Igor Debatur 0:00

If you want to build an actual map that can be used by professionals, it's a very different game. It's not even ten times harder. It's 100 times harder. It's very RD heavy. It's very business development heavy. You cannot get good satellite imagery if you don't buy it. You cannot good digital elevation models if you don't find them and if you don't mosaic them together.

Angela Robertson 0:23

Welcome back to the Stormy Stories show. I'm your host, Angela Robertson, CEO of Ace Tech. We are a community of tech founders and CEOs who understand what it's like to grow a technology business here in Canada. And today I'm joined by Igor Debatour, CEO and co-founder of Outmap. He is a serial founder who previously built and scaled upload care before launching a fast-growing outdoor navigation platform that helps people explore the backcountry with confidence. He's also an advisor, angel investor, and lifelong outdoor enthusiast, passionate about building products people truly love. We're so grateful to have you on. Welcome to the Stormy Stories show.

Igor Debatur 1:11

I'm glad to join. Glad to meet you, Angela.

Angela Robertson 1:14

You built Upload Care and then started again without Map. What made you want to jump back into the founder seat?

Igor Debatur 1:21

Honestly, I don't think there was any choice for me. I yes, I remember I always was a founder or founder material, as it's popular to say. So when I was 16 years old, I was building some communities for games. Then I built a community for mountain bikers when I was about 17 years old. When I joined uh company as a developer, I I like building stuff. But then I also understood that I love uniting people around some ideas, and it was just a good combination, I think, that made me a founder. So when my company was acquired, I considered this as a university to learn something. It worked really well. I was glad to do this for a year and a half, but then I just understood I cannot not build. I I want to do something else, I want to start something else. And then I joined Felix, my co-founder, and we started building out map. Continued building out map because he already spent three and a half years doing it as a side project. And then I joined and we started building an actual business and a company.

Angela Robertson 2:22

And that's so interesting because I think sometimes that's where co-founder relationships can be challenging, right? If someone's made this their passion project, and then you find this co-founder who's come in later on and is equally how do you find your relationship with your co-founder? How did you meet and what brought you together and how has it been building together?

Igor Debatur 2:44

It's a really nice story to tell. So uh when my company was acquired, I had an opportunity. I was lucky to have an opportunity to be able to think. And I had options. It's very easy to fundraise to the similar type of the company when you sold a company, because investors are looking for someone with track record, meaning that the person already knows how to do the whole story. And it would have been easy to fundraise for software as a service company. But then I also considered building something from scratch, maybe in a different direction, maybe with a different audience. And since I'm myself as an outdoor enthusiast, um and actually a quick story behind. So uh simultaneously with UploadCare, I launched another startup. I and my co-founder we launched an app called Riders, and it helped people to learn tricks and skills for skiing, surfing, snowboard, and 15 different disciplines. And it was quite large, it was more than a million of users and quite popular. When I had my riders sticker on my helmet, people were recognizing me everywhere in Europe, in the US, it was super cool. But we failed to monetize it. So instead of continuing building riders, we focused on upload care because upload care was getting traction. Uh, it was growing, team was growing, but I had this fear of missing out. So with Outmap, I was actually using Outmap because Fatmap, who was uh the competitor, it was acquired by Strava before it, and there was a major opportunity in the market. People were looking for something as good.

Angela Robertson 4:20

Right.

Igor Debatur 4:21

Did my research, I found that uh some other people liked Outmap, I liked Outmap, my friends liked it. So I just messaged Felix. Uh, I found the founder on Reddit. I messaged him and I explained that I have an interesting combination of skills. I know how to build a company from scratch, and then I know how to build adoption at a really large scale because writers had a million of users. And I started advising Felix. I spent several months advising him, and then I joined full-time.

Angela Robertson 4:47

Wow. And so you just boldly one day sat down uh and went on Reddit and reached out to Felix.

