Carta Maps: Year One Review

This month marks a full year working on Carta Maps. It's been a fun project to work on and an extremely humbling experience. I have learned a lot about maps, no-code tools and more but probably have learned the most about sales, marketing, search ads, social and email marketing. As a bootstrapped idea, I've had to learn and wear all the hats of a business.

So far, MRR has been as high as $1,200, currently back down close to $900 since I stopped search ads for month while I rethink my search ads strategy and focus more on social too. Churn is high but expected since I really haven't found PMF.

I finally jumped on the .com train and purchased cartamaps.com for $1,250 and I already see a decent increase in organic traffic. I also hired my first contractor to help me with social ads. Luckily he is also a very talented UI/UX person so having someone to bounce ideas off of is very helpful.

I recently launched a totally free experience called the Designer. The new tool allows users to create a unique map theme from just one color. It generates a full color palette and then programmatically applies them to all 100+ map layers at the right hue and lightness. You can just download the theme and use it with Mapbox tiles or open it directly in Carta Maps.

I am hoping that this new free tool can serve as a good funnel to get people hooked on how cool they can make maps look and how much customization is available. From there, they can open it in Carta Maps and start adding their data and embed it on their website. Check it out at https://www.cartamaps.com/designer. Its very much V1 so would love any feedback.

Thats is for year one, looking forward to growing the business, potentially raise some money and really kick it into high gear for year two.

Thanks for reading!