Mappedin raises $24.5M to digitize indoor spaces for a third of the world's malls and expand into safety

Speaker 8: Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining. First time on the show. Please introduce yourself and the company.

Speaker 6: Sure, John. My name is Hongwei. I'm one of the founders here at Baffonton, and we are mapping all of the indoors, one building at a time. Okay. Up from Waterloo, Canada.

Speaker 2: How are you mapping it? What what is the sensor?

Speaker 6: So look, there's low tech and there's high-tech. Mhmm. You can download the map and scan app, grab any iPhone, grab any three sixty camera these days and just walk through buildings. Yeah. Everyone thinks that that's what you have to do and you don't. The the amazing thing is that 70,000 people have now mapped, you know, all sorts of stuff, schools, their own house, offices, malls, just by scanning in the piece of paper that's on every wall. I bet somewhere in in Yeah. In that room of yours, there's an emergency escape map on the wall somewhere in the studio. Oh, okay. You can take a photo of that, and you can get it in. The problem, of course, is it's a it's a picture. And so how do we turn that into vector data? How do we make that interoperable and useful to all the other apps that you already use and take for granted? That's what we're trying to do here at Matten.

Speaker 1: So what are all the different use cases for indoor mapping data?

Speaker 6: So the one that, you know, I've become known for because I've been at this for a while is, you know, that touch screen in the mall that you guys probably use at Santa Monica Place and stuff Yeah. That gives people directions? Yeah. That's us.

Speaker 5: No way. So we

Speaker 6: do that for yeah. We do that for a third of the malls in the world. We do it for the Super Bowl four years in a row. We do it at LAX where you guys are trying to make that airport experience a little bit better. Yeah. We think we touch about a third of Americans a year Cool. With our products. They probably wouldn't know it's us, but we're we're trying. And now increasingly, we're starting to be embedded in safety applications. We've mapped thousands of k to 12 schools now in The United States, unfortunately, because when something bad happens, need a map of the inside for the good guys to know how to run inside.

Speaker 2: Yeah. When when I think about those customers that you mentioned malls, the Super Bowl, LAX, I feel like they have reasonable budgets. So is is it about cost savings to use an image based on a floor plan as opposed to just walking around with a three sixty camera? Because that doesn't feel that cumbersome when I think about the the price of an Insta three sixty or a GoPro or even your phone. Like, it feels like the data collection shouldn't be that cumbersome. But what what is motivating the the desire to sort of go go lighter on the data collection side?

Speaker 6: Yeah. Fair question. And and first, I assure you they all negotiate very

Speaker 1: hard to

Speaker 2: see any

Speaker 6: customers listing. They they got a good deal. Okay. Yeah. But I I I think the hardest part about mapping the indoors is not mapping it once, but keeping it up to date. Okay. You know, the the goofy example is like Santa Claus moves every year in the At Christmas.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6: Right? So if you want to know where Santa Claus is going to be this Christmas, the only person who knows is the person on the ground planning Christmas at the mall in that off in that back office. Right? And if you wait until that's already happened and then you somehow try to scan it, it's too late. Never mind that it's private property and, you know, someone would escort you outside. Yeah. So a lot of managing and mapping the indoors for you and I and for everyone else who needs that information is getting ahead and being able to plan ahead and managing that constant change. The you know, you can scrape the outdoors with a with a LIDAR sensor or with a satellite with a car. It's good for about five years. If you've even if you manage to scrape the 100,000,000 buildings that are privately owned indoors, it's good for about five days. So how do we how do we enable those folks to plan ahead?

Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, the the tagline is Google Maps for the indoor spaces. Are you are you gonna partner with Google? Are you gonna partner with Apple Maps? Is there an API that you can just expose these things to? Because I imagine if I'm LAX, I'd I I pay you, I'd want the data to be as available as possible to my customers and patrons.

Speaker 6: I wish I could use that tagline. I'm glad you did Yeah. So I don't have to. But, look, I I think from from their perspective, and obviously, I can't speak for Google and Apple. Yeah. But, you know, Google wants better data so that they can serve more users. Yeah. Apple wants better data so they can sell more phones. They I think they're generally pretty happy when someone does all the hard work of mapping the indoors and makes that information accessible and standardized. So we publish a lot of data on behalf of our many clients, the LAXs of the world, the, you know, SoFi stadiums of the world, two platforms like that. Mhmm. I can't speak specifically to which ones and who because they're all pretty sensitive about, like, this is my private property. Sure. You, mister Big Tech, can't have it. Yeah. But to your point, you know, consumers need this information. It's it's on the wall. So we're we're just about standardizing the pipes Yeah. And enabling building owners to publish their information.

Speaker 2: Have how do you think this interacts with the potentially coming robotics boom?

Speaker 5: I've been getting a lot

Speaker 6: of calls about that. It wouldn't surprise you, of course. So I think there's enough problems to solve outdoors for robotics that I'm, you know, I'm still kind of holding my breath for when this becomes more real indoors. There's more constraints. I'll just say that. If you if you you know, we're only now solving for self driving cars outside. It's been, what, twenty years since Yeah.

Speaker 7: That we've

Speaker 6: been talking about it. And that's actually a much simpler problem. Right?

Speaker 2: Mhmm.

Speaker 6: Like, streets, buildings, lampposts, pylons. Yeah. There's, like, you know, far fewer things you have to recognize outdoors to be able to move around. Indoors, there's way more. And and the training data is not actually easily available because unless you're a Roomba, you can't just scan people's houses. And even if you could, it's incomplete.

Speaker 2: Yep.

Speaker 6: So, you know, we're we're building up, we think, a pretty large training dataset. We've, you know, seen our technology now deployed for Department of Homeland Security, various fire departments and police departments throughout The United States. But going you know, I I guess I'm sometimes accused of being too Canadian in that we don't we don't sell ahead of reality. I think we're a couple years out of of You have be like, we're going

Speaker 2: to map the inside of Saturn's moons soon. You gotta think, like, fifty years ahead.

Speaker 6: How about Mach three jets for starters? I'll I'll do that first. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe maybe airplane hangars. You know?

Speaker 6: Yeah. We're headed that way. I'll I'll say this. If if we don't pull it off, I don't know who would. Yeah. We have by far the most amount of training data at this point of the indoors, but we're we're doing it on behalf of our clients. And I really do think that the indoors belongs to the landlord

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Belongs to the people operating it. And and so it's about who can enable them to realize that future.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And to help their customers. Makes a ton of sense. Tell us how much did you raise?

Speaker 1: I love how you've you just got a third of the market. Like, I just like, it is a it is such a such a large Yeah. So much market share and and those early early pitches. Yeah. It's a it's a fascinating market overall. But anyway

Speaker 2: Tell us about the round.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, my fiance hates that I I don't like going to malls anymore if you would believe it. It's really not fun. Oh, go to feels like it's working. Yeah. Oh, dude. Alright. We raised $24,500,000. Congratulations. That's a lot bigger than the sales Gong we have in our office.

Speaker 8: So thank you guys.

Speaker 7: That's a

Speaker 2: huge one.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for

Speaker 2: coming on the show. Congratulations on the progress and we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 6: Love you guys.

Speaker 3: Have a good one. Love you.

Speaker 2: Love you is a great sign off.

Speaker 8: That's a

Speaker 1: new exit.