Mapbox is one of the companies I respect a lot. They are really undervalued in terms of their contribution to many other companies who utilize both their services (tiles, data, etc) as well as high quality open source mapping frameworks.
And almost everything they have done is open source, with lots of blog posts and knowledge sharing on how stuff is done.
I work at a drone company and most of our stuff (UI related) is built on top of Mapbox. Couldn't do it without them.
They had an interesting start. They started as Development Seed[1] a Drupal development house in and around DC that specialized in non-profit, NGO, and government websites, web apps. They were working on a lot of Drupal projects using geographic location data. They had some cool stuff and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Knight Foundation to develop open source mapping projects. I think in the beginning, 6 years ago, they used OpenLayers[2], started creating their own tile sets and MapBox grew out of that. One of the projects the Knight Foundation sponsored is Managing News[3] which never really took off (awesome technology came out of the project but it was kinda cheesy) but all the founders of MapBox heavily developed it including Will White, Alex Barth, Young Hahn, Jeff Miccolis, and Tom MacWright. As Development Seed matured they stopped wanting to store configuration in the database which was one part of a huge battle between Dries Buytaert and Earl Miles and the Development Seed crew who subsequently dropped Drupal almost all of a sudden, stopped supporting their products (responsibly as Phase 2 picked them up), PHP, and became an early adopter of Node.js. That's when MapBox was spun from Development Seed. (I can't verify anything I say is true.)
1. Development Seed created a heat map of crime in DC[1] and wanted dark tiles. So 3 of the founders, Alex Barth, Jeff Miccolis, and Tom MacWright created the Nice Map module[2] as a tile (WMS) management client for Drupal.
2. Development Seed uses Mapnik to manage their WMS server [3]
3. Development Seed started to share tile sets for maps hosted on AWS on Mapbox.com.[4]
4. The MapBox product is created and effort is put into it.[5]
5. They created Maps on a Stick and iOS client apps [6]
6. TileMill is released so people can create their own map tiles[7]
7. Development jumps from Drupal and the LAMP stack to Node.js and MabBox.[8]
I also work in the drone industry and can't believe how much better Mapbox's solutions are than anything else out there. It's not even remotely close on any level. It's basically the tool I've been dreaming of for the past ten years, plus maybe a little extra magic I hadn't dreamed of.
As someone who has routinely used MapBox for various projects. I completely agree, it's one of those amazing gems no one really acknowledges.
In the mean time, I'm excited to see how this plays out. Seeing as how Human is an "activity monitor", I'm wondering if this will develop into something bigger.
I really dislike the X joins Y wording of these kinds of statements. Is Mapbox a league of companies in the mapping business? No. It's another company. Human was acquired by, or maybe merged with, Mapbox. We cant we just say that? Is there actually a good reason not to?
Paul, founder of Human here. We chose the term "join" because it really feels like we're joining forces. One of the reasons why are so excited about this is the cultural fit and shared vision between both teams. We started Human for a reason and Mapbox is just as mission driven. Glad that our team and app can now be part of that.
Can you describe how money/shares/options get traded in a deal like this? Do you get cash for your shares/options or do you get shares/options in Mapbox or a mix of both?
Sometimes this language is used specifically when the acquiring company doesn't actually acquire them. Depending on the product/IP, sale price, investors, etc. it's can often be simpler to just extend the entire team individual job offers that include substantial bonuses and retention packages, rather than formally acquire the company and it's IP.
This can be a really nice form of "soft landing" for a startup. It can usually happen quickly too, since job offers don't require board consent like legal acquisition. And unless it's a sizable return (>3x) most seed-stage VCs aren't going to squeeze to get their cash out.
Everyone is happy in the end, and the startup's product also has a better chance of living on since the "acquiring" company doesn't actually take the IP.
(I have no idea if that's what happened in this case. I've just seen it happen elsewhere plenty.)
I tend to agree, but in this case, it sounds like Human will continue to be operated as a stand-alone app, so "join" is appropriate. I trust Mapbox more than most companies to follow through with that.
part of the "ourincrediblejourney" meme(?) is that they actually need to shut down the product. that could still happen but until then it's not really a "fuck you" to its customers if the app still works.
Shutting down the product is one way a company can qualify for ourincrediblejourney. I would argue that another way is the "we're being acquired by $RANDOM, so thanks for all your personal data!" track.
That's step 2; usually happens months after step 1 (and the bingo marks are all there: "we are joining X, do not fear, what a journey"), proferred here.
We did. By a lot. A few months ago we implemented a new hibernation mode that suspends location services more aggressively when you're not active. This saves about 50-90% battery on an average day. The only downside of this approach is that we can't show the first 100-200m on a map when you start moving again. If you find that important, you could use the high accuracy option at the expense of a bit more battery impact. Try it!
Strava and Human are pretty different products, where Human tracks everyday activity, and Strava focuses on specific activities like running and cycling. We became pretty close with the Strava team over the years and were honored to count their leadership to our group of advisors. Being an avid Strava user myself, I'm excited to work with Strava in my new role at Mapbox.
We're looking forward to sharing what we learned about the health & fitness space, activity tracking, and mobile with all Mapbox customers.
And almost everything they have done is open source, with lots of blog posts and knowledge sharing on how stuff is done.
I work at a drone company and most of our stuff (UI related) is built on top of Mapbox. Couldn't do it without them.