Mapzen

Start where you are

Since 2013

30 West 26th Street, New York, NY, USA

Open source: Yes

What it was "Mapzen was a company making open mapping more viable for developers out in the world. Our tools cover the full range of map-making: cartography, graphics, search, routing, data, transit, mobile apps. And we published all of it as open source code and, in the case of Who's On First, the project I work on, as open licensed data. The project began in 2013 with a small group of tech people, led by Randy Meech, our CEO. We were a part of the Samsung Next accelerator, but operated under a slightly different part of the org chart. We had a lot of freedom to work out in the open on the problems that were most interesting for making maps." – Dan Phiffer “Randy Meech, the CEO…offered his thoughts on how much of the company's software was built to last beyond its possible death (which occurred at the beginning of this January) while one of its developers, Dan Phiffer, had a somewhat more skeptical take on the same topic.”