EcoMap Technologies secures $3.5M of extra seed capital to revamp its product, expand its team

In a stride toward its vision of enabling entities to map their respective ecosystems, EcoMap Technologies recently concluded its second seed funding round, raising an additional $3.5 million in investment.

This latest financial injection followed the company’s initial $3.5 million seed round in June 2022. Las Olas VC and Cofounders Capital led this particular round, while TEDCO, IDEA Fund Partners, Conscious Venture Partners, TCP Venture Capital, 2ndF and Chris Cochrane also participated. 

Pava LaPere, the cofounder and CEO of EcoMap Technologies, told Technical.ly that this raise will support the company’s revamp of its core product — a platform that universities, tech communities, municipalities and more have used to map their own respective ecosystems. 

“The vast majority of these resources are going to overhauling and rebuilding our product from the ground up and really bringing a lot of the cutting-edge tech and data that we have on the backend to the front end — which is something that we’ve been wanting to do for a while,” LaPere told Technical.ly. 

The company’s raise will also support the addition of five team members. LaPere said that EcoMap Technologies’ team doubled from 15 to 30 principal staffers after the last raise.

“First and foremost, we’re bringing on two full-stack developers,” LaPere said, adding: “We’re bringing on additional engineering capacity to help see [the product rebuild] through, as well as support on the product side. … And then, we’ll likely add a few team members around digital ad management, as well as likely another account executive.”

This funding milestone is the latest in a series of achievements that EcoMap Technologies celebrated in the past two years. They include Eden Rodriguez, the company’s head of people operations, being distinguished as a 2023 RealLIST Connector; the aforementioned seed raise; setting up a new headquarters in the Bromo Arts District of downtown Baltimore; earning Breakout Company of the Year during UpSurge Baltimore’s centenary Equitech Tuesday event; launching the AI-enabled EcoBot, the approach for which LaPere said is similar to that for the current product upgrade; graduating from the first Equitech Accelerator; and landing a spot on the 2022 RealLIST Startups roster. 

The company’s ability to rekindle investor interest aligns with the upward momentum evidenced in the substantial fundraising surge of 2023’s second quarter, as highlighted in the Q2 Venture Monitor report. 

As EcoMap Technologies embarks on the next chapter of its journey, many aspiring founders might ponder how to replicate a comparable level of growth. For these people, LaPere has some advice.

“Invest a lot of time into really deeply thinking about the idea and the market, and making sure that both of those things are solid,” LaPere said, adding: “You can’t get away with just having an idea with no traction anymore. And so, the more time people can invest to really honing that stuff, it sets you up for the future growth later.”