Steve Feldman

Along the way they raised an enormous amount of funding for a relatively small startup – according to Crunchbase they had a $10m Series A in 2014 and a $40m Series B in 2016 with some pretty serious investors coming on board. Now they have launched their PASS which potentially can save users upwards of £4 per week on the cost of an Oyster Card (London Transport’s contactless card). The company’s explicit plan to counter that loss is to expand the pass by bundling in ever more private offerings, where it has more power to negotiate prices, until it offers a bundle that covers everything from dockless bikes, through rental cars, to ridesharing services. But the launch of the service has prompted concerns from some that the company’s end goal is to try and burn its funding to establish a large base of users that it can then wield in political battles with city authorities to gain better terms for itself.

Thanks to Ed Freyfogle, I have just finished reading Never Lost Again by Bill Kilday. If you enjoy books about the history of tech and the rollercoaster of a startup in the early part of this century, this is a great read

Last week I hopped on a plane to Barcelona to hang out with my pal Ed Freyfogle, strategise about the development of his OpenCage Geocoder business (where I am an advisor) and to support him at the launch of geomob in Barcelona. Barcelona is an awesome city with great food, wonderful walks, beautiful buildings and of course the beach, but I think it is fair to say that the tech scene in general and the geo scene in particular are not as well developed as they are in London. Then it was time for the traditional geomob drinks at a local hostelry, the staff struggled a bit with the concept of running a tab but it didn’t stop us drinking plenty of beer, chatting maps and stuff, meeting new people and generally having a good time. There are already four speakers lined up for the next event in April, if you want to speak at a geomob BCN or a geomob LDN send a message to Ed.

If you are a follower of the OpenStreetMap Foundation mailing list you may recall that there was a flurry of concern in late November 2018 regarding 100 new members, all of whom worked for the Indian data factory GlobalLogic. The new members had all signed up in a relatively short time period just prior to the cutoff point for new members to vote in the annual OSMF Board Elections and understandably some people thought that this influx of new members might signify an intent by GlobalLogic to influence the outcome of the election (readers in the UK and US may be hearing an echo at this point)