January has been a blur for Evelyn Tichenor, but she does not seem to mind at all.
Within a period of a few weeks she went from Louisville — the home base of her employer, GoodMaps — to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to Portland, Oregon, for a product launch at the airport there to Louisville for a few days to ... England for a multi-month stay.
“I’m running on fumes — or excitement. I’m not really sure,” Tichenor told me a few days after arriving in Milton Keynes, a city 55 miles northwest of the heart of London.
It was Tichenor who gave the presentation that took home first place on Jan. 6 in the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) Foundation’s annual CES pitch competition. Tichenor — who was promoted to vice president of sales and partnerships at GoodMaps in November — gave a three-minute talk that touched on an overview of the company and what it has been working on (more on that later).
Every year, the CTA chooses a theme for the competition. The 2023 theme happened to be “better for it,” which focused on improving the lives of the disabled and the elderly. GoodMaps was one of nine companies that were chosen by the CTA to present.
Founded in 2019 by American Printing House for the Blind (APH) under the name Access Explorer, GoodMaps uses technology in which mobile scanners capture LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) point clouds and images, which then convert into digital maps of interiors of buildings.
Tichenor said taking home first place provided validation for the company's LiDAR mapping technology.
“The fact that the judges chose us proves to me that these points that we've been driving home, are real and valid points and the technology that we're pushing towards — having an infrastructure-free solution, and minimal maintenance — is valid, and that it is what the market is looking for,” Tichenor said.
In 2022, GoodMaps was awarded an Innovation Award at CES for its Explore accessible navigation application.
“Having a navigation app that helps anyone go into a building is what people want, they don’t want something that’s very niche,” she said. “They want it to be able to help the 99% of the consumer base, while also helping that one person who needs that more extensive experience.”
Tichenor said at last year’s CES she made it a goal to scan the convention space area to allow attendees to do an on-site, live demonstration. Using a scanner, she and her team were able to produce a digital map from the headquarters in Louisville in about six hours — a process that would have taken a week. The path extended from the main entrance of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall to their booth.
“We’ve drastically improved our efficiency,” she said.
Up next: Europe
Tichenor is scheduled to be in England until the end of April as she is working closely with Neil Barnfather, who was recently named to the role of chief commercial officer at the same time that Theresa Reno-Weber was named as the company’s chief operating officer.
Tichenor, Barnfather and their UK-based mapping team are working on one of the company’s main focal points on its roadmap for 2023: building infrastructure in Europe, namely its railway systems.
They are in the process of forming partnerships with some of UK’s 27 train operating companies — so they can in turn, scan all of the corresponding rail stations. There are also plans to start similar operations in France, Belgium and Germany, Tichenor said.
GoodMaps was named as one of KY Inno's Startups to Watch in 2022. Currently, the company has 30 employees, but CEO Jose Gaztambide told me in December that the company plans to double its headcount in the next 12 to 18 months. It also recently moved its offices to 1741 Frankfort Ave., down the road from its former space at APH at 1839 Frankfort Ave.
Coincidentally, Gaztambide will highlight his company’s origin story as the featured speaker at the upcoming edition of Venture Connectors on Wednesday, Feb. 1, at Story in NuLu.