Igor Debatur 4:54

Exactly, yes. And uh it helped this approach helped a lot uh without map because we landed partnerships that we couldn't have landed if we weren't bold. But I told the Felix from the very beginning that I know where we want to be, I know kind of how to get there. And the only question is when, uh if we can go there faster. I'm pretty much sure that we will deliver what we want to deliver and we will get where we want to get. So that's why our partners trust us. And I think that's why Felix trusted me, because I actually I trust myself, I know this.

Angela Robertson 5:30

Yes, and you had such confidence, but also you had the user experience aspect too, right? Which is often a piece I think that folks fail to they fail to give as much credit to understanding who their user is and why they value the product, I think sometimes. And it's not always easy to have that combination of skills, like you said.

Igor Debatur 5:52

So what I think theoretically anyone can build any kind of business and they want to set some monetary goal and to get there. I'm just not this kind of a person. I think it's hard, it's hard for me. If I understand the audience, if I'm ideally a part of the audience, like it was with Upload Gear, I was a developer. I started as a developer, so I I understood what we are building, why we are building it, how we build it, and that's why it's uh easy for people to trust me. For outmap it's better, it's just easier for me.

unknown 6:20

Yeah.

Igor Debatur 6:21

I'm a climber, I'm a mountain biker, uh, I'm a bad surfer. Uh join the club. Yeah.

Angela Robertson 6:28

I am also part of the bad surfing club, but yeah, no, I get that. What was one stir early stormy moment when you joined Outmap that tested your belief in the idea? I know you mentioned that you're so confident and you knew exactly what you wanted. You reached out to Felix, but surely there was something in there that potentially, once you got behind the curtain, maybe shook your belief a little bit? Was there something there?

Igor Debatur 6:53

I would say that not being able to get any kind of salary for a while, it's definitely a stormy moment. For me, it's a bit easier because I have this full trust and understanding. But we decided not to fundraise. We can fundraise and we have options and people approach us. But we decided to bootstrap it.

Angela Robertson 7:16

Wow.

Igor Debatur 7:16

Being bootstrapped, it's limiting in many ways. At the same time, it requires us to be creative. And I know that uh, for example, in Apple, they have all kinds of resources you can ever think of. But at the same time, they never hire too many people. They're always limited. All their teams are always limited. I think it's just stimulates creativity. And also, a person who was a head of winter content for FatMap, he joined our team. And he explained to me that for them at larger scale, most people who actually delivered results weren't motivated by money. Money is important, it should be number two, three, four, a priority. But main motivation should be something else. So we just explored this at a very large scale. How to bring people who are actually interested to help build an outmap, not getting any monetary compensation first, getting something else.

Angela Robertson 8:10

How long was it until you were able to pay your team?

Igor Debatur 8:14

Uh it took us several months to be able to start paying at least someone. So five, six months. Then we started paying just a little, but then we started growing. So we planned our winter marketing campaign, and during this winter we've grown tenfold. So we are able to pay for to plenty of people right now. Still, we are very limited, of course, and we still have to be very creative in how we bring ambassadors on board, what we can offer. But just as a quick example, I randomly stumbled upon a guy on Instagram, uh a guy from Finland, and he pitched the idea in his Instagram. He had maybe 200 followers. He pitched the idea, he wanted to traverse Lingen Islands. Full traverse of Lingen Islands, fully unsupported. And the fun thing is that he wanted to swim across all the water just by himself.

Angela Robertson 9:10

Right.

Igor Debatur 9:10

It's crazy, it's hard to believe.

Angela Robertson 9:12

But yeah, I don't know.

Igor Debatur 9:13

I think one of my skills is just to see people who can actually deliver what they want to deliver. And I felt that this guy can make it. So I messaged him, I told him, Piri, his name is Piri. We want to support you as a cartography provider. We actually cannot offer you any send monitoring, but we want to help you to navigate and maybe to introduce you to someone. So uh he tried out map, he liked it. Then I introduced him to Charlie, our head of winter content. Somehow Charlie knows people in Mahmoud. So he helped uh Piri to lend the Mammut sponsorship.

