Over a decade ago, a group of employees at Yahoo were struggling to compete with Google Maps as the younger firm aggressively outspent its rivals and scaled its offering with a grand vision and unparalleled risk-appetite.
They won because we didn't have the same budget. As a competitive person, it was frustrating to me, said the product manager at Yahoo.
Siedman co-founded Gigwalk and tried to use phones to provide mapping data. He said that it was never going to get to the scale that was needed to build out a global map.
A lot has changed in recent years that has Siedman convinced that it is now the right time to build a global mapping infrastructure.
Four years ago, a remarkable price hike came as a surprise to many businesses that rely on the product. It upset many of them and made them try alternatives.
In the last few years, three startup founders in India and Pakistan have told me that they are saving tens of thousands of dollars each month by cutting back on using the internet.
According to a report last month, the DOJ is looking into whether or not the bundling of the service with other software violates antitrust laws.
There is the whole web3 push.
The right incentive model, getting a community behind the project and sharing the upside with them, and the infrastructure that can help a project quickly scale and offer a solution to businesses that make economic sense are all Siedman believes that now exists.
Only the largest and most capitalized tech companies in the world have the resources to do digital mapping, and even with all those resources street level imagery in many parts of the world is only updated once every two years. cascading logistical, municipal, and political problems are caused by this. Maps can be near real time. He said that an open source, community-owned map is the only way to continuously construct a living, breathing, ever-updating view of our world.
Hivemapper, Siedman's new startup, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $18 million.
Multicoin Capital led the Series A round for the startup. Hivemapper raised $23 million in a round led by scores of other investors, including Solana Capital, Shine Capital, Spencer Rascoff, and Sunny Venture.
In the new round, investors are getting both equity and warrants, according to Siedman.
Hivemapper is building a network. It is relying on dashCAMs and maps contributors to capture 4K imagery. The data is processed and annotated.
Map consumers leverage the map via a set of APIs that can call for images, directions, and more. The Freshview feature on the platform allows consumers to zoom in on an intersection and see a timelapse of that location.
Hivemapper says it is rewarding both drivers and editors with a native token called HONEY.
The founder and chief executive of Helium, Amir Haleem, was one of the entrepreneurs Siedman talked to. Haleem is joining the Hivemapper board.
That is what makes loyalty. That is what causes passion, right? Even if they made $5,000 or $10,000 in cash, it was never going to be significant relative to the value of the map in the early days.
Dash cameras have their own advantages. Tushar Jain, Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital, said dash cam's allow drivers and the firm to avoid spending on expensive mapping vehicles.
The network can simply identify regions that need to be mapped and put bounties on them, which are then claimed by a vast community of map contributors who are eager to claim those rewards for simply driving their daily commute. He said that Hivemapper creates unprecedented coverage, freshness, and quality in a cost effective way.
Hivemapper is live in nine metro areas. It will launch in 30 more markets this year.
Logistics and delivery firms, governments and NGOs are some of the businesses that the startup is planning to cater to.
Hivemapper is building a project. Businesses will buy credit on the internet. The business will not be treated as transactions when they use the Hivemapper API.
Hivemapper says it will begin shipping its dash cam in July. The idea of trading the HONEY token on popular exchanges is not the focus at the moment.
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