In 2022, as the artificial intelligence gold rush was reaching its peak, Craig Campbell made a counterintuitive decision. He walked away from a blank check from investors—a promise of unlimited funding for any new AI venture—to start something that seemed almost quaint: a website. That website, Past Maps, is now proving that the old school web is far from dead.

From Meta Engineer to Solo Founder

Campbell’s career path is one of deliberate choices. After working as an engineer at Meta, he founded an e-commerce tool for Shopify businesses and sold it in 2022, just as the AI boom was accelerating. His previous VC investors were eager to back his next idea. “I had my prior VC investors breathing down my neck, going ‘start something else. We’ll write you a blank check,’” he recalls. But Campbell had a different vision—one rooted in his personal passion for metal detecting.

While searching for historical artifacts, Campbell found himself frustrated by the lack of tools that could overlay old maps onto modern GPS coordinates. He wanted to identify where old structures, roads, and trails once stood so he could explore those spots for relics. So he built his own solution. The tool allowed him to take public-domain historical maps from sources like the US Geological Survey and align them with current satellite imagery, with an adjustable opacity slider to fade between past and present.

Campbell began sharing his creation on Reddit communities dedicated to metal detecting. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Other hobbyists wanted access to the tool for their own searches. What started as a side project quickly evolved into a full-fledged business. By early 2023, Past Maps was live.

The Mechanics of Past Maps

At its core, Past Maps is elegantly simple. Users enter a location and choose from a library of historical maps. The service then overlays that map onto the current Google Maps view. The opacity slider lets you see how a landscape has changed over decades or even centuries. The maps are georeferenced so that the old cartography aligns with modern coordinates. Campbell’s background as an engineer was crucial in building the backend tools to process and host these large raster images efficiently.

The use cases are surprisingly diverse. While Campbell originally built it for metal detecting, others have found applications in genealogy, urban planning, historical research, and even environmental studies. One daily user maps the locations of old oil wells; another traces the shifting course of rivers. “It’s a research tool, but it’s also just plain fun,” Campbell says. I personally used it to watch the Duwamish River in Seattle straighten from a meandering tributary into a ship canal—a change that happened over the course of a century.

Growth Through Organic Search

In an era when many websites are desperate for traffic and rely on social media algorithms, Past Maps has grown almost entirely through organic search. Campbell focused on search engine optimization from the beginning. He tagged each map and page with detailed metadata, ensuring that Google could index the content properly. When someone searches for “historical map of downtown Denver” or “old railroad maps of Pennsylvania”, Past Maps often appears near the top.

“As I started exploding out this data and making it finally available to Google and giving it a place on the web, traffic just started to build,” he explains. The result is a steady, compounding growth curve. From 20,000 monthly active users in its first year, Past Maps now serves over 300,000 users per month in its third year. That growth has required no paid advertising and minimal social media marketing—just good, old-fashioned web content that answers real questions.

Campbell sees this as a validation of the original vision of the internet. “This is how the web is supposed to work. This is actually the old school web,” he says. “It is alive and well, but only in these really, really small niches.” The phrase “old school web” evokes the early 2000s, when independent websites thrived on useful content and search engine traffic, long before the era of centralised platforms and algorithm-driven feeds.

A Subscription-Based Revenue Model

Instead of relying on display advertising—the traditional monetisation method for content sites—Past Maps operates on a freemium subscription model. Users can explore basic maps for free, but deeper access requires a $9 weekly pass or $52 annual subscription. This approach insulates the business from the volatility of ad markets and from Google’s dominance over ad tech, which the US Department of Justice ruled an illegal monopoly in 2025.

The subscription model aligns with Campbell’s philosophy of building a sustainable, direct relationship with users. He doesn’t need to chase page views or sell user data. His income is now comparable to what he earned as a mid-level engineer at Facebook, but with far greater autonomy. “I’m making the same as when I was like, an E4 at Facebook, which is like a mid-level engineer,” he notes, without regret. The trade-off is worth it for the freedom and the satisfaction of building something people love.

Embracing AI as a Tool, Not a Master

Despite his decision to avoid AI for the core business, Campbell has fully embraced artificial intelligence as an operational tool. He runs a local language model agent on his desktop that automates customer service. The agent checks his Gmail once an hour, filters spam, identifies customer requests, and drafts responses. For straightforward issues like refunds, it can even initiate the Stripe cancellation process automatically, only pinging Campbell for final approval. This has reduced his daily customer service load from one or two hours to about ten minutes.

Campbell is also using AI to tackle a harder problem: optical character recognition (OCR) for historical maps. Old maps are notoriously difficult for standard OCR software because text often follows curved paths along rivers or roads, letter spacing is inconsistent, and labels overlap. Off-the-shelf tools fail. Campbell has found success using modern large language models with reasoning capabilities, but he emphasises that it’s not a simple prompt. “You have to still bring that human spark into the mix,” he says. “It still doesn’t bring like that human-level reasoning spark, and creativity, and being able to stitch together decades of using tools like this.”

This hybrid approach—combining human intuition with machine efficiency—epitomises Campbell’s overall strategy. He is not anti-AI; he is anti-hype. He uses AI where it genuinely helps, but keeps the human at the center of the creative and strategic decisions.

The Resilience of Old-School Web Values

Campbell’s success story stands in stark contrast to the prevailing narrative that the open web is dying. While AI-generated content and walled gardens dominate headlines, Past Maps proves that a niche passion project can thrive by adhering to timeless principles: make something useful, optimise for search, treat customers well, and keep costs low. The business has no venture capital pressure to grow at all costs, no need to go viral, and no dependency on any single platform.

This is not to say it’s easy. Running a one-person business that serves 300,000 users requires constant attention to server costs, map data updates, and user support. Campbell and his wife handle everything themselves. But the reward is full ownership of the outcome—both financially and creatively. He is building a business that could survive even if Google’s search algorithm changes drastically, because his revenue comes from subscriptions, not advertising.

The cultural moment also works in his favor. As more people become disillusioned with algorithm-driven social media and crave genuine, human-curated content, sites like Past Maps offer a refreshing alternative. They are the digital equivalent of a local bookstore: small, specialised, and run by someone who cares deeply about the product.

Broader Implications for the Web

Campbell’s journey offers lessons for entrepreneurs and web enthusiasts alike. First, the “old school web” is not dead; it has simply retreated into niches where passion meets utility. Second, organic search remains a powerful acquisition channel if you invest in genuine content rather than SEO gimmicks. Third, subscription models can provide stability in a landscape dominated by advertising. And finally, founder passion is a competitive advantage that cannot be replicated by AI or venture capital.

The rise of Past Maps also underscores a broader trend: the return of the personal website. After years of consolidation into a handful of platforms, individuals and small teams are rediscovering the joy of owning their digital presence. Tools like static site generators, cheap cloud hosting, and open-source mapping libraries make it easier than ever to launch a niche service. Campbell’s bet on the old school web is paying off not because he ignored technology, but because he used it judiciously while staying true to a human-centric vision.

As AI continues to reshape the internet, the demand for authentic, handcrafted digital experiences may only grow. Past Maps is a living proof that a single founder with a good idea and a lot of dedication can still build a thriving online business—without a blank check and without following the crowd.

Source: The Verge News