a canadian startup

StartupMap Complete — See a map of Canadian Startups

Ever wanted to see where all the startups are in Canada — all at once?

Now you can!

I am really happy with the way the map of startups in Canada that I referred to earlier turned out. We launched it today at the OCE Discovery ’08 conference (thanks for the help Chris) and learned some new things about the Google Maps API performing on live servers!

Take a look at a map of all the startups we have listed on StartupIndex.ca . As you zoom in to sections, the autoclustering algorithm intelligently (usually) figures out how to draw red circles that are bigger if the region has more startups. If you’re not seeing your startup on the map, it’s because you’re being slow to add your current company — add yourself now!

Check out my work on the front page of StartupIndex.ca

If people are interested in using my modified clustering algorithm, just send me an email.

The back story:

The issue we had from the beginning when making the map is that we knew that if we just straight plotted all the Canadian startups on a Google map, all the pins would overlap and it would be pointless. All the clustering algorithms we used didn’t work the way we wanted — they were ugly and didn’t give an idea of the number of clumped points that they were clustering. It got to the point where the final map I made wasn’t useful enough to go up on the live site (much to my dismay because I spent so many hours on it). I showed it to the others working on StartupIndex and they basically said “yeah, it’s nice but not useful or pretty enough to put up on the front”. So we pulled it from our original plan and extended the feeds to take up the remainder of the page.

Late one night, I had the idea of how to make it work and be pretty — hours later and this was the final product. The others liked enough to put it back into the design. I hope you all like it! I find it’s fun to play with.