and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) decide where to open, move or expand by comparing areas, existing branches, competitors, population, transport and local activity

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Inspiration

Large retailers have analysts, property teams and expensive market data to decide where to open. Independent founders and smaller businesses are often expected to make the same decision with far fewer resources.

What it does

Venturis is a London-first location intelligence platform for founders and small and medium-sized enterprises.

A user can select the type of business they are planning, choose the part of London they want to explore and answer a few questions about their intended customers and trading pattern. Venturis then compares locations using nearby competition, population, transport access and local commercial activity.

The platform divides London into consistent H3 hexagonal cells and evaluates each cell using the Venturis Opportunity Index (VOI), which is calculated through a structured scoring algorithm.

VOI combines four main signals:

competition and market saturation; local population and potential demand; transport access and mobility; local commercial and street activity.

Competition is treated inversely, so an area with fewer relevant competitors may score more strongly, while population, transport and activity contribute positively. The weighting can also change depending on the type of business being assessed, allowing the underlying algorithm to adapt to different use cases.

The result is not intended to predict success or provide a guaranteed answer. VOI is a transparent comparison tool that helps users understand why one area may be more suitable than another and where further investigation is still required.

Users can:

  • explore ranked areas across London;
  • inspect the evidence behind each VOI score;
  • view nearby competitors;
  • evaluate a specific postcode or address;
  • save and compare possible locations;
  • build a shortlist for further investigation;
  • produce a structured location brief;
  • review existing branches within a shared workspace (for teams or organisations).

How we built it

Venturis uses a Python and FastAPI backend with a JavaScript, HTML and CSS frontend. MapLibre and deck.gl power the interactive map, while H3 provides a consistent geographic framework for comparing locations.

The platform combines several types of business, population, transport and local activity data. The backend cleans and standardises this information, removes likely duplicates, assigns records to geographic areas and prepares the signals used by the Venturis Opportunity Index.

These sources were not originally designed to work together, so the backend standardises, deduplicates and assigns the information to geographic cells before the VOI calculation is applied. The results are then presented through the map, ranked location lists, area details and site-evaluation tools.

Challenges we ran into

The most difficult part has been combining public datasets that use different geographic boundaries, naming conventions, formats, update schedules and levels of detail.

Another challenge has been deciding how to create a useful score without presenting false precision. A high VOI score does not mean that a business is guaranteed to succeed. Rent, property condition, local knowledge, costs, planning restrictions and the quality of the business itself still matter.

I therefore wanted Venturis to show the reasoning, source coverage and limitations behind its recommendations rather than displaying a number without context.

There has also been a design challenge. Location analysis can quickly become technical, so I have had to translate spatial data and scoring logic into language that a founder or business owner can understand without requiring GIS or data-analysis experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The most difficult part has been combining public datasets that use different geographic boundaries, naming conventions, formats, update schedules and levels of detail.

Another challenge has been deciding how to create a useful score without presenting false precision. A high VOI score does not mean that a business is guaranteed to succeed. Rent, property condition, local knowledge, costs, planning restrictions and the quality of the business itself still matter.

I therefore wanted Venturis to show the reasoning, source coverage and limitations behind its recommendations rather than displaying a number without context.

There has also been a design challenge. Location analysis can quickly become technical, so I have had to translate spatial data and scoring logic into language that a founder or business owner can understand without requiring GIS or data-analysis experience.

What we learned

Building Venturis has shown me that the value is not simply in collecting more data or creating a more complicated algorithm.

The difficult part is deciding which information matters, making the calculation understandable and presenting the result in a way that helps someone take a practical next step.

I have also learned that first-time founders and established businesses have different needs. A founder may need help deciding where to begin looking, while an established company may want to compare branches, identify gaps in its current network and explain an expansion decision to colleagues or investors.

What's next for Venturis

My Build Week goal is to complete a focused expansion workflow for established businesses while keeping the individual founder journey intact.

The longer-term aim is for Venturis to become a practical location decision workspace where a business can understand its current estate, test future locations and keep the evidence behind those decisions in one place. Over time, I also want to introduce factors such as commercial rent, business rates, property availability, planning restrictions and estimated occupancy costs, alongside alerts for competitor openings, changes in transport, population, footfall and other local conditions that could affect a location’s potential. This would allow users to stay informed without constantly repeating the same research. In the much longer term, once London is reasonably well covered, I would gradually expand Venturis into other cities and regions, one carefully analysed area at a time.

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