Startup Spotlight #191: Matidor
Matidor is a YC backed project management software on a live map.
I got the chance to speak with Sean Huang, co-founder and Head of Business Development of Matidor, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.
Matidor.com is a YC-backed project management software made specifically for fieldwork — where it helps to be able to see what is happening with one's projects on a map. Their platform directly addresses an urgent need in the field services industry for oil and energy companies: collaboration. It helps facilitate the complex relationship between environmental consultants and their clients (operators, municipalities, energy producers, etc.), by enabling seamless collaboration on location-based projects.
Huang is a Vancouver-based entrepreneur with over 11 years of experience in SMB to enterprise-level sales, business development, business strategy, and sales management. In 2015, he co-founded his first startup in the mobile VR space and after some initial traction, the company relocated to Shanghai after being accepted into a cross-border accelerator. Currently, Huang heads business development for Matidor, a geospatial project collaboration tool for environmental consultants working with energy exploration companies.
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Startup Spotlight: Matidor
Problem: The field service industry has been overwhelmed by the amount of information flowing between stakeholders: Correspondence, reports, field data, photos, financials, and the list goes on. Meanwhile outdated and hard-to-use legacy software and spreadsheets do not offer much help: they’re complex, siloed, often impractical and trying to access information at the right time is like pulling teeth.
Market: According to the report from Environment Analyst: the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for the global field servicing industry is valued at $44 billion per year currently. North America alone represents about $5.3 billion. Our current niche is a $1 billion market consisting of mid-size energy operators and field environmental services firms in North America. According to another report, the global environmental remediation market in 2019 is valued at approximately $98.5 billion. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% and is anticipated to reach around $164B by 2026.
Solution: Built on an intuitive map-based interface, Matidor.com (YC S21) delivers real-time project tracking, collaboration and reporting among users. Matidor.com can provide both a broad look at a company’s entire portfolio – for example, all of the locations where project work is occurring – or be zoomed in to any single location for specific site drawings, tasks, communications while able to consolidate third party data sources.
Team: Founded by Vincent and Sean, both have founded companies before. Vincent has over 20 years of product development and enterprise software commercialization, a former technical lead at Google Earth with product management experience at Dassault Systemes. Sean has over 12 years in business development and go-to-market, with cross-border experience with his first startup in Shanghai.
Recent Success:
Huang: I think as a team we have been successful at iterating the product according to the demands of the market and not just one single customer. The reason why I use we are because it is a team effort at the beginning between Vincent and myself where I would actively ask the potential prospect what they liked or didn't like about the product, even if they didn't sign up with us, to better understand the market where Vincent would then prioritize and build out accordingly. This has been received very well in the market and we have established our brand as a constantly evolving product as opposed to the legacy software that is commonly used in the field services industry. Another thing we have been successful at was hacking our way through virtual conferences, we would join associations and leverage as much PR through industry newsletter and publications to garner attention as well as webinars.
Recent Struggle:
Huang: Sales cycle, even to this date. Being an enterprise SaaS platform definitely has its challenges in terms of pushing deals down the pipeline to a close. In this industry the market is very cyclical meaning even if you identified the right stakeholders, timing-wise it might always work out. For us, it's a lot of relationship-building which takes time and the larger the deal size the more blockers we would face and at times just identifying one internal champion is not enough to move the needle forward. We have also struggled with hires before as a Canadian company trying to recruit great talents in US, our go-to-market strategy has always been to hire someone local in that area who has the industry expertise to help us open doors.
Founder Advice:
Huang: Stop, listen and observe. Being an entrepreneur is very challenging since most times you're always on the move; an email comes in or a phone call often results in a knee-jerk reaction to respond or keep chasing down clients or prospects blindly. I think persistence and patience come hand in hand; my advice for entrepreneurs is really to have that discipline to be patient and observe more in certain situations, because at times, when you rush into a response or act on something, it might have a negative effect on the long run.
Two Cool Founders You Should Know About:
Huang: Here are two founders you should check out next!
Brandon Waselnuk, Founder of Codex: Codex is a devtool and local first solution that enables just-in-time documentation for deep collaboration wherever you work.
Jason Kim, Founder of Big Whale Labs: Big Whale Labs is a web3 startup building at the intersection of zk, social, and crypto.
If you enjoyed this Startup Spotlight on Matidor, check out their Case Study below:
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Previous F2F Case Studies:
Case Study: Matidor's Sean Huang Builds For The Market, Not Any One Particular Customer
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Case Study: Paces CEO James McWalter Learned To Turn Rejection Into Success Through Curiosity
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