Building Tech that Powers Ecosystems with Ed Schmalzle
- Heather Fields
- Posted on
- Compass Series
Ed Schmalzle, Chief Technology Officer at EcoMap
Compass Series
Because every map needs a compass. In this series, we deep dive with the minds behind EcoMap to break down how we do what we do and how it helps you grow and thrive. This month we’re talking with Ed Schmalzle, CTO.
Ed Schmalzle leads engineering at EcoMap as Chief Technology Officer, bringing a product-driven mindset to how we scale our technology. Before joining the team, he served as VP of Engineering at WholesomeCo Cannabis, where he built their tech-first e-commerce platform from scratch, the first engineering leader to build something of this kind for the cannabis marketplace in Utah.
Those experiences significantly influenced his perspective on infrastructure, leading him to emphasize usability, performance, and rapid adaptability. At EcoMap, he’s strengthening the core platform and ensuring our technology keeps pace with the needs of ecosystems across the country.
You’ve spent 15 years in tech startups across industries. What’s one lesson from that journey that shapes how you lead EcoMap’s tech team today?
One thing that comes to mind is the proclivity of both product and technical teams to solve all client problems perfectly. It’s admirable, but with so many different ways to approach a problem, it can hamstring you if you get caught up in the perfectionism of it.
In practical application, what’s most important is that we have clarity on the plan vs. certainty it will work. Everyone needs to commit to doing the same thing, align across that common goal, and push forward together. You’ll find out pretty quickly if it’s the wrong thing, and then you can pick a new thing to be certain about. The most important part is you’re moving together.
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I’ve been in the shoes of the entrepreneur wading through an ecosystem attempting to find the right connections and resources to succeed. I care deeply about building products that make that journey less arduous.”
EcoMap’s AI platform is innovative and impactful. How do you design tech that’s both powerful and easy for diverse users to navigate?
Innovation is useless if it’s not solving problems for our users, so we start with them. I work with our excellent product and design team to conduct user research and interviews with our current and potential customers. By understanding their pain points and the problems they’re trying to solve, we’re able to dial in our solutions to have the most impact.
As CTO, you’re steering a fast-moving tech vision. What’s your process for deciding which features or innovations to prioritize?
We’re thinking five steps ahead in terms of what ecosystem builders need, so when we say long-term strategic vision, we mean leveraging direct user feedback, platform analytics, and our own expertise to understand what will be impactful for our users in the next six months, 12 months, or even two years. So, it’s not just solving tactical customer problems today, but solving both the tactical and strategic problems we see coming for them in the near future.
Having co-founded digital services companies, you’ve been in the shoes of the entrepreneur, which means you’ve been in the shoes of EcoMap’s customers. How does that entrepreneurial mindset influence the way you build solutions at EcoMap?
I believe that, as we build solutions at EcoMap, I can get into the mind of the end user a lot quicker and easier because of my past experience, understanding what entrepreneurs need as they grow their businesses, as well as what an entrepreneur support organization needs to be able to provide to entrepreneurs in terms of digital infrastructure.
But that mindset is also core to how we build at EcoMap in general. We stay close to the people we serve, prototype fast, and measure success by impact. I push for flexible, scalable, and easy-to-evolve solutions because needs shift fast, and rigid systems don’t survive.
My past experience grounds me in our mission.
Ecosystem builders often deal with messy, fragmented data. What’s a strategy from your experience you use to turn that chaos into something actionable for EcoMap’s customers?
We give our users just enough structure to navigate the data without losing the richness of the ecosystem. Instead of trying to normalize everything upfront, we design flexible schemas that can accommodate variation while still surfacing common patterns. Then we layer on enrichment techniques, like entity resolution, classification models, and relationship mapping, to make the data more meaningful.
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I’m at the table with our customers, interacting with them regularly and listening to their needs and pain points. ”
Tech evolves quickly, and so do customer needs. How do you balance staying ahead of trends with delivering stable, practical solutions for EcoMap’s users?
Staying focused on the needs of our customers and solving problems for them is key in keeping us from chasing shiny tech for the sake of shiny tech. That said, it’s important our solutions continue to be best in class. We spend considerable time in research and active conversation with our own technical ecosystem to make sure we’re bringing in the right tech at the right time for maximum utility within our platform.
You’ve worked with both early and late-stage startups. What’s a key difference in how you approach tech development now at EcoMap compared to those earlier ventures?
Every company brings a different level of product, technical, and organizational maturity, so I focus on meeting the moment with the right approach. At EcoMap, that means strengthening what’s already working, like our data foundation, while evolving how we build, so the team can move faster and deliver with confidence as we grow.
EcoMap’s customers rely on our platform to grow their ecosystems. What’s one tech principle you lean on to ensure the platform is reliable and scalable for them?
Flexibility/Adaptability. Our customers’ work is always changing with new partners, data, and priorities, so we need to build in such a way where we can adapt with them. That means designing modular systems, flexible data schema, and data flows that enable us to evolve our product with the evolving needs of our customers.
EcoMap is pushing boundaries in ecosystem intelligence. How do you see your role as CTO acting as a compass for where the platform and the company are headed next?
I have intimate knowledge of all collected data: the types, the nuances, how people are interacting with it, both from our classic data pipelines and ecosystem data. Concurrently, I’m at the table with our customers, interacting with them regularly and listening to their needs and pain points.
So I have this overarching view of what’s happening, but then an intimate look at some of the golden nuggets of opportunity.
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