A Walkthrough With City Data Co
Vic Uzumeri/CTO, Co-Founder
Funding or bootstrapped:Received seed capital in May, but have been largely bootstrapped.Your Pitch:City Data Company makes Walkabout, a digital mapping platform, specifically designed for festivals and other permanent and temporary walkable places.How'd You Get The Idea For It:I have had a long-standing interest in walkable urbanism for the better part of a decade. When I left banking for business school, it was with the expressed interest in finding a way to put the tools of business to work towards building a more walkable world. Last December I went for a walk on the eastside trail of the BeltLine, and when I went looking for a usable map, I realized that there really wasn’t one. Google Maps wasn’t up to date, and the BeltLine simply had PDF maps at the time that weren’t much use to those on the BeltLine itself. It dawned on me that at the fine-grain level, the level of the pedestrian, many of today’s mapping technologies fall short of depicting the actual dynamism of these areas.So, I reached out to Michael and Vic, who I’d met through the Ritz Group and knew were well-versed in technology. After an hour and half conference call, we realized we’d stumbled on an idea that might actually have legs. We incorporated a month later in January, acquired seed round funding in May, and launched our Beta in August.Revenue Model:We charge the map administrator for creation and usage of the map.Who are your competitors and how do you stand out:We have several competitors, though none of them are really actively pursuing the festival market. Obviously we go up against the big boys: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Mapquest. And then there is Pointsmap out of Chattanooga, Mapbox, and a smattering of native app designers making apps for places and events. We differ from all of them for 3 specific reasons:- We’re the only one incorporating time in our design. By putting a time slider in our design, our maps are not just a map but also a scheduling tool and calendar. This makes them ideal for festivals, and other places with a lot of events happening throughout the year.
- We are cloud-based, so we are more easily updated. Unlike Mapbox, there is no software to download, and our system is extremely easy to use, so anyone can create and update their map in minutes. No coding skills necessary.
- We’ve created a tool for local administrators to manage local resources. This is a nuanced difference, but a key one, since ours is the only tool that is designed for local administrators (event organizers, city/college officials, etc.) to be able to control the image and local resources of their community. .
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