Mapping Innovation and Panathēnea — An AMA Hang with Lars Rasmussen
🗺️ Mapping Innovation — An AMA Hang with Lars Rasmussen
By Joseph Perla, Founder & CEO of Hangout.fm
Lars Rasmussen—creator of Google Maps and early Wave architect—walks us through every step: from the .com layoffs that sparked Where2, through the money and technical hurdles of scaling Maps, to personal stories behind his song choices, and his latest project reviving the ancient Panathēnea festival. No quotes have been shortened or summarized.
New here? Learn about our first AMA Hang → Introducing AMA Hangs — Music + Conversation = Connection.
👥 Bios
Joseph Perla
Technologist & founder of Turntable.fm and Hangout.fm.
Lars Rasmussen
Co-founder of Where2 Technologies (acquired by Google), creator of Google Maps, core engineer on Google Wave, and early Canva advisor.
🎤 Full Interview
Introduction & Icebreaker
Joseph:
Lars:
Hello hi anyone here? Oh hi Joseph :)
Joseph:
Come on up Lars.
Lars:
Ok! 👍 ❤️ 😂
I figured it out :)
This wasn’t supposed to be my first song but ok :)
From Layoffs to Maps
Joseph:
What was the “aha” moment that led you and Jens to build what became Google Maps?
Lars:
Well we got laid off :)
Back when the .com bubble burst in the early 2000
And everyone was getting laid off
So we needed something to work on
And my brother Jens has a drawer full of startup ideas (still does)
Joseph:
That's inspiring for these times, where a lot of people are getting laid off; may be the impetus for creation of the next Space Maps Rocket company
Lars:
I agree!
Never let a good crises go to waste :)
This one particularly interesting because it coincides with the AI revolution
No more exciting new tech has emerged in my life time I think
And I'm pretty old :)
Funding & Acquisition
Joseph:
Looking back, what was the single biggest technical hurdle you overcame when scaling Maps to a global service?
Lars:
But yes back in 2001 or so my brother’s maps ideas seemed something a) deeply needed b) something a small team could have a big impact on
Honestly money was the hurdle
We tried and tried and tried to raise money but failed
Joseph:
Thought I'd add some fun energy to kick things off, from one of the best
Lars:
Couldn’t even afford to license a full mapping database let alone servers to run our maps backends 😲
Prince is the king :) I have Kiss on my list!
Joseph:
Also lots of founders feeling that too for last 2 years
Lars:
Grew up on ABBA and a bit later Prince ;)
For sure
In our case we solved it by selling to Google a few months before we were ready to launch
They had seemingly unending resources being a huge 2000 person company! 😂
And the whole world’s eyes on them :)
Still in that first year—despite all the buzz around Google Maps our organic traffic was shrinking
Performance Optimization
Lars:
It grew when there was press
Ok back to the music <3
My first song!
My beloved Greek goddess wife Elo (whom you know) sang this song (with backup choir) as her ‘wedding vows’ when we got married on a Greek island 7 years ago <3
She knew of course that ABBA is my all time favorite band (hers too) and tied to the best childhood memories ❤️
So there :) Back to maps 🗺️
It took us a year of adding features to realize the problem was load time
We had the first dynamic JavaScript driven site out there. It took a while to load all the script but once loaded our maps were much faster
But that first load took too long
Our PM Bret Taylor realized this and persuaded the rest of us 😲
Lars:
So we put all feature dev on hold and spent 3 months just speeding up the original load time 👍 🙌
Joseph:
Bret Taylor, board member/chairman at Twitter and now OpenAI
Lars:
And traffic has been growing consistently ever since
Lessons from Google Wave
Joseph:
Google Wave was way ahead of its time—like Turntable.fm the predecessor to Hangout I founded in 2011. In hindsight, what did you learn from Wave that helped you in later projects?
Lars:
Yes that one :) Never worked with a smarter human! (Also CTO at Facebook and CEO at Salesforce and now founder of multi-unicorn Sierra)
Ha ha yes this is my 9 year old’s favorite ABBA song right now :)
Well with Wave I made lots and lots of mistakes—to many to fix in time!
The key one though was this: I was building a tool for myself first and it turns out my needs of a communications tool isn’t well aligned with the mass market we were trying to capture.
Lars:
I spend my whole day communicating, collaborating, coordinating highly technical teams spread out across the world. So the tool I need is just way too powerful (and therefore hard to learn) for most people…
Wedding Vows & Love Songs
Joseph:
That first song you played—tell us about it.
Lars:
My beloved Greek goddess wife Elo (whom you know) sang this song (with backup choir) as her ‘wedding vows’ when we got married on a Greek island 7 years ago <3
She knew of course that ABBA is my all time favorite band (hers too) and tied to the best childhood memories
Backing Canva’s First Engineers
Joseph:
What first caught your eye in Canva as an investor, and how did you evaluate its potential in such a crowded design-tools market? As an advisor/early backer, how did you help Canva structure their engineering culture and hiring strategy to move so fast?
Lars:
Well actually back then the space didn’t feel crowded at all—it felt dominated by a single player Adobe!
Mel and Cliff had unwavering confidence still that they could change design—in particular for the non-pro designer who really didn’t need the pro features of Adobe’s tools; nor had the time to learn how to use them.
