During her cross-country bike trip from the East Coast to the West, Maggie Bachenberg found that she always ended up asking local riders, particularly in major cities, for the best cycling routes.
The experience showed her that despite the many GPS mapping apps available, none really prioritized the needs of the micro-mobility community. In fact, Bachenberg discovered through research that more than 70 percent of micromobility riders don’t trust Google’s routing.
Once she got to Providence to attend Brown University, Bachenberg noticed the problem even more. She teamed up with fellow Brown junior Trisha Ballakur to form a solution. The two co-founded Pointz, a mapping app designed to find the safest routes for bikes and scooters using road data and crowdsourced information.
“The basic idea is that we are looking for quieter side streets to help people get to their destination in a safer fashion, especially on micro-mobility vehicles,” Bachenberg told Rhode Island Inno.
Pointz will map 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 wants to know about along the way.
Pointz will also allow local riders to crowdsource suggestions to optimize the app’s mapping algorithm. Individual riders will be able to flag hazards, rate road segments and mark points of interest.
The Pointz team was thorough with their research. They collected feedback from 150 bicycle riders, 20 bike and pedestrian officials from different cities and 20 professionals who work in the micromobility space. They found that micromobility is a $30 billion industry in the U.S. with 110 million riders.
Bachenberg and Ballakur, who is a software engineer, decided to build a beta app. It features what Bachenberg calls a “quiet layer” with mapping routes and algorithms that favor low-traffic streets that are more suitable for bikes and scooters.
The crowdsourcing portion of the platform will come into play later on as more and more riders use the app, acting as sort of a “check and balance” for the existing software. Bachenberg said riders can catch mistakes that will ultimately allow the team to improve the app.
While the backend is being built in house, Bachenberg said Pointz will use a third-party mapping service to deliver the visuals on the front end. Eventually, Pointz may identify intersections and areas with high accident rates that biker and scooter riders should avoid.
The startup is currently considering a few different business models, including a freemium model, selling anonymous transportation data and allowing courier services like Postmates to use Pointz’s routing algorithm if interested, Bachenberg said.
But for now, the Pointz team is focused on releasing its beta in Providence. Pointz will soon be available on iOS devices. After the initial release, the team will use customer feedback to enhance the technology before potentially expanding in late spring. Bachenberg said Pointz is currently eyeing Boston and New York.
That could require the team to potentially try and raise a pre-seed round. Expanding into new cities means purchasing more databases, Bachenberg said.
Accelerated at Brown’s B-Lab last year, Pointz placed second at the Rhode Island Elevator Pitch Contest in November, then went on to win the “Calamari Tank” pitch competition at the Rhode Island Startup Weekend. It is one of Rhode Island Inno’s Startups to Watch in 2021.
Bram Berkowitz is a contributing writer for Rhode Island Inno.
