Despite economic turmoil in the tech world, an Oakland-based startup shows that moonshots are still getting funded. Felt, co-founded by Sam Hashemi and Can Duruk, wants to disrupt the role of maps in society, and rethink how we think about the medium. The startup allows users to build a map with data sets integrated into it, and work with each other to showcase impact in a less static way than your average Google maps query.

Despite a massive mission – proving that maps are a forgotten yet fundamental medium worth renovating – the co-founders cited proven business models from Figma and Notion, both valued in the billions, as reason to believe in their work. The aforementioned companies both succeeded in rolling out to users for personal use then pivoting to the enterprise, a playbook that Felt wants to follow (and that VCs can certainly speak the language of).

“That kind of business model and go to market is – I don’t want to say immune, but is a little bit removed from the kind of market fluctuations we’re seeing,” Hashemi said. “It’s really not about consumer, spending, it’s not about an advertising business, it’s just day in day out work that businesses are relying on.”

The argument worked. Today, the collaborative software startup tells TechCrunch that it recently closed a $15 million Series A led by Footwork with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Moxxie Ventures and Designer Fund.

Since its seed round, a $4.5 million investment announced in August 2021, Felt has grown its team from 7 people to 15 people across Hawaii, California, Missouri, Vermont, Canada, and Spain. One of Felt’s team members – Mamata Akella – is even an in-house cartographer – a job title you don’t too often see as part of the early-stage startup ranks.

The funding, and team growth, means that Felt thinks it is ready for the next phase of growth: feedback. The startup launched its platform publicly today after weeks of private beta testing with over 1,000 people. The public beta combines 50 layers of data, such as earthquake history or wildfire data, with a clean interface meant to empower people to draw their own maps. That in and of itself as a feat, the co-founders say, given that data is often fragmented, inaccurate or just straight up badly formatted.

Felt is meant to be a continuation of the collaborative software movement underscored by everyday tools like Google Docs and top companies like Notion and Figma, as well as a sequel to Hashemi’s previous company, Remix. Bought by Via for $100 million, Remix is a city transportation planning startup born out of Code for America Hackathon. Felt was the follow-up story, this time taking mapping beyond cities. From August to now, the co-founders say that Felt went from a tech demo to a product with more “commercial legs” including richer, fact checked data sets, less bugs, and hopefully, a faster load time.

Felt launched with a climate-focused angle, yet …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/31/felt-maps-15-million-series-a/