I got involved because after 100 nos from VCs this one angel our dear friend Bill Tai told Mel he’d invest if she could find a tech team Lars would sign off on (I live in Sydney at the time and had run Google’s engineering office there for a bit!)
Neither Mel nor Cliff are software people and Bill figured that was the missing piece
So on and off for a year I helped Mel find her first couple of techies
Lars:
Both former teammates of mine at Google: Cameron Adams (now their third cofounder and CPO of Canva) and Dave Hearnden (now their CTO) was next.
Before those two joined I had interviewed slew of candidates and turned them all down—Mel’s ambitions were (still are) astronomical and I argued she needed the best of the best to have a shot at achieving her goals.
It took a year because Cam had founded his own startup which had to play out before he could really join Canva—one of those cases where deciding not to pursue one startup had a profoundly positive impact on another!
Then once Cam joined Dave joined shortly after—although Google tried hard to make him stay by quintupling his comp overnight 😆—luckily Mel is more persuasive than all of Google’s money :)
Reviving Panathēnea
Joseph:
To transition to your next project, can you share the vision behind Panathēnea (in Greece in May) and the biggest challenge you’ve faced getting it off the ground?
Lars:
Yes for sure!
The most exciting (and terrifying) thing I’ve worked on for a decade :)
As you know Greece has a small but quickly growing tech ecosystem—in particular after the devastating crises that decimated the Greek economy for a decade
We first actually tried persuading a big existing American festival to come to Athens and we found by looking at Websummit in Lisbon and Slush in Helsinki
Spent most of 2023 on this—raised €60m for this project!
But ultimately failed to persuade the Americans to come
Instead we had this idea: The modern Olympics was inspired by a popular Ancient Greek sporting event
So we asked ChatGPT might there be other Ancient Greek festival that we could modernize into a big festival of innovation? Ideally across both tech and culture
And Chatty told me about the ancient Panathēnea—which I admit I had never heard about!
But the more I learn the more I think of it as the world’s original innovation festival :)
Lars:
Lasted for almost 1000 years! Was more popular than the Olympics at the height of it—people came from all over the Greek world which was huge back then for a 12 day festival in tech + culture + sports
Will feature 2000 people for 3 days, mostly a startup conference but with some 25 cool side events all over stunning Athens, cultural crossover points (actress-turned-founder, Clean Bandit cofounder), Marina Satti, speakers from OpenAI, DeepMind, MSFT AI, Hugging Face, etc.
Closing Thoughts & Calls to Action
Joseph:
How do you balance your instinct to “build” with the more hands-off role of investor/advisor?
Lars:
Look it’s crazy—the team has just 5 full time organizers all in their early 20s 😮
Building all this in just 5 months!
Like I tell everyone—if this team is representative of Greece’s youth then the country has a bright future ahead of it!
I can’t even begin to keep up with them :)
Joseph:
Any blind spots you see among early-stage founders?
Lars:
Here in Greece I think that American can-do attitude is still missing a bit—that of course you can build a world-changing startup from a place like Greece.
Same as Sydney 15 years ago; soon no one will question Athens.
Joseph:
Any last words?
Lars:
Yes come to Panathēnea already! 💜🇬🇷 7–9 May
Panathenea.org
DM me with questions anytime :)
This year will be amazing—next year even better!
Thanks for having me :) Hope to see everyone here again soon <3
Need to go put some ice on my typing fingers now 😂
🎶 Our Playlist + Liner Notes
Each of these tracks marks a moment in our conversation and personal history:
1. The Righteous Brothers — “Unchained Melody”
This was Elo’s parents’ favorite love song, and we've made it our moving-in anthem whenever we change homes.
2. Prince & The Revolution — “Let’s Go Crazy”
A high-energy kickoff—Prince’s send-off into the afterlife always gives me goosebumps.
3. ABBA — “Take a Chance on Me”
Elo sang this (with choir!) as our wedding vows on Patmos—forever my favorite.
4. ABBA — “Money, Money, Money”
Because who doesn’t need a reminder of funding struggles and boardroom dreams?
5. Etta James — “At Last”
Elo chose this for our Patmos wedding; after decades apart, we finally made it work.
6. Aretha Franklin — “I Say a Little Prayer”
That timeless soul and cinematic vibe—perfect for late-night coding sessions.
7. Adele — “Make You Feel My Love”
When the world seemed against our union, this Dylan cover did the trick.
8. The Savage Rose — “Wild Child”
My Danish rebel anthem—still resonates decades after its release.
9. ABBA — “Lay All Your Love On Me”
Because sometimes you just want to feel a tidal wave of devotion.
10. Arcade Fire — “Wake Up”
Met their early producer and saw the underdog spark firsthand—anthemic and unstoppable.
11. Tina Turner — “Proud Mary”
Americana power and reinvention—what startup spirit is made of.
12. Prince — “Kiss”
The ultimate groove—gave my teenage years their soundtrack.
13. Arcade Fire — “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”
A late-night cityscape reflection—perfect close to our set.
🚀 Panathēnea
Panathēnea 7–9 May in Athens: 2 000+ attendees, global speakers (OpenAI, DeepMind, Canva), and 25+ student-run side events across the city. Learn more & join us!
🚀 What’s Next
More AMA Hangs with artists, founders, and storytellers are coming.
Want to join? DM me on X or visit Hangout.fm. Let’s keep the playlist—and the conversation—alive.