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Recently earthmine founder's John and Anthony sat down to talk with Alexis Gerard, President of Future Image. Here's a peek at the conversation: |
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| Gerard: |
In an industry segment that's seeing a lot of activity and excitement, earthmine is doing something new and different. Where did the idea come from? |
| John: |
The idea really started when Anthony and I met at UC Berkeley. Anthony was working on his architectural thesis work in digital panoramic photography and I was doing PhD research in applied laser scanning technology. We had an idea that if we could integrate panoramic photographs with geospatial data we could capture and deliver photo-realistic 3D environments that would accurately document our world. |
| Anthony: |
Initially, we concentrated on developing this idea to document historical sites for research, restoration and site management, so we joined the Kacyra Family Foundation to work on CyArk where we spent a lot of time traveling the world and refining our methodology on how to document some of our world's most incredible places. During that time we had time to really think through the bigger implications of what we were doing... |
| John: |
And the possibilities of our idea got very exciting to us when we started thinking about using these tools for documenting the world's urban environments. That was in 2006, when we decided to take the plunge and founded earthmine. |
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| Gerard: |
What was the business rationale for deciding to focus on urban environments? |
| Anthony: |
That's a good question. <<laugh>> Well, I guess we need to think about urban environments from a time perspective. Every square inch of the city is designed, built, maintained, and destroyed every 50 years on average. And for every step of this process, people need information to help guide them when making expensive decisions — such as why should I build a residential unit here, or turn this hotel into a parking lot there. |
| John: |
It's surprising how little geo-spatial data exists out there, even for cities with the latest GIS (geographic information systems). And of the data that does exist, the great majority of it is either too difficult to access, out of date, or unreliable to make important business decisions. Really what we are trying to do is create a data mine of information about our urban environments where people can extract the piece they need to make any number of decisions with confidence. |
| Anthony: |
From an economic standpoint, a huge percentage of the cost of running our government is associated with the physical infrastructure that we all pay taxes to have in place—streets, telephone lines, sewage systems, even art installations. |
| John: |
—and compared to historical sites, the city posed a much more interesting and challenging problem — where change happens daily, not over centuries. |
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| Gerard: |
As I mentioned earlier, there's a lot going on in this area. How are you guys unique? What's your value proposition? |
| Anthony: |
Most people forget that the internet was a massive pile of garbage until indexing and search engines helped make sense of the seemingly random links here and there. I guess the same thing is true with finding things in a city, since it is cluttered with all sorts of signs and…a lot of times actual garbage. <<laugh>> Basically what we do make is make it easy to find that "thing" you want in the real world and the way we do that is by indexing reality. |
| John: |
It's not just that we are indexing the real world, but were also trying to make complex three dimensional information and mapping tools easily accessible. The gulf between complex geospatial information and regular people is just too large and relies far too much upon a small number of highly technical geospatial experts. We think there's a piece missing in the equation—a geospatially accurate inventory of our world that is instantly understandable and usable by regular people. |
| Anthony: |
We have been trying hard to make it an experience that people can relate to. Standing on the street with a map in hand—it should be that easy. |
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| Gerard: |
That's a pretty big idea. |
| Anthony: |
Yea, we tend to like the big ideas. <<laugh>> |
| John: |
Our goal all along has been to build a company that changes the way people connect information to places. The nice part is that all of our initial conversations with customers, investors, partners and industry pundits keep confirming our instincts on this. The timing just seems right now for the earthmine vision to happen. |
| Anthony: |
We know earthmine is a big idea.. But not that long ago people said sending a package overnight to any address in the nation was too big of an idea, and now business relies on it. We're confident that we know how to do it, and we know it's an idea that simply needs to be done. Of course, we're not fooling ourselves into thinking that we can do it alone... |
| John: |
We're in the process of building the A-team that will help us make this really happen in a big way, but we've solved the hardest technical challenges, we know it can all be done, and now it's just hard work to get it to the point where others can prove it's success in the real world. |
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Hear more from earthmine's founders at upcoming events or visit their blog |
