Israel’s Mapme gets $1M funding to map the world’s ecosystems

Getting to know different communities and ecosystems across the world is difficult. You have to know the right people and they’ll have to, in turn, introduce you to more people. Some folks will contact the local journalists who are well-connected, or they’ll join Facebook or Slack groups with the right crowd. But either way, the process is tedious and can be better. This is where Mapme comes in. Mapme allows users to input location-based content based on themes, such as startup ecosystems. It was founded by Israeli Ben Lang in 2014 and just received US$1 million in funding from local Israeli investors to map ecosystems across the world.

And these ecosystems aren’t just restricted to startup ecosystems. According to Lang, Mapme will be open to mapping all types of communities. If you’re an ecosystem builder like Lang, you’ll likely remember existing projects like Represent Map, which allowed anyone to use its open source software to create an ecosystem map locally. There’s also Startup Blink, which allows anyone to add their startups to a map. But Lang wants to expand this beyond just tech startups:

It doesn’t matter whether it’s an ecosystem focused on tech, wine or hummus, Mapme is an extremely exciting, beneficial and comprehensive visualization, marketing and networking platform.

And this is already true with the growing collection of maps on Mapme today. It has everything from the global community of 3D printing startups to the cycling community in Austin, Texas. Lang has expanded on his work in the startup scene and applied these principles to every possible community out there. After all, he originally got inspiration from the Represent Map software:

I used it for Mapped In Israel originally, but pretty quickly I couldn’t use it anymore because of the new things that we needed. So we built a system from scratch for Mapped In Israel which eventually turned into Mapme.

It’s with this that the feature set for Mapme expands beyond just a map, as the press release reads:

The maps are built in several layers, providing a simple visual overview at first glance, and then enabling deeper exploration of the content within the maps to give an all-encompassing overview of what is happening within the ecosystem. This perspective allows the maps to offer added value including human resources, marketing, networking, and much more.

With US$1 million in the bank, Lang and his two co-founders will have time to build out the data they need to map the world’s ecosystems for the next year. Eventually, the team will look to make money by offering the map creators tools to monetize their maps. For example, a map creator could enable premium listings on their maps or have special sponsored markers. Mapme would share in their user’s revenue, but Lang indicates that this is still far off.