Soupy
Joined 17 years ago
Karma
799
Submissions
91
Member since
Aug 21
Recent submissions
Comment · 3 months ago
https://pastmaps.com
This is my side project turned solo bootstrapped startup that I've been working on over the past 2.5 years. Pastmaps has been solely a US-focused platform since it's initial launch but I'm currently working on launching to the UK and Ireland within the next week. If all goes as planned then I should have a first wave of 30K fully digitized, hi-res, and fully georeferenced 1800s ordnance maps available soon to help folks discover the history all around them.
I'm likely going to need to start building out my own global LiDAR dataset next though. My coverage for the US is quite stellar thanks to the data provided by the USGS' 3DEP program but I'm way out of touch with what's available and possible in the EU. It's gonna be a challenge but I'm excited to dive in.
Comment · 6 months ago
I'm OCR-ing 200K+ historical maps (or at least trying). For example: https://www.threads.com/@that.map.guy.craig/post/DXA59AylJng...
This has only really become possible within the last 3 months and I'm still shocked at how good some of the new models are at tasks like this.
I'm not a crazy person, promise. I run https://pastmaps.com as a solo bootstrapped founder and this data is so valuable to my customers. It's been a dream of mine to do this as part of my map digitization pipeline and I'm so excited for the product experiences this is going to unlock.
So much to build, so little time
Comment · 8 months ago
I've decided to open source cmux - a small minimal set of shell commands geared towards Claude Code to help manage the worktree lifecycle, especially when building with 5-10 parallel agents across multiple features. I've been using this for the past few months and have experienced a monstrous increase in output and my ability to keep proper context.
Free, open source, MIT-licensed, with simplicity as a core tenant.
Comment · 1 year ago
Around 90% of the maps currently on the site are from the US government (USGS). The last 10% are from public institutions and libraries and this is the newest segment that I'm actively working on growing. My hope is to flip this ratio with time.
I also have a few partnerships in the work with some private collections but those have proven trickier to actually get to a "yes". It also involves a lot of bespoke work to process and ingest each individual source so I'm not focusing as hard on this type of sourcing anymore.
Comment · 1 year ago
Hey Brendan! I also would love to add Canadian maps, it's been a huge request from my users and something I've been wanting to focus on all year. A big challenge I have in bringing the service to new regions is just data access, both to raw hi-res map imagery as well as to satellite, LiDAR, etc so this is on my todo list to begin digging into what the Canadian government offers. Brave new world for me
Will absolutely reach out to connect!
Comment · 1 year ago
whoa this is wickedly cool! and yes, georeferencing these old maps is the bane of my existence right now
awesome project
Comment · 1 year ago
"Google maps but for old maps": https://pastmaps.com
This is a solo startup that I've been working on for 2 years now. It's a labor of love and I'm very lucky and thankful that it's big enough to surprisingly pay all of our bills. Still constantly feeling FOMO over all of my startup buddies working with AI and LLMs while I plug away at old maps and GIS .
It gets ~80K MAUs and just slowly and consistently is growing organically through word of mouth through history focused communities. I'm currently playing with expanding the coverage internationally as I still only support the US which is a wickedly fun project.
Comment · 1 year ago
Stoke | Bellevue, WA | ONSITE (hybrid)
Stoke is a 5-month-old startup (founded in Feb 2025 by insuretech veterans with $4B+ in previous exits across 2 bootstrapped companies) building real-time Voice AI agents to make insurance purchases easier, faster, and more affordable.
PROBLEM: Insurance is a critical product, and the current system is broken. Policies are the main shield between American households and financial ruin. At 5% of income, it’s the fourth largest household expense after housing, transportation, and food. The majority of people have insufficient coverage and are paying too much for it. This is primarily driven by human agents who frequently have insufficient expertise and are driven by ~$200B a year in perverse incentives. Customers eat the costs of all of this through higher premiums.
SOLUTION: AI agents that enable personalized, unbiased, expert product recommendations at scale and at a fraction of the cost. We can simultaneously raise the bar of service while stripping out unnecessary costs, delivering those savings directly back to consumers in the form of lower premiums.
TEAM: 5 engineers (ex-Facebook, NYT, ScaleAI, AssuranceIQ), growing fast.
HIRING: Founding principal engineers/leaders with expertise in distributed systems, infra, real-time pipelines, agentic AI.
TASK: Shape architecture (AWS, Kafka, Python, Kubernetes, WebRTC); scale for 1000s of concurrent calls under 400ms latency; mentor as we hit 50+ engineers; directly help families save on premiums.
YOU: Obsess over reliable code, solve tough problems, ship fast, explain concepts clearly, learn quickly.
PERKS: Competitive salary/equity, full benefits, top tools, encouraged recharge time, quarterly retreats (hackathon + vacation).
Email Kyle Moseley: [email protected] with resume and why Stoke.
Comment · 1 year ago
I also run a small B2C company (https://pastmaps.com). Here's what worked for me:
First 1000 users: daily manually done reddit posts. Very time-consuming and annoying, but it gets the job done. Just make sure the content drives users back to the site and is actually relevant, interesting, and valuable
Next 100K users: programmatic long-tail SEO. obviously this is unique to my own product, but I realized that people were organically already searching for the data contained within the maps I host. By focusing on organizing that data and making it understandable to Google, I started a traffic flywheel that's paid off massively.
I'm now exploring programmatic social media marketing as the next lever for the next 1M users as it directly drives even further benefits on the SEO side
One last thought - whatever growth channel you pick should really align with the product you are building. Some products are a great fit for SEO, others not. Some are awesome for Tiktok/Reels, others not. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution.
Good luck!
Comment · 1 year ago
It's currently 60% premium subscriptions to unlock advanced features (LiDAR layers for example) and then 40% for more traditional physical map print sales. I didn't intend to get into the physical ecommerce world with this but customers kept asking over and over again for ways to purchase the maps for display so I finally gave in last year. Figuring out the supply chain, shipping, graphics design process, etc has been a bit of a lift but fun to do. We have 2.2M unique product variants available so that's also been a bit fun to wrangle!
Comment · 1 year ago
I also love David Rumsey's collection! Check out the rumsey map center at Stanford if you ever find yourself in the area, it's ridiculously cool
Pastmaps was really born out of my desire for more advanced features, layers, and tools on rumsey's site and I'm hoping I can eventually deliver on that vision (spoilers: I'm definitely not there yet)
Comment · 1 year ago
Soon! I currently only have coverage for the US but I am expanding globally in Q1 2025. Just not enough hours in the day
Comment · 1 year ago
You hit the nail on the head - my primary use-case is genealogy research!
Former vc-backed ecommerce and travel founder. Ex-FAANG working on mobile OS, Growth, and Search
Social: https://threads.net/@that.map.guy.craig
Reachouts: [email protected]