Who remembers the days of Key Maps? Or, more recently, printing out directions before you headed to a destination? Only in the past 15 years have we been able to rely on applications such as Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze.

“If you think mapping is boring or isn’t changing, you’re not paying attention,” says Steve Roberson, CEO & Founder of MapRight, an online and mobile mapping platform. “You used to have to use a paper map. The ability to see yourself on a real-time map has
only existed for maybe a decade.”

His company is taking that evolution even further, allowing clients to navigate and build maps whether they have GIS experience or not.

“One function on the MapRight mobile app allows a subscriber to send an interactive map to somebody. That somebody can get driving directions to a property and view it themselves without the agent even being there,” Roberson explains. “That person can evaluate the property’s boundary, floodplain and things like that. A feature like that had never really even been thought of except in the past decade.”

Roberson unlocked his passion for mapping decades ago as he completed his Master’s in applied geography with a concentration in GIS.

“I was always fascinated with real estate and how mapping interacted with it,” he says.