More than two years after Brown University students Maggie Bachenberg and Trisha Ballakur teamed up to create Pointz, a micro-mobility startup focused on mapping out lower-stress routing to bike and scooter riders, their app has attracted attention on Product Hunt as it broke through the top 10 last week.
Product Hunt showcases new products that have recently been launched with the most popular being featured in the day's newsletter. Last week, Pointz shot up to the No. 6 spot with its alpha version of the app, making the email's subject line "Waze for Bikes."
Pointz maps the safest route for users based on the type of bike or vehicle they are using, preferences for elevation and which stops, if any, the rider should know about along the way, Bachenberg said. The app also enables local riders to crowdsource suggestions to optimize the app’s mapping algorithm.
Like Waze, riders are able to flag hazards, rate road segments and mark points of interest. Pointz pre-rates roads from 1 to 5 on bike friendliness, based on sets of attributes from available datasets, and users can customize routes based on their tolerance for safety or hills.
Bachenberg first got the idea for Pointz during a cross-country bike trip, from Virginia to California. After repeatedly asking for help from local cyclists, she was inspired to find a way to use technology to share safer routes by leveraging existing datasets and crowdsourcing.
Investments funds raised
Bachenberg said although Pointz's mission has always been to provide lower-stress routing to bike and scooter riders by leveraging local knowledge, the app itself has changed a lot over two years. In 2021, the Pointz team was just getting ready to release its beta in Providence and becoming available on iOS devices, for example.
"We've been iterating on the app continuously," Bachenberg said. "One thing that is important to us is to constantly be taking into account feedback from our community members. To do this, we get on short Zoom calls with them, send them surveys, and have in-app questionnaires. We also look at our app's metrics and how changes affect those metrics."
Over the last year, Pointz has raised money from Rogue Venture Partners and Techstars, which came with a 3-month program.
"We plan to raise an institutional pre-seed round in 2023 to accelerate our product and user growth," Bachenbach said. "Next year will be all about nailing the product and growing our user base."
Currently, Pointz employs three full-time workers and one full-time contractor, Bachenberg said. Pointz is currently working on new features as well, including save and share routes, shortcuts and the ability to add bike parking, shops and repair stations.
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