In this exclusive CanadianSME Small Business Magazine interview, Hongwei Liu, Founder and CEO of Mappedin, shares how a campus navigation project evolved into a global indoor mapping platform now powering over 6.5 billion square feet across 190+ countries and territories. He explains why most venue problems are really alignment problems, how a single, shared “map layer” can become critical infrastructure for everything from airports to SMEs, and why driving the cost of indoor mapping toward zero will unlock a new generation of location-aware applications built on top of every physical building.
You’ve grown Mappedin from a student startup in Waterloo to a platform mapping over 6.5 billion square feet in 190+ countries and territories worldwide. How did the idea start, and what problem were you originally trying to solve inside complex indoor spaces?
This all started with finding classes on campus. We wanted to build something for the next wave of new students. What kept us working on this was that, ironically, we didn’t enjoy going to classes much ourselves. Building was more fun!
Our first customer was the local mall, helping shoppers find stores and amenities. Then we mapped the university, then a casino. Along the way, we kept having to photoshop new maps and keep information up to date. We ended up building tools for ourselves to make updating easier. As it turned out, those tools were solving an even bigger problem (mapping an ever-changing indoors) for an even bigger market (property managers of the world’s 100M+ commercial buildings).
You’ve said most problems that venues have don’t start with an experience problem, they start with an alignment problem: every team uses a different “version” of the building. Can you explain what goes wrong when operations, safety, and experience teams all work from fragmented maps?
When systems don’t align, the consequences escalate fast. At minimum, more time is spent verifying, correcting, and matching records. At worst, a first responder or security guard doesn’t reach the scene of an incident in time and people get hurt.
At a technical level, using different maps across different systems is like trying to assemble a big project where some people are working in Microsoft Word, some in Google Sheets, and some on pen & paper. It’s just more work. And it introduces way more error into the system.
You often talk about “one map” becoming the new digital infrastructure for buildings. In practical terms, what does that look like for an airport, mall, or campus—and why is a shared, location-aware foundation so critical for both experience and operations?
Let’s take the example of an airport. As travelers, we can intuitively understand the need for maps and navigation, especially if it’s an airport we haven’t frequently visited.
But even regular travelers are often stumped if they are going just from memory: airports change by the hour. Gates change, domestic and international zones fluctuate based on demand, renovations are constant. Even airport staff need help navigating these environments.
Increasingly, travelers and staff are relying on digital tools (e.g., airline apps), which in turn need digital maps. If the underlying data isn’t coming from the same systems, mistakes happen: wheelchairs get sent to the wrong jetbridges for travelers; security lines experience more bottlenecks.
A common operating picture for travelers, staff, and security personnel is the only way to keep the planes flying on time.
Many SMEs hear terms like “digital twins” and assume indoor tech is only for large enterprises. What are the biggest mapping challenges small and mid-sized organizations face, and how does something like Mappedin’s Map Maker help them get started without big budgets or heavy IT projects?
Digital twins are the white elephants of proptech. Expensive technology searching for a problem! What has often happened is that people have implemented these big, expensive digital models of buildings (e.g., BIM) as part of new construction projects. When the construction budget is $1B for a major project, a $5M software fee doesn’t seem that high to have a fancy model that is supposed to be a step into the future. But when that building is completed and tenants move in, the maintenance costs of that digital twin cannot fit within the operating budget of the building. That’s why we haven’t seen digital twins scale beyond innovation projects. They had negative ROI.
Mappedin is building for the long term. We envision there being a digital copy of every physical building, not just the 0.1% of new mega-sites. So we’ve always had to make our products cost-effective per sqft. Our Map Maker tool comes with a free tier, and it’s been amazing to see tens of thousands of users sign up to map their buildings this way.
Mappedin is now powering things like geo-intelligent chatbots and wayfinding for major venues. Looking ahead, what do you see as the future of buildings and indoor-outdoor experiences—and what should Canadian SMEs be doing today to prepare and benefit from this evolution?
One exciting trend is the consumerization of enterprise tech. It’s happened everywhere: we all use iPhones and Macbooks at work. Dropbox has largely replaced FTP. Gmail has replaced mail clients.
Proptech has remained a laggard: for many of us, our homes are smarter than our offices. And where commercial and industrial buildings have digitized and adopted IoT, the costs are orders of magnitude higher than the equivalent gadgets for smart homes. But in areas like CCTV cameras and WiFi, we are already seeing the blending of consumer and enterprise grade, with costs falling as economies of scale grow.
We anticipate this trend will continue. In fact, we are doing our best to bring it about faster, by driving the cost of indoor mapping to zero. We think most of the value will be in applications that have yet to be created, and we are always looking for more creators to come build with us.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CanadianSME Small Business Magazine. Our platform is dedicated to fostering dialogue and sharing insights that inspire and empower small and medium-sized businesses across Canada.
