Montana-based mapping startup onXmaps raises a round of funding fit for Big Sky Country

A mapping startup based in Missoula, Mont., which allows users to download sophisticated offline topographic maps outlining public and private lands and a number of other features geared towards hunting, fishing and camping, has pulled in its first major outside funding.

onXmaps has closed a $20.3 million Series A round led by Summit Partners. Bessemer Venture Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, Next Frontier Capital and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke also participated in the round. The company is calling the fundraise one of the biggest ever among startups based in Montana.

onX Hunt app

This is impressively the first bout of outside funding that the 70-person startup has ever taken since being founded in 2009.

The company’s founder and CEO Eric Siegfried, an avid outdoorsman himself, had created a more basic program to integrate these maps with his own Garmin GPS. After finding his friends were interested in having a product like this too, he put down $27k of his personal funds into the venture and turned his wife’s scrap-booking room into an HQ of sorts, copying the software he’d written to microSD cards and laser-printing labels.

A big application of the Missoula, Montana-based startup’s technology has been in enabling users to track the boundaries of public and private lands while creating custom maps with other information grouped into “layers” for when they’re hunting, fishing or hiking. The company’s central product for desktop, mobile and Garmin GPS devices is an app called onX Hunt, which the startup says is used by “millions of hunters” though onXmaps CTO/COO Joshua Spitzer notes that “almost zero percent of users use the product just for hunting.”

The company’s maps cover nearly one billion acres of public land and around 121 million private properties according to the company. Users can download topographic maps of these areas and use their mobile device’s GPS functionality to follow their own movements along user-designed routes or the more than 400,000 miles of trails that are available in the company’s app.

Public data access differs on a state-by-state basis so users can either pay $30 per year to get access to maps for a single state or they can plop down $100 annually to see data for all 50 states.

The company has thrived inside the Montana startup ecosystem, which you’d be forgiven for not having heard much about. The company’s leadership is pretty emphatic that the company’s success owes a lot to Montana itself though.

“In the onXmaps history, Montana is actually almost like a co-founder in some ways,” Spitzer told TechCrunch. “The company that we have today could never really have been founded anywhere else based on the sporting history and sporting culture in Montana and the patchwork land ownership situation that exists with public and private lands.”

As the company looks to grow, it’s looking to build new products outside of its core Hunt app in the coming months and use this latest round of funding to acquire more customers and more data to strengthen its services.

Comments

The EHang 184 Is A Human-Sized Drone Taking Off At CES

We’ve seen some pretty cool stuff on day 1 of CES 2016, but probably nothing more eye-catching than the EHang 184, a human-sized drone built by the Chinese UAV company EHang . Yes you heard right — a giant autonomous drone that fits a human. It’s basically what you would expect to see if someone shrunk you down to the size of a LEGO and stuck you next to a DJI Inspire. Except no one was shrunk, and the giant flying machine was sitting smack in the middle of the CES drone section. EHang, which was founded in 2014 and has raised about $50M in venture fundingto date, was pretty gung-ho about telling everyone at CES that the 184 was the future of personal transport. And for the most part, people were too in awe to question them. But the reality is that the company probably was using the 184 as more of a marketing tool for their standard-sized drones like the Ghost . Not that we’re saying that the 184 will never be a real thing, just that it probably isn’t co...

IT Where

#Responsive_Webdesign start from #7500, #hosting_Service Start from #3300 Per Year #get #your #special offers at Itwhere Pondy #Digital_Marketing , #SEO , #Product_Branding at Itwhere Pondy Email:info@itwheretech.co. in M:+91 9092734853 www.itwheretech.co.in

Western Union Brings Money Transfer And Its Tricky Fees To Chat Apps

Remittance has always been a shady business. Migrant workers need to send money they earn home to their families, but get hit with fine print fees so less cash comes out the other side than they might assume. Remittance companies earn extra by keeping the margin between their own made up exchange rate and the real one. Western Union is the best known remittance company, with 500,000 brick-and-mortar locations around the world. But tech startups like TransferWise, Azimo, and WorldRemit are gunning for the business. They hope to increase convenience and reduce fees to lure customers away from Western Union, Moneygram, and other old-school remittance providers. So Western Union is going digital thanks to partnerships with big messaging apps. It launched its Western Union Connect system in October last year, followed by a partnership with WeChat for sending up to $100. Now it’s getting into bed with Viber , which has over 664 million “unique” users, thou...

Google Calls Out EFF Over Bogus Claims That It Snoops On Students With Its Chromebooks

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) caused quite a stir this week when it alleged that Google is using its Chromebook platform, which has made a significant impact in the education sector, to snoop on students. The charges were damning, with the EFF claiming that Google was violating its own corporate policies and using students’ personally identifiable browsing data/habits to refine its services, in addition to sharing that data with partners. "EFF bases this petition on evidence that Google is engaged in collecting, maintaining, using, and sharing student personal information in violation of the 'K-12 School Service Provider Pledge to Safeguard Student Privacy' (Student Privacy Pledge), of which it is a signatory,” alleged the EFF in its initial FTC complaint. Google takes such allegations very seriously, and has thus responded to every claim brought forth by the EFF. “While we appreciate the EFF’s focus on student data privacy, we are confid...

Google Announces Android Wear Update With WiFi Support, Always-On Apps, And More

It has been a while since Android Wear got any substantial updates, but today Google is announcing a big one. A new version of Wear will be rolling out over the coming weeks that includes a number of previously rumored features (like WiFi support) and some all new stuff (like always-on apps). Most Wear devices use the always-on ambient mode for the watch face by default, the Moto 360 being a notable exception. The new Android Wear version allows apps to operate in ambient mode too, so they remain active when the watch goes to sleep. That makes it easier to take a quick glance at the app instead of waking the device up and opening the app all over again. The watch will still only go into full-color mode when necessary. WiFi support is also coming in the update, which means your watch can be useful even if your phone isn't connected. Watches with WiFi support will be able to connect to WiFi and still get messages and notifications from your phone, provided it has an interne...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog