How FiscalNote went from idea to Series C
The path that recently led to an additional $10 million in venture capital
About 5,000 years ago, humans began scribbling systems of rules on stone tablets and the law as we know it today was born into existence.
The evolution of law for the next several centuries would take many twists and turns — from the rise of the Common Law system to the beginning of the mass production of books — but one truth still held true: the law remained disorganized and in the hands of the very few. As the world became much more complex and intertwined (the 20th century was a crazy time with two World Wars and the creation of the computer) this problem would only accelerate.
The last 20 years have seen incredible advancements in personal computing, the Internet, mobile devices, and the cloud. Large scale computing power, information on the go, and advanced artificial intelligence are now available increasingly to the broader public. But the retrieval and accessibility of law to this day has not seen the improvements of technology.
This would all soon change.
In 2013, a couple of high school friends — who hadn’t graduated from college yet — thought that this was a problem worth solving. They bootstrapped $25,000 and holed up in a Motel 6 in Silicon Valley, tinkering with what they thought might be revolutionary. Setting out on a mission to open up government data and invent the future of law they recruited a small group of incredible investors, advisors, and team members to join the cause.
They saw the world of D.C. politics as one of backroom deals and opaqueness. They saw the sheer expensiveness of organizations that sold information to a select few for millions of dollars. They saw organizations of all sizes struggling under the complexity and expansiveness of the law trying to keep it all together. They saw users trapped under the legacy of old tools and bad service.
And they saw an opportunity.
It was this lack of transparency and access that they wanted to eliminate. It was this craziness in the new world they wanted to restructure. And they sought out to build a unified and integrated platform that tied information together that was available to everyone from universities, non-profits, startups, to Fortune 500 organizations.
It was a grind. Their Series A fell apart at the last minute and many people doubted that the beltway could ever become a data-driven place.
But they kept at it. Every day. From that Motel 6 to Bethesda and on to D.C. and New York City. And as it turned out, they were right. FiscalNote drew educational institutions such as the University of Virginia and Berkeley; and Non-profits such as Code.org, National Resources Defense Council and Achieve. It spread to startups such as DJI, Lyft, and others; and Fortune 500s such as Salesforce, Walgreens, BlueCross, and Southwest Airlines. All of this happened in less than three years.
Monitoring and analyzing tens of thousands of regulations, hundreds of thousands of bills, millions of comments, and tens of millions of pages of legal text. FiscalNote had built the world’s most powerful platform for taking control of one’s relationship with government for any type of organization in the world. Their real-time information, advanced analytics, beautiful design were taking the industry by storm.
They were able to accomplish this because of their commitment to their values, to the mission, and to the amazing performance of everyone they brought onto the team. They committed everyday to leveling up, supporting the family, and being aligned and transparent. That was the secret sauce.
And they’re just getting started. That family of FiscalNoters — now exponentially larger in size — raised a Series C last week to continue their growth and their mission. As they look to expand the mission into the judicial branch, into compliance, and into the rest of the world, they look to the opportunity of a lifetime to build a company that is truly changing the future.
Thank you everyone and congratulations on an amazing journey so far!
