Digital Map Finds Unified Directions After Sale

Digital Map Products Inc. of Irvine says it brings plenty of location technology expertise to its recently created, new private equity-backed owner LightBox, and benefits flow the other way, too.

“LightBox has a vision to make commercial real estate transactions more efficient and more cost-effective,” Digital Map Chief Executive Jim Skurzynski told the Business Journal in an interview this month. “We’re going to contribute to that with our technology.”

Digital Map is a provider of “geospatial mapping technology.” Its cloud-based location and mapping products are used by a variety of businesses—including real estate-related firms, such as Redfin Corp. and CoStar Group Inc.—plus government organizations and indirectly by consumers.

In May, it was acquired for an undisclosed amount by New York-based LightBox.

LightBox, which was founded last year, is planning to create a digital platform for professionals in the real estate industry. On the same day it announced the Digital Map acquisition, LightBox said it also acquired Real Capital Markets, a global marketplace for commercial real estate.

The 1-year-old company is backed by Menlo Park’s Silver Lake and Boston’s Battery Ventures, a pair of PE firms focused on technology.

Boundaries

Skurzynski will stay at the Digital Map helm along with chief technology officer Geoff Wade, who is also a co-founder.

Less than two months into the combination, Skurzynski is already seeing benefits for his company, which specializes in real-time geospatial data used for real estate boundaries and other uses.

The new parent company gives Digital Maps access and collaboration opportunities with other firms, and Skurzynski added that “we’ve already shared customer lists” with other LightBox portfolio companies.

“I can’t even see an end to it. That’s probably one of the most exciting things about the LightBox acquisition is the access to and collaboration with the other portfolio companies,” he said.

“We’re bringing a lot to LightBox, and LightBox is bringing a lot to us,” the Digital Map chief executive said. 

Real Estate

Digital Map said 20% of its businesses deals with commercial real estate, followed by sectors including technology, builder/developer, government, and residential/online real estate. 

Digital Map’s goal of embedding location technology into everyday workflows has allowed its more than 350,000 users to make informed decisions based on real-time geospatial intelligence.

Digital Map aims to increase access to accurate parcel and property data for use by businesses and government agencies to help them make better and faster decisions with its LandVision map-based real estate application and other platform solutions. 

The location intelligence platform is easy-to-use, configurable and customizable, according to Digital Map.

“With tools like LandVision, [developers] are getting out way ahead of the curve and finding these opportunities before anybody realizes what’s happening,” Skurzynski said. “They don’t have to get in their car and drive anymore” to a property they’re interested in.

Companies utilizing Digital Map’s technology include D.R. Horton, Zillow, CBRE Group Inc., Google, Uber, Microsoft, and the state of California. Google, for example, uses the technology to more accurately locate the points on a map.

“We’re touching half [of] the U.S. population every day through some piece that we provide to somebody’s solution that touches the consumer directly,” Skurzynski said. “Our strength is in kind of being the back end” to consumer-facing systems.

UCI Nexus

Digital Map’s original concept launch was in 1995 with the support of Psomas Engineering and Thomas Bros. Maps, where Wade had previously worked in a senior engineering position.

It opened its first office with five employees in Costa Mesa in 2000.

By 2008, it partnered with Google to obtain data on national parcel boundaries.

In 2016, it received a $36.3 million investment led by Silversmith Capital Partners, a Boston-based growth equity firm that typically invests in companies with at least $10 million in annual sales and 20% annual growth.

In 2017, Digital Map bought companies to expand into Mexico and Canada. That year, it also moved into its newest office next to University of California-Irvine.

It has 108 employees in the U.S. and 37 in its Toronto office, with 21 employees to be added this year. As of now, there are no plans to extend into Europe.

In 2017, Skurzynski told the Business Journal that the company had annual sales of more than $20 million. This month, he declined to provide a recent revenue figure, saying “we are profitable” with a 20% sales growth since the beginning.

“You always believe your idea is the greatest thing out there. It’s that attitude that makes it successful,” he said.

School Ties

The company said its pay is “very competitive” though it doesn’t try to match the packages offered by the likes of Google and other Silicon Valley behemoths.

“We hire some of the smartest engineers we can find out of there,” Wade said, referring to nearby UCI. “They love it here. We do interesting stuff, always on the leading edge of technology.”

Wade said the company is happy to train young engineers, even though some leave for other opportunities later on. Others leave and come back to Digital Map.

“I’d rather hire folks that are really smart and adaptable because one thing about technology is that it is always changing,” he added.