Angela Robertson 9:49

Wow.

Igor Debatur 9:49

And a few days ago, Piri finished his first unsupported traverse of Ingin Islands uh with winter swimming. No one did it ever. It was 51 and a half hours, 10,000 meters of gain. And uh this post generated a ton of reposts and likes, and now he can be sponsored by anyone.

Angela Robertson 10:08

And we are there.

Igor Debatur 10:09

So Outmap is there. No, but did we help to build a story? I think so.

Angela Robertson 10:15

Absolutely, and it speaks to exactly what you were trying to build. You're creating that same experience that you had in looking for something like Outmap with this incredible adventurer, right? Who had this vision and something they wanted to do, but maybe lacked the navigational tool to be able to support them, and then you could be this connection hub for them. That's fascinating.

Igor Debatur 10:40

And we support people like this, people with bold vision, people who actually can do what they want to do, can dream of something. We started supporting Dave Cyril. He's a very uh famous mountaineer in Europe, and he has a project called 50 in Europe. I don't remember the exact name, but he wants to do 50 different objectives in Europe and in Scandinavia. And we are so glad to support people like this.

Angela Robertson 11:06

That's amazing. I want to touch on that a little bit because I I am also an outdoor enthusiast. This is kind of speaking to my heart. I love to ski. I live on an island close to Vancouver, and so hiking and swimming and everything, it's all part of my DNA. But I do find that there's a lot of noise in kind of the outdoor app space. It's hard to figure out, you know, who has the best data and who has the best mapping technology. How do you think about standing out in a crowded market? What have you learned without map? Is it relationships like what you just talked about, where you sort of build, you know, credibility for your brand, or is there something else that you do to try and ensure that you are found amongst the rest?

Igor Debatur 11:51

Yeah, it's a really good question. And it's one of the questions I addressed when I reached out to Felix first. I think this combination that I'm actually a tech founder and I know how to build very complex tech companies, it's helpful because the market looks crowded. It's very easy to start a mapping app. There are technologies, it's Mapbox, MapLibre. You can just use them, you can wipe code something, or you can code something, and then in a week or in a few days, you can have some basic navigation app. You can market it. Some people will even use it. But if you want to become a large player, if you want to build an actual map that can be used by professionals, it's a very different game. It's not even 10 times harder, it's uh 100 times harder, it's very RD heavy, it's very business development heavy. You cannot get good satellite imagery if you don't buy it. You cannot go digital elevation models if you don't find them and if you don't mosaic them together. So it's really complex. And I definitely relied on my network of very strong engineers who advised us to who helped us to build the solutions. So it wasn't just Felix. When I joined, it's a whole network of people who help us, and then we started bringing more and more people in our Slack. So we have president previous uh president of Avalanche Association of Canada who advised us. We have actually the original founder of FatMap who advised us. We have so many people who helped us in many different ways. This just wouldn't be possible without them. And it's again, it's a very RD heavy field. So we think that there's maybe five real competitors in overall whole world, and tens of others. We don't follow them much because they're just I don't think they're able to succeed because they just won't be able to build something more advanced. And we already did that, so super happy. Even cartography part, cartography part, you have to bring cartography designers. And we managed to bring two strongest cartography designers in the world just to help the map to look beautiful. Many people they won't even notice. They will notice, but subconsciously, because it's all in small details. But when you think about designing the map, there are so many zoom levels, so many objects, so many different uh audiences who need to browse it. It's very tricky. And it's what just one of the problems that we were able to solve.

Angela Robertson 14:22

And I think it's one of those arts that is almost getting lost, right? It's so rare that people actually pick up a physical map. So many people are accustomed to a few different interfaces and maps in their normal day-to-day. And I think it's one of those things where people converge on what they use most of the time, right? So, but if you can design a map really beautifully that's visually appealing, they will have more people wanting to use it and to to and it'll be easier for them when they're in that state of panic, trying to navigate, to be looking at something that they can recognize and understand.

