Remix

Remix started as a side project among four Code for America fellows sitting at neighboring desks. The early idea was a grassroots tool that would let citizens of San Francisco suggest better routes for Muni. Tiffany Chu had an urban planning background, and the project combined mapping and new technologies that the team found exciting. Their plan was to build something fun that pushed the boundaries of geospatial mapping.

The founders launched a prototype called Transit Mix in June 2014. It let users sketch a new route on a map by clicking from point to point, with the tool following streets, understanding one-way roads and contraflow bus lanes, and linking stop infrastructure automatically. Before this, drawing a route on a map was tedious, so the tool made it possible to go from a blank slate to a new route in about a minute. The prototype was small and had no user accounts or organization features. The team rebuilt it from scratch for real customers, with the first version taking roughly two weeks.

The prototype went viral. Code for America tweeted about it, and press coverage followed. While the team was at an offsite with no reception, their phones filled with 250 emails from planners around the world, many with detailed feature requests. The founders then called every planner and transportation expert in their network to ask what they thought and where they saw the product going. Those conversations led to the first customers. Matthew Barnes at the Oregon Department of Transportation gave the company its first real shot. When asked how much it cost, the founders had no answer, so they asked him what he could afford under his departmental budget, and that became their first deal.

Building for users from day one kept the product grounded. The founders also deliberately turned away lucrative private customers, such as companies running employee shuttles, to stay focused on serving local government. They made a costly mistake by signing TransLink in Vancouver too early. The product was not ready for an international agency with that level of sophistication, and the customer churned about nine months later. The team later recovered by building infrastructure for cities at that scale and adding international demographic data.

The founders say Remix now has about 55 people, works with about 275 cities and transit agencies across 10 countries, and has opened an office in Amsterdam. The company expanded from its first transit product to Remix Scheduling, launched in December of the prior year, and then to tools for designing streets.