Spotlight: Maptia

The World’s Travel Stories.

WHY I LOVE IT

Idea

It was in a black cab with my brother and mentor, Omar, where I came up with the idea for a website which captured the history of where people grew up: what if we could share the significant stories about the places we’ve lived? Imagine reading the story of your childhood home from the perspective of the previous family and being able to add your own chapter of what that place meant to you.

Preface

It was week four of my summer internship and the possibility of me staying in London had grown exponentially as I made the serendipitous discovery of the ‘UK Ancestry Visa’ the evening before.

It is a 5 year working visa for grand-children of UK-born citizens. How lucky. My grand-father happens to have been born in Kent, a small borough located in the southeast of London, a ‘measly’ 120 years ago. Naturally, I wanted to know what house he lived in growing up— before he made his way across the Atlantic to beautiful Montreal. Before he fought in two world wars. And before he raised a family of 7, including my wonderful mother. I wanted to know what it felt like for the culmination of all my ancestors’ decisions, me, to stare back at where it all began.

The App

Omar liked my idea of “stories for places”— as he called it. But, as any entrepreneur with another ‘brilliant’ idea vying for space in this smorgasbord of start-ups, Omar knew we needed to check for competing space— the ‘first movers’. His basic due diligence paid off.

Alas, my idea already existed. Enter Maptia.

Why it’s the next big thing

-Allows users a central platform to blog about their travel, upload photos and tell the world about their story.

-Creates humanity’s running dialogue of the places it visits and puts a meaningful stamp on everyone’s journey.

-Has created a ‘gamified’ sign-up incentive by allowing users to download and print a sign-up manifesto which is a world-wide ‘pass-along-note’ the creators hope reaches every country.

-Already has over +8000 Facebook and Twitter followers

Why it might flop

-Travel blogs already exist in abundance. Do we really care about what other people have done in a particular place of the world?

Other start-ups such as Exposure focus more on the increasing trend for society to care more about visual information rather than written information.