The Geospatial Index: Why Understanding the Business of GIS Changes Your Career, Your Income, and the Future of Our Industry
The Geospatial Index: Why Understanding the Business of GIS Changes Everything
Most GIS professionals spend years mastering tools, workflows, and data. Far fewer understand the business behind the technology we use every day. And almost none look at geospatial as an investable industry with measurable performance, competitive dynamics, and long-term economic signals.
But that’s exactly what Wil Waters set out to analyze. And in doing so, he uncovered something powerful.
Our industry has a financial story. And if you understand that story, you can make smarter career decisions, earn more, and participate in the growth of the very companies shaping the tools you use.
This isn’t investment advice. It’s a deeper look at the economics of geospatial and why it matters more than most people realize.
How a GIS Professional Built the First Geospatial Stock Index
In 2022, Wil decided to answer a surprisingly simple question.
How is the geospatial industry actually performing?
Not the hype. Not the analyst reports predicting billions in growth. The real performance of the companies doing the work, selling the tools, launching the satellites, processing the imagery, and building the software.
To do this, he built an equal-weighted index of every publicly traded company with meaningful geospatial activity. Everything from mapping software to sensor manufacturers to big tech companies with major spatial products.
No weighting. No complicated financial engineering.
Just one hundred dollars into every company that truly touches geospatial.
And then he watched what happened.
What the Index Reveals About the State of Geospatial
When you look at hundreds of companies together, you start seeing real patterns.
1. Geospatial is growing, but unevenly
The Geospatial Index has outperformed the S&P 500 over many snapshots, though the spread varies with market volatility. What’s clear is that a subset of companies is driving most of the growth.
The pure-play geospatial companies, the ones we tend to cheer for, often struggle.
But the adjacent companies, the ones embedding geospatial into much larger product lines, are delivering most of the returns.
2. Spatial databases are the economic engine
One unexpected insight from the contribution analysis is that database and enterprise data companies are disproportionately responsible for the index’s compound growth.
If you’re a GIS professional wondering what to learn next, this alone is a major signal.
Tools evolve. APIs change.
But spatial databases remain the foundation of everything.
3. The industry is bigger and more interconnected than most people think
Looking at public companies forces you to see geospatial as part of global economic systems rather than a niche profession. Consumer tech, automotive, climate, logistics, and AI are all pulling geospatial deeper into their core stacks.
Which means the value of spatial skills is not shrinking. It’s expanding into places many GIS professionals don’t see yet.
Why This Matters for Your Career and Income
There’s a point in the conversation where Wil shares something most people in GIS never think about.
Worker productivity has risen dramatically over the past few decades.
Worker compensation has not.
That means doing excellent work—even being highly productive—does not guarantee you capture the full economic value you create.
And that’s where understanding the business of your industry becomes a strategic advantage.
Here are the practical takeaways.
Practical Outcomes for GIS Professionals
1. You need a multi-modal career strategy
Relying only on wages means accepting the structural gap that has widened between productivity and pay.
Professionals who combine wages with long-term ownership in the industries they understand are the ones who close that gap.
Even small, consistent contributions to an index over decades can match or exceed a lifetime of wage growth.
2. You already have an advantage most investors lack
The average investor doesn’t know the difference between Earth observation and Earth Engine.
You do.
You understand how lidar works, what actually drives GIS adoption, and which companies have real products versus slideware. That domain knowledge is a legitimate analytical edge.
3. Career decisions get clearer when you understand who is growing
If databases consistently outperform, that tells you something about where to skill up.
If Earth observation companies face slow revenue growth, that shapes your expectations for specific subfields.
Understanding the economics of geospatial helps you navigate your own career with far more clarity.
4. You start seeing how AI, cloud, and geospatial converge
Look at the list of public companies investing heavily in spatial data.
Look at who’s being acquired.
Look at who is expanding their geospatial engineering teams.
It’s not just mapping companies.
It’s cloud platforms, AI labs, automotive, insurance, energy, logistics, and defense.
That means opportunities are moving upstream into places traditional GIS job seekers often overlook.
Where Geospatial Goes Next
What Wil’s work reveals is simple.
Geospatial is not a small industry.
It is a foundational layer of the modern economy.
But if GIS professionals don’t understand the economics of their own field, the decisions about where it goes next will be made entirely by people outside it.
Understanding the business side of geospatial is not a distraction from the technical work.
It is a way to see the full system.
It helps you understand why certain tools get built, which companies shape the ecosystem, and how the value you create actually flows.
And it gives you another path to participate in the future of the field, not just through your work but through long-term ownership.
Final Thoughts
If you want to shape your career intentionally, see where the industry is heading, and understand how value moves through the companies that define geospatial, you need to pay attention to the business side.
Not to trade stocks.
Not to speculate.
But to understand the system you’re operating in.
That’s what the Geospatial Index reveals. And it’s why this conversation matters for every GIS professional thinking about their future.
If you want to go deeper, you can listen to the full episode with Wil Waters on Spatial Stack. It’s one of the most eye-opening discussions we’ve had about the economics behind the maps we make.
