Welcome to Startup of the Week. A column highlighting BC’s most innovative and exciting tech startups. This week, we’re featuring Vancouver’s Matidor.
We spoke to Sean Huang, Co-Founder and Head of Business Development at Matidor, a dynamic geospatial field services collaboration tool. Matidor is solving the problem of complex and outdated field services solutions. Their system provides users with the ability to share data and standardize workflows, leading to better decision making and ensuring that all projects result in a smaller environmental footprint.
We spoke to Sean about what keeps him up at night, business lessons learned from badminton practice and the team’s favourite restaurant for celebrating wins.
Q: Pretend I’m your Grandma, explain what your company does.
A: In short, we help companies manage job sites through digital maps and online collaboration.
In the energy and environmental space, working on multiple location-based projects is challenging given most project managers and consultants are still using archaic tools like spreadsheets and complicated mapping software. Matidor eliminates collaboration and visibility challenges by consolidating key project information on one intuitive, map-based dashboard with real-time updates that can be shared between multiple parties.
Q: What was the impetus to start this company?
A: Energy exploration companies and environmental consultants are constantly plagued with poor visibility and a lack of collaboration on their projects in the field. Conventional tools like spreadsheets often leave people with missed deadlines, billions of dollars each year in liabilities and cost overruns. The process of accessing tabular and spatial information requires too many steps and involves too many people, making it frustrating, slow and costly.
We created Matidor to tackle this fundamental problem by offering a solution that allows multiple users to collaborate, share and update geospatial information and share critical project status in real time, achieving better operational efficiency and reducing unnecessary time in the field.
Q: Do you have a motto or quote that inspires you?
A: There are so many quotes that inspire me. Our company culture (and our product) at Matidor has always been about working remotely, whether at home or anywhere else, as long as we can get things done and hold ourselves accountable. I like this quote from Michael Dell, CEO and Chairman at Dell Technologies:
“Technology now allows people to connect anytime, anywhere, to anyone in the world, from almost any device. This is dramatically changing the way people work, facilitating 24/7 collaboration with colleagues who are dispersed across time zones, countries and continents.”
With our flexible working culture, not only were we able to grow our team from five people last year to 18 members now, but we were able to do so without growing pains. The motto of working anywhere while remaining a close community is definitely something that our organization will keep as one of its core values.
Q: What keeps you up at night?
A: What’s keeping us at night, and I am sure all startup founders can relate, is the uncertainty of our market and figuring out how to drive up our annual recurring revenue. That’s the metric that matters most.
Due to COVID, a lot of in-person conferences have been compromised, moving everything online. Events were an important aspect of our business development prior to the pandemic simply because they allowed us to have great conversations. From outbound sales and shaking hands with our prospects, to shifting towards LinkedIn and online events now, we had to adapt the way we were reaching our clients.
Q: What don’t people know about Matidor that they should?
A: Matidor is the only software product that combines mapping and project management with controlled, two-way sharing.
On top of this, our business model means that we charge per project location. By avoiding the pay-per-user model commonly used by similar software providers, we keep our clients’ costs lower, while also protecting their security and privacy. This model allows the number of Matidor users to grow exponentially as clients bring other stakeholders on board, which has been a major differentiator when compared to other software solutions.
We recently finished a Digital Technology Supercluster project, working alongside Unity Technologies and MNP, to build out a pandemic predictive monitoring platform by offering our geospatial expertise. This was a great experience as this proves use cases outside of our current market as well as signing on as a delivery partner with Unity Technologies. We feel this partnership is a great fit as we set out to bridge the gap between map-based data and 3D visualization.
Q: We know you love badminton, do you carry any lessons from the sport into your business?
A: A lot of people think recreational badminton is a backyard sport, however when played competitively it quickly becomes a physical game of chess. I am not a pro by any means but even during regular games, you have to strategically predict where your opponents are going and what kind of shots they would take. Patience and the ability to be quick on your feet are two lessons I bring from this sport into my day-to-day life.
Q: What’s your favourite local restaurant?
A: Manzo in Richmond. It’s a Japanese izakaya restaurant that has a great selection of fresh sashimi and assorted seafood. Considering this is usually where we have our founders meetings and celebrate our milestones, it’s definitely our go-to.
Matidor is nominated in three categories at this year’s Small Business BC Awards and would appreciate any support in terms of voting to get into the next round. Matidor is hiring a sales representative! If you are interested in working in a fast-paced environment they would love to hear from you. Please send your CV to hr@matidor.com.
Want to be featured as a Startup of the Week? If you do, or would like to suggest a BC-based tech startup that we should know about, reach out to startups@switchboardpr.com.
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