What they do: Develop data and predictive analytics tools that put “neighborhood data – such as demographics, environmental factors, and business atmosphere – into meaningful context to help business owners, investors, developers, marketers, and others find their ideal neighborhoods or customers.”
Problem they solve: As globalization marches on (yes, even in this isolationist Trump era), many startups are discovering overlooked opportunities closer to home.
MapVida seeks to contextualize the local on a much broader scale.
How they solve it: MapVida takes data points associated with a physical location (people, activities, geo-spatial attributes, schools, crime, businesses, spending, home stock, walkability, etc.) and review it for the past 15+ years.
Next, their software calculates “similarity clusters.” MapVida uses these “similarity clusters” to create tools that help people find, target, and even build out specific neighborhood types.
Big50-2017 Group 2 vote winner MapVida finds neighborhood similarity clusters. #Big50 http://wp.me/p330ZZ-hB Click To Tweet
“We solve the problem of similarity,” said Mike Mauseth, CEO and co-founder of MapVida
For consumers, this may mean you’re moving from one city to another, but you want to find a neighborhood similar to the one you just left. For businesses, they may want to target their advertising and business development more granularly. For example, a specific type of neighborhood may drive a ton of retail foot traffic, so as they expand, they’ll want to locate new stores in similar places.
Mauseth argues that “similarity clusters” change the way you view your world. “Instead of 3,000 neighborhoods in Denver, we break it down into 45 neighborhood types (and their leading characteristics),” he said. “You can now translate the unknown into the familiar. And from a business perspective, we can find how to better target your marketing dollars.”
Headquarters: Denver, CO
CEO: Mike Mauseth. Before co-founding MapVida, Mauseth served as President of TransUnion’s Real Estate Division. Prior to that, he sold his last startup, KikScore, to Google.
Year Founded: 2015
Funding: MapVida is backed by $2 million in seed funding.
Competitors include: Walkscore (consumer segment), ESRI (commercial segment), Merkle (marketing segment), and manual efforts (multiple web-searches and analysis, and social recommendations/rule-of-thumb approximations). Other startups entering the space include Niche and Rentjoy.
Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: MapVida crushed the Big50 challenges. They won the Group 2 vote, and they were also a content challenge winner, pitching us an insightful story angle on the future of startups. (You’ll hear our interview with MapVida later this year.)
We also really like their idea of “similarity clusters,” which could help both people and businesses feel at home even when they are far from it.
