Stephen Coast (born 20 December 1980) is a British

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and the founder of the

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (abbreviated OSM) is a free, Open Database License, open geographic database, map database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveying, surveys, trace from Ae ...

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

Early life

Coast grew up in Walderslade and

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, United Kingdom.

Career

Coast was an intern at

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

before studying computing science at

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

(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 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 corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

's Bing Mobile. On 3 September 2013, Coast wrote on his blog that he had started to work for TeleNav, taking care of OSM development for the company's Scout navigator. 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 became a board advisor for Navmii. In March 2016 he started working as Chief Evangelist for What3words. In May 2016 he became an advisor for MapJam. In October 2017, he joined DigitalGlobe. In the summer of 2021 he was appointed Vice President of Community at TomTom. In July 2022, it was announced that Coast had joined Grab as Head of Engineering, Geo Innovation.

Personal life

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

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. In 2009 he moved to

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

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

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

. 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