Interview with the Founder of Carta
About?
Carta is a service that can be used to create interactive maps for various purposes.
In this interview, we interview the founder, Franco Valdes.
How did you come up with the idea for the business?
I built a tool called GeoBarriers back in like 2013 which was an API Saas to query boundary information. There was an SDK for about 2-3 languages that would help you either store the data back to your database or render the boundaries directly onto a google or mapbox map. With the rise of no-code solutions, I was considering building a tool that was more end-to-end that did more than just pins on a map since I already had the boundary/GIS expertise. Around the same time, a friend of mine in the real estate business was looking for exactly that, a way to easily build a map with pins and boundaries to showcase neighborhoods and points of interest near high ticket real estate properties.
How did you build the product?
The product is built with a pretty large mix of technologies. The actual application is React using Remix. I use Supabase for all things: auth, database, storage and real-time sync engine. The main application is hosted on AWS while the marketing site still sits in Vercel. The data comes from many places, luckily boundary information like the one available in Carta Maps is publicly available just hard to ingest without deep GIS knowledge. For map tiles I use Mapbox although I am looking into OpenMapTiles and protomaps. There are a ton of incredibly helpful libraries like Turf.js and other open source projects from people like Tom MacWright and other map enthusiasts.
How big was your team when you started?
The team is just me and has always been just me. I have recruited a ton of help for testing for alpha and beta phases but overall its just me.
How did you launch the business?
The launch was gradual. I built v1 in under 30 days. I knew there were going to be bugs and edge cases I hadn’t covered. So I opened a beta phase and invited friends and made it free for beta testers. I fixed bugs non stops and added features I wasn’t even aware were useful for the next 4-6 weeks. Finally launched publicly and started promoting it on social.
How have you grown the business since its launch?
Most of the growth has been through paid efforts. Worked with a few search ads specialist at the beginning and came up with a few good campaign ideas which are still working well. Tried social but didn’t really yield great results since this is a B2B space. Some organic growth too so now that I have a decent number of backlinks I am going to start content marketing.
What are the main marketing channels that work out for you?
So far Google Search Ads have been the only good channel. Tried social (Facebook/Instagram) but that wasn’t great. Tried LinkedIn too, but also wasn’t great. Now that the site is more mature, will try some content marketing to grow SEO and organic traffic.
Which tools do you use most often to help grow your business?
I haven’t really done a ton of outbound since this is just a side gig for now and still have a 9-5. Lost growth, again, has been through paid search efforts.
What is the business model (ads/subscription etc)?
The business model is subscription based. You get certain amount of features and limits per plan. Initially had a free plan but was bogging down support so I decided to get rid of it about 3 months ago. So far so good.
What do your finances look like?
Just had our best month so far which ended at around $1,300 MRR. Unfortunately cost for search ads is currently around $900 so not much profit once I also include tools and hosting. Hoping that content marketing and organic traffic can offset some of the search ads cost for new year.
