A Walkthrough With City Data Co

Everyone loves a good festival. Food trucks with cotton candy and shaved ice, live bands, and crowds upon crowds of people. Due to all the hustle and bustle, however, it’s darn near impossible to explore everything, and even harder to navigate it. Local startup City Data Company is working to change that. Founded in January of 2014, City Data Company makes interactive, digital maps for festivals, events, and other walkable places. The company recently released the beta of their first project, Walkabout, and has partnered with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition for the Atlanta Streets Alive festival on September 28th.

We got a hold of one of the founders, Tres Crow, to give you some more info on this new startup:

Year/Date Founded:
January 2014

Number of Employees:
3​

Founders/Execs:
Tres Crow/CEO, Co-Founder; Michael Darden/COO, Co-Founder; 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. .

How does ATL weave into your story?
ATL is the through line of the CDC story. Not only did we come up with the idea by walking on the Atlanta BeltLine, but our first customers have been local, and all three founders live in the city.

If you could have one mulligan (do-over) in the process of launching and running this startup what would it be?
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I wouldn’t do anything differently. This first year has been absolutely wonderful.

What kind of mentor could you use the most right now:
Probably what we could use the most help with is moving from the festival level to the association level. We’ve proven the technology works and that there is a market for it. Now we’re getting more aggressive with our sales and marketing efforts in order to reach a wider audience.

Is there anything else you need (that money can’t buy)?
Sales help, and help spreading the word.

[Photo Credit]