GoodMaps
Based: Louisville
Year founded: 2018
Capital raised to date: $7.5 million
Key investors: American Printing House for the Blind, National Federation of the Blind, FutureLabs Capital, Strike Capital, Brook Smith, Keyhorse Capital.
Founder: American Printing House for the Blind
Top executives: Jose Gaztambide, CEO, Theresa Reno-Weber, chief operating officer, Charlie Meredith, chief technology officer and Neil Barnfather, chief commercial officer. Gaztambide answers below.
Gaztambide’s hometown: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Lives: Louisville
Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics, Babson College; MBA, Cornell University
Hobbies: Baseball
Why scale your company from Kentucky?
Part of it is our relationship with the American Printing House for the Blind. Part of it is that we’re finding great talent on both the engineering side and the geospatial side. Ultimately, Louisville is home and we’re grateful for all of the support.
What’s driving your growth?
We’re seeing particular traction in the transportation space and the retail industry, both across North America and Europe. What’s driving that is pent-up demand from customers who are trying to make their space easier to get around and more inclusive for all audiences.
How do you balance existing operations with the need to scale?
It is always a delicate balance. For GoodMaps, we tend to go as hard as we can for as long as we can and then take a brief hiatus to reflect, iterate the process and make improvements.
Do you expect to hire in 2024? If so, how many?
Yes. We’ll be growing our engineering team and our mapping department.
What’s been critical to your company’s success?
I’d point to a few things: (1) We had a great group of investors and supporters who aligned with our vision for the company. (2) We attracted great talent, particularly at the C-suite, and (3) timing! We happened to start the business at a time where LiDAR, computer vision, and AI were ready for scale and relatively universal adoption. I don’t think we could have done what we’re doing even three or four years earlier.
