Portland startup UrbanForm just completed the Portland Incubator Experiment program and is now set to start a three-year startup partnership with mapping giant Esri.
This comes as the company launched in its third city, San Diego, where architects and developers can now tap into UrbanForm’s software to easily find zoning information. The software is now available for Portland, Seattle and San Diego.
“The fundamental challenges with zoning information and the solution we want to provide is the same (in all cities), a quick and easy answer to (the question), ‘what can I build here,’” said founder Quang Truong.
However, that easy sounding idea is incredibly complex. Zoning code is different in every city as is the technical sophistication of the data. Not everything is online, and if it is, the format varies. Part of the work of the last year, which saw the startup go from Portland to Seattle to San Diego was to see if it could generate a repeatable process to gather that information quickly and efficiently, said Troung.
The goal is to create a plug-and-play process to add cities, he said. The time to get a city up and running has been coming down with each launch.
“We’re close to that goal. I don’t think anyone else has anything close to it,” he added. It took two years to develop Portland, six months for Seattle and three months for San Diego, which launched earlier this month.
Truong and co-founder Anna Shakotko continue to bootstrap the company, which has paying customers in all three cities.
“Ideally we’ll use the revenue we are able to earn to fuel growth and maintain control of the company,” he said. “Given the growth of revenue in the last few months, it’s painting a promising picture. We are going in the direction where we don’t need outside funding.”
With UrbanForm, users can get site-specific information on zoning through a web application. It uses artificial intelligence and GIS technologies to tell users what can be built on given properties, with a summary and links to source documents and calculated results for elements like setbacks and building heights. Users can also search and filter sites based on building parameters.
The software automates a manual process that can take days or weeks to sort through.
As part of PIE, Truong has been working out of the Portland office of software maker Autodesk, which is a big player in the architecture, engineering and construction market. As he gears up to start a program with mapping tech company Esri, it means he will have meaningful connections at two of the industry’s biggest names, “which is exciting for us,” Truong said.
The Esri program is a three-year remote accelerator. The startup will have access to Esri’s software and mentors.
The team, which includes four zoning analysts and an offshore development crew, is now evaluating metrics to pick the next city. Truong hopes to start work on a new city by the end of this year.
