Felt is the best way to make maps on the internet.
Tell Me More
Felt is continuing the trend of building collaborative software products, previously popularized by everyday tools like Google Docs, and extended to emerging product companies like Notion, Figma, Replit, Miro, and many more. Felt’s goal is to make it simple and easy to build and export maps to wherever you need them. Initially launched as a way to create climate data maps, Felt is building in adjacent areas like the sciences needed to understand oceanography, as well as the national park’s interest in creating a better way to track trails. Similarly, the company leverages public data sets to create powerful visualizations tailored to a variety of use cases.
Market Opportunity
Maps might feel like a strange market to build collaborative software in, but maps have been an important tool for thousands of years. Maps have helped truck drivers deliver goods, airplane pilots get their passengers to their destinations, climbers traverse treacherous mountains, hospitals plan for emergencies, pizza delivery drivers deliver their pizzas (if that still exists), and the list goes on.
Despite the examples above, it can be hard to visualize the ubiquity of maps. Since learning more about Felt, I’ve boiled the use case for maps down to the following points:
Mission Critical Maps: Consumers and businesses rely on maps every day. Two of the largest technology companies in the world have the top two competing maps products and in 2022, people still can’t agree on which is better. Google maps has 150M monthly active users, and in 2014, Google’s parent company, Alphabet acquired another map company, Waze for $1.15B. Still, Google and Apple are not alone in mission-critical logistics mapping — Garmin, an all-purpose geospatial mapping company, recorded $5B in revenue in 2021. Likewise, the geospatial mapping market has seen a new crop of venture-backed companies emerge like Orbital Insight, Predata, and many more.
Planning: Whether it be disaster relief or warehouse process planning, maps are important to scenarios outside of traditional travel mapping as well. Whether it be hospitals, schools, public transit, or office buildings, many public and private institutions rely on maps for transit planning, communing, scheduling, and scenario planning.
Education and Fun: Maps can also lead to enjoyment. Take trail running, African safaris, or even video games — maps are helpful for identifying sights, adventures, and fun. Companies like Strava leverage maps for social sharing while Surfline enables anyone to check the waves in their local area. EvenSnapchat, a company with 300M+ daily active users leveraged maps as one of the early-entrants to ~ the Metaverse ~.
Why I like the company
Think about how much easier it would have been for Magellan to circumnavigate and chart the world with a tool like Felt? Instead of leveraging third party data and pre-built templates, he needed a cartographer to help draw every coastline and beach!
In all seriousness, Felt provides an interesting opportunity to build a horizontal, collaborative software product for one of our most under-appreciated, but ubiquitous tools. Companies like Figma, Miro, Notion, Google Docs, Replit, and more are reaching ubiquity and in some cases, market saturation thanks to their network effect driven businesses. For Felt, the beauty is in sharing. Once one person creates a map and shares the masterpiece with someone else, that second person will be driven to Felt to view, explore, and create additional maps. This creates a positive feedback loop where additional users are cheaper to acquire through a 1:many product experience and are native to the product’s experience.
Given the variety in map making, Felt spans both B2B and B2C use cases. A teacher could leverage Felt for interactive lessons where the students map animals to the correct regions while a trucker could outline her favorite diners along a specific route. Since Felt services both consumers and businesses, I am excited to see how other businesses leverage the product to bring specialized maps to a verticalized community of enthusiasts.
Since it’s an early-stage company, we can’t forget about the dream team Felt’s assembled. Led by Sam Hashemi, a masterful designer and second-time entrepreneur. Sam was previously co-founder and CEO of Remix, a transportation planning software company that scaled up to 350+ cities in 17 countries and was acquired by Via for $100M. To create Felt, Sam teamed up with Can Duruk, a fellow Carnegie Mellon grad and an early engineer at Uber and Digg. The remaining 13 employees span engineering, design, and cartography.
Lastly, digital mapping is not a sleepy industry. Mapbox, an all-service mapping company was recently valued at $1.25B and has raised $225M to be the SDK to power logistics applications. Similarly, mapping titans like Garmin, ESRI, and more have proven there’s a market for mapping. Despite a unique idea, Felt’s vision is validated thanks to incumbents in the space.
