Stephen Coast (born 20 December 1980) is a British

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and the founder of the

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...

community-based world mapping project and CloudMade, a geography-related company.

Early life

Coast grew up in

Walderslade Walderslade is a large suburb in Kent to the south of Chatham split between the unitary authority of Medway and the boroughs of Maidstone and Tonbridge & Malling in South East England. It was, until 1998, fully part of Kent and is still ceremo ...

and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, United Kingdom.

Career

Coast interned at

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include Wo ...

before studying

computing science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

(UCL). In July 2004, he founded the

project (OSM). Coast set up Z.X.V. Ltd. with Nick Black, Tom Carden and Ben Gimpert as a technology consultancy in 2005. In 2008 this became CloudMade after investment by

Nikolaj Nyholm Nikolaj Nyholm (born 13 September 1975) is a Danish serial technology entrepreneur and investor from Copenhagen, Denmark. He has founded four technology startups that have pioneered different domains, is an advisor to Minecraft creator Mojang, wa ...

and Sunstone Capital (company's website claims it was established in 2007). He resigned from CloudMade in October 2010, although he remained a shareholder. On 23 November 2010, Coast announced that he had accepted a position as Principal Architect at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Bing Mobile Bing for mobile (formerly ''Live Search Mobile'') is a search tool for handheld mobile devices from Microsoft as part of their Bing search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into Windows Mobile and Windows Pho ...

. On 3 September 2013, Coast wrote on his blog that he had started to work for

TeleNav Telenav, Inc. is a wireless location-based services corporation that provides services including Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation, local search, automotive navigation solutions, mobile advertising, enterprise mobility and wor ...

, taking care of OSM development for the company's Scout navigator. In March 2014, Coast became an advisor to Auth0, an identity-as-a-service provider. In November 2015, Coast published "The Book of OSM". The book contains 15 interviews conducted by Coast with various users who had participated in the project since its beginning. In January 2016, he stepped down from full-time work at TeleNav and started his work as a board advisor in Navmii. In March 2016 he started working as Chief Evangelist for

what3words what3words is a proprietary geocode system designed to identify any location with a resolution of about . It is owned by What3words Limited, based in London, England. The system encodes geographic coordinates into three permanently fixed diction ...

. In May 2016 he became an advisor in MapJam. In fall 2017, he joined

DigitalGlobe DigitalGlobe is an American commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on 14 May 2009, selling 14.7 million shares at US ...

. In spring 2019 he joined

TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

as a vice president in the Maps department.

Personal life

In 2008, Coast moved to the United States, first to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

. In 2009 he moved to

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...

with his wife Hurricane (née McEwen). In November 2010 Coast wrote that he would be moving to

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

. He moved back to

in 2013.

References

External links

Steve Coast's website and Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coast, Steve Living people English businesspeople Alumni of University College London Collaborative mapping Web mapping Crowdsourcing 1980 births OpenStreetMap people English computer programmers British technology company founders