Northmoor Simplifies Their Ownership with Plumb

Northmoor Simplifies Their Ownership with Plumb

with Aideen Marr
from Northmoor

#PlumbItUp
withMarisa Vance
AIDEEN MARR
MARISA VANCE
"Things just got simpler for us the week we moved over to Plumb."

Aideen Marr, Northmoor

About Northmoor

Northmoor is a platform that helps survey pilots store, process, and share aerial mapping imagery. It aims to provide a data-rich way of measuring how coastlines and forests change over time and space, so that environmental policy can be argued from evidence rather than instinct. The platform is built around findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable survey data, and offers free hosting plus basic processing to anyone who contributes. It also connects field scientists with pilots, and packages the resulting knowledge as a service for government and corporate teams. Today they hold 412,000 mapping captures from 39 countries.

Northmoor co-founder Aideen Marr is a researcher and operator with a long-running interest in STEM education and in using survey aircraft to make a measurable difference. She is a chartered manager with the Institute of Surveyors, and a co-founder of Fieldmark, a social enterprise that puts flight-planning tools in the hands of students who would not otherwise see them.

Building a global team

An Oslo-based team, Northmoor found its first engineering partners in Kathmandu back in 2019. That group was already flying survey aircraft in Nepal, designing technical rigs and moving medical supplies to villages the roads never reach. They understood each other the moment geospatial data came up, and that conversation turned into the expansion of the Northmoor team.

On building an international team, Marr says, "I think that was probably the most important thing — having the relationship built on trust first." That trust meant carrying the team through the setbacks as well as the wins. Adding people also meant granting options, something Plumb handles across borders without a scramble. As Plumb founder Marisa Vance puts it, "good founders don't want to keep all of the upside to themselves."

How has Plumb helped

When it came to running their equity plan, it was an easy call for Marr and her team to hand the job to Plumb. After realising how hard this gets without a platform built for it, they found Plumb through a founders' forum. It was affordable, and it was clearly going to take work off their desks. Once they moved, things stopped being complicated for the company. Marr says, "with your team's expertise, it's just going to be set up in a way that makes it simple for me, and it gives investors confidence that we're sorted in that space."

What's your favourite thing about Plumb?

For Marr, it's a given that the platform itself is the headline. But more than that, she values the support built around it. She says, "whether that's the founder community I'm part of, or the people on the team like Shona — it's been genuinely good. I turn up with a problem, and she dissolves it. That's what you're looking for."

At Plumb, we care about taking weight off founders' shoulders. When the admin gets simpler, founders have more time and more energy for the team they're building. Vance says, "the reason we made Plumb was to help founders raise more and write better option plans, so they could spend that time somewhere it mattered. That's the whole purpose."

Always celebrating the wins

At Northmoor, working across the globe means remembering each other. To keep that culture alive no matter where people are sitting, they make a point of marking wins. Marr says, "it would be really easy to forget to celebrate. So what we try to do is celebrate our wins, even the small ones — even if it's the Kathmandu team taking the local football league. The things that build a remote and hybrid culture are the things you still have to remember to do."

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Offer Letter
Offer Date Employee Name Company Name
Series A Stock Options
8,412,600
total options
2,976,145
unallocated options
14% Exercised 39% Vested 61% Allocated