Igor Debatur 14:58

Exactly. And it's uh quite easy for many people to distinguish one map from another to find which of them they like the most, but it's hard to explain why exactly. So beautiful map is beautiful, but how to make them beautiful, it's a skill.

Angela Robertson 15:15

I can completely appreciate that. Yes. I'm curious because Igor, you've been very humble in terms of telling us this story where clearly you've been able to pull in, you and Felix and the rest of the team, these incredible thought partners and experts in your field close to your business, and yet you've been building and growing, and it hasn't been always easy. When business is messy, how do you stay clear-headed and how do you keep moving forward even when you're in the midst of a storm?

Igor Debatur 15:48

Actually, this outdoor sports they help a lot. For me, it's a way of meditation to do backcountry skiing or to ride uphill on a bike. And we actually start running uh Felix is currently in Squamish and I'm in Squamish as well. Oh, are you? So we ride bikes every day, and on our uphill routes, we just uh talk to each other, we brainstorm, or we just uh keep silence and we think it's super helpful to get rid of any extra thoughts. Climbing climbing as well, climbing helps too.

Angela Robertson 16:16

That's amazing. I think it's so interesting that with all of the progression we've had with technology that people don't take as many outdoor meetings. I'm a huge proponent of having a call outdoors or having a meeting outdoors, whether it's going for a walk or a bike or whatever, because it just really helps you to be in a different environment and reset how you're thinking.

Igor Debatur 16:38

Yeah. I'm a part of a mastermind group. We have a four people and we have our calls every month or every 45 days. And uh we started doing these long walks. Usually it takes about three hours for this call. And uh it's funny because everyone is walking somewhere. Uh, two of us are in London, another one is in Switzerland, I am in Vancouver, and everyone is walking.

Angela Robertson 17:01

Oh, that's so great. I love that though. What a great idea. We uh have roundtables that our ASTEC members are a part of, and sometimes folks are meeting virtually because they're in different parts of the world. Um and I never thought to join a round table while walking. I think that's a really great suggestion.

Igor Debatur 17:18

It helps to think again.

Angela Robertson 17:20

It really does.

Igor Debatur 17:21

I don't remember whom, but maybe Einstein. Some people they really loved walking.

Angela Robertson 17:25

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think it's a huge part of a bit of a lost art, right? Is that you know we used to walk so much more and now we're so much more sedentary. And it's great to have companies like yours, like Outmap, with a vision for getting people moving and outside so much more.

Igor Debatur 17:41

Oh, thank you. We want to motivate people to do this more and more, and also to get back home safe.

Angela Robertson 17:47

Yes, to get back home safe. That is the big message, of course. Is there anything else that you want to share to our community that's listening in, to folks who are maybe founding technology companies in and around the lower mainland or across Canada who maybe are feeling like a little bit more alone or worried about where they're going with their business? What would you say to them?

Igor Debatur 18:12

There is no silver bullet uh for sure. I think right now it's a great time to start building something, especially for people who has who have ideas. And having ideas, I think, is the hardest part. Right now it's so easy to deliver, it's so easy to write code, it's so easy to provide design, to produce if you have an idea, just try it out. Uh, there are so many services, V0 codecs, uh, like basically anything. You can use any kind of tools, and then in a day or so you can have something up and running. And just unleashing the creativity became possible, it's great. And I think we'll we will see many founders who always were a founder material, but they struggled because they weren't engineers and they struggled to be engineers. But now it's different. Now all the products people, designers, they can also deliver something. And engineers, if they struggle with design, they can create a design. So I heard somewhere that the best combination is right now to have some understanding of product, some understanding of design, and a little understanding of engineering. And it's the most powerful triangle ever right now. So I think for people who have this combination, it's a great time to be alive.

Angela Robertson 19:26

It's the time to be the generalist, the great generalist. That's wonderful. Well, thank you, Igor. I really appreciate you joining me today on the Stormy Stories show.