On Wednesday, MapBox announced it had raised a $52.6 million Series B that will set it up to reach more customers and further develop its proprietary mapping data platform. The huge round is just one piece of evidence that the District has evolved into a hub for mapping companies, with others in the space including Landmark, Esri, Transit Screen and Transit Labs.
This is important for a number of reasons—perhaps most importantly that companies who are successful within this industry carry awesome exit potential, which could be tremendous for the local tech scene. For instance, over the last several months reports have circulated about the potential sale of Nokia’s maps division, which includes HERE maps. Multiple buyers are interested even while Nokia’s price tag is an astonishing $4 billion.
To get a better idea of what’s going on the space—along with what products each company is working on and why the technology might be valuable—we spoke with mapping technology executives from Esri, Landmark and MapBox:
Esri
Esri is headquartered in Redlands, Calif., but has a large operations center in the D.C. area, in Vienna, Va., which employs several hundred. Unlike, Landmark or even Mapbox for that matter, Esri can be described as a later stage, corporate entity.
Esri, similar in some ways to MapBox, offers developers an open-source mapping API tool that can be used build location-enabled applications and software. As a result, Andrew Turner, director of Esri’s local R&D center, told DC Inno that the company's "user base now includes anyone working with data.”
Turner added: “In the past decade, location information has become ubiquitous and accessible to nearly everyone. The demand for more data and the tools to use that data for better decision making and contextual awareness has dramatically increased … We want to make people aware that there are amazing questions they can ask of their maps.”
"Our user base now includes anyone working with data."
In terms of where the industry is headed, Esri has been focused on making its tools more available through the web, mobile devices, and to be easily integrated with other applications through open standards and plugins, Turner said.
Landmark
Landmark is a D.C.-based startup and spinoff of Silica Labs, an augmented reality application developer that focuses on Google Glass. Landmark, unlike both Esri and MapBox, is not an open-sourced provider of mapping API but rather it is the developer of a city-based navigation system that solely focuses on walking directions. The company prides itself on providing users with interactive realtime business information and extremely precise step-by-step navigation.
We want to make walking simpler and more intuitive
"We leverage open-source mapping technologies, image repositories, community-engagement tools, and our own algorithms to make city navigation visual, intuitive and safer by tailoring navigation to pedestrian needs," Landmark's website reads.
Landmark co-founder Stephanie Nguyen described Landmark’s technology this way: “As a pedestrian you see buildings, textures, colors and signs — a perspective much different than a map overview gives you. We want to make walking simpler and more intuitive, using these landmarks and visual points of interest around you.”
In some ways, the growth of startups like Landmark — companies that use open-source mapping data to enhance user experiences — mirrors the developer shift to location-enabled applications that Esri’s R&D director spoke of.
“Landmark is in product development and aims to launch this fall. We won a DC Tech Fund Grant in October and have been building the product and testing designs to make sure it's a product that users love … The future of transportation will empower drivers, pedestrians, bikers and commuters to make transit more efficient and enjoyable,” said Nguyen.
MapBox
MapBox says it is creating “the building blocks for a complete mapping stack.” TechCrunch called the company the “map layer” of all applications. Fresh off the new funding raise, Eric Lundersen’s company plans to expand this stack, further advance product development and to hire top talent for its engineering, data, operations and business divisions.
MapBox sells their open-source mapping data directly to businesses, more specifically to developers, so that they can build out their own platforms (applications/software) to include accurate geo-location features. Gundersen said that as time progresses he thinks that most mobile applications would use some sort of mapping API to improve their individual product. As of April 2014, there were 1.2 million iOS applications available to users and about 680,000 used location-enabled features.
Limited data supply, in this case, always means demand.
Gundersen told DC Inno that the future of this technology means being easy to run on mobile, offers low data usage, will be highly responsive to individual users experiences and will provide developers with realtime updating options, among other things. Making a product that can be easily navigated and molded by developers also remains very important in addition to keeping up with the continuously evolving contemporary demands of new users. As a result, MapBox’s main focus right now is on mobile, he said.
The company currently has about 5,000 paying developers.
In terms of valuations within the industry, Gundersen shared similar reasoning about why we are seeing such epic growth: there is a scarcity of similar open-source options, and as a result, their valuations tend to be substantial. Gundersen added that he believes companies like his own are “strategically important” to the business directive of most large software companies, as users are expecting more personalized experiences each time they open a program.
Limited data supply, in this case, always means demand.
