Start-up Society #41: The GovTech Issue 🏛
Keeping the American Dream Alive
Welcome to the 41st edition of Start-up Society! This is a weekly blog that promotes nationwide entrepreneurship and highlights some of the most exciting start-ups in the country striving to keep the American Dream alive.
Make sure you check out the previous issue, if you have not already, here!
In today’s issue, we are going to look at three companies innovating within the public sector and regulatory environment. The GovTech industry is set to be worth $1 trillion per year by 2025.
Join us as we uncover a company utilizing data to make cities smarter, a group of fintech experts and regulators combatting money laundering, and a start-up developing the platform for designing your city’s transportation future. All three companies are based in San Francisco — perhaps Washington D.C. is not where all governmental innovation lives after all.
California
CITYDATA.ai
HQ: San Francisco
Founded: 2020
Total Raised: $2.2M
About the Company
- CITYDATA.ai has three main products/services; CITYDASH.ai, CITYCHAT.ai, and CITYTRACE. The company’s main function is to measure the presence, activity, and movement of people to build digital replicas for smarter cities and real-world businesses. Their geospatial AI platform provides fresh, accurate, anonymized, and actionable insights into how people interact with the real world.
- The company’s platform leverages a deep understanding of location intelligence to open valuable insights about customers, enabling brands to understand and connect to targeted audiences while measuring foot traffic and advertising success.
- CITYDATA.ai analyzes thousands of cities on a global scale. Its self-serve map-based visual dashboard called CITYDASH.ai combines public and private datasets to unearth insights for civic impact.
- The company raised $2.2 million of seed funding from Suresh Shanmugham, William Bao Bean, and Madhusudan Swami on October 15, 2020. Sharil Tarmizi and Bernard Harguindeguy also participated in the round.
Meet the Team
Apu Kumar, Founder & CEO
- Previously, Apu earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Mumbai in Engineering and his Master’s from Stanford University in Engineering and Earth Sciences.
- Apu served as the SVP of Global Sales at BlueStacks for over 4.5 years. He has also held senior leadership roles at iconic technology brands like Hewlett Packard, Phoenix Technologies (acquired by HP), CNET.com, and mySimon (acquired by CNET).
The Start-up Society Assessment
- CITYDATA.ai is building four concurrent products that all work in unison around their main offering. Splitting attention is proven to be less efficient than deep focus, however software offerings are made up of features, which offer its users increased usability and value.
- The fact is that each of their software offerings are supporting the overall goal of the company, which is to bring in the next wave of city management and planning. Offering the public sector new solutions to simulate public spaces allows for more intelligent and intellectual planning and construction. State and local direct general expenditures in the United States increased from approximately $1.1 trillion in 1977 (in inflation-adjusted 2017 dollars) to $3.1 trillion in 2017 — a 178 percent increase over 40 years.
- There is a clear sizable market here combined with public data to fuel CITYDATA.ai as they refine their products in order to drive increased value to the public sector.
Go Deeper
CITYDATA.ai opens access to census demographic APIs across 8 countries
The Top-100 GovTech Shining Stars of 2021
Hummingbird
HQ: San Francisco
Founded: 2017
Total Raised: $11.8M
About the Company
- Hummingbird is a provider of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance technology. Its products have driven efficiency gains of 80–90% in financial services providers’ workflows for investigating and reporting suspicious financial activity.
- Hummingbird offers two main products: a case management, investigation, and reporting platform; and an API for validating and filing regulatory reports. These products drive down costs, improve accuracy, and automate financial compliance programs, while also facilitating collaboration and technological advancements.
- Since its launch in 2017, the company has helped major financial institutions with trillions in assets under management, as well as tech-savvy trailblazers such as Brex, Upgrade, and Etsy, orchestrate their compliance programs.
“We invested in Hummingbird since its inception because it is a business at the intersection of two important trends accelerated by the pandemic — finance embedded in all our digital experiences and the digitization of regulation. The Hummingbird team cracked the code for automation in AML where others have struggled.” — Kabir Kumar, Director of Flourish Ventures
- On July 16, 2020, the company raised $8.2M in its Series A funding round. The round was led by Flourish Ventures with participation from Lachy Groom and Jon Zieger, and seed investors Homebrew, Designer Fund, and TTV Capital.
Meet the Team
Joe Robinson, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Product & Operations
- Previously Product consultant at IDEO.org, Vice President of Risk & Data Science at Circle, senior product lead at Square, and director of product marketing at Brightcove.
- He is a Board member of ACAMS Northern California, West Coast AML, and is CAMS certified.
Matthew Van Buskirk, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Regulatory
- Previously director of regulatory affairs at Circle, manager at Treliant Risk Advisors, and regulator at the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision.
- Matthew earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Colorado College.
Jo Ann Barefoot, Co-Founder & Board Member
- Formerly Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, U.S. Senate staff, and managing director at KPMG.
- She is concurrently CEO of Barefoot Innovation Group and Alliance for Innovative Regulation.
- She attended Ohio Wesleyan University, the University of Michigan, and The George Washington University.
Jesse Reiss, Co-Founder & CTO
- Previously Director of Engineering at Square from 2012 to 2017.
- Received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering Physics and French from the University of California, Berkeley.
Ryan Gerard, Co-Founder
- Also ex-Square, Ryan most recently served as Engineering Lead — Caviar
- Received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Start-up Society Assessment
- The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2–5% of global GDP, or $800 billion — $2 trillion in current US dollars, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
- Amazingly, law enforcement officials reportedly catch less than 1% of this money laundering. Modern criminals have become tech-savvy making it that much harder to stop them in their tracks.
- Drug cartels, organized crime, weapons sales, political corruption, and human trafficking all rely on money movement through our financial system. Hummingbird’s technology reduces cumbersome paperwork, provides insightful analytics, and enables collaboration for compliance professionals and law enforcement agents to fight these criminals.
Go Deeper
Hummingbird: automating financial compliance technology
Remix
HQ: San Francisco
Founded: 2014
Total Raised: $27 million
About the Company
- Remix is a public transportation platform designed to assist cities in managing and exploring new concepts related to public transit. Using a drag and drop interface (see below), cities are newly enabled to make decisions in the best interest of their communities.
- Auckland, New Zealand’s department of transportation claims Remix’s dashboard reduced planning time by 92 percent during a recent transport network redesign, and King County Metro claims it shaved over a year off of its 2040 transit plan.
“We started with an aspiration to make public transportation more efficient and effective, and we’re proud of the success more than 300 cities have had using the Remix platform to date. Now, cities have asked for support managing the proliferation of private mobility options, including ridesharing, dockless bikes, escooters, and eventually autonomous vehicles. We expanded the Remix platform to do that, so cities can take a holistic approach to improving transportation policy, routes, and infrastructure.” — Tiffany Chu, CEO of Remix
- The company raised $15 million of Series B venture funding in a deal led by Energy Impact Partners on February 27, 2019, putting the company’s pre-money valuation at $45 million. Sequoia Capital, Purpose Built Ventures, and Four Cities Capital also participated in the round. The funds will be used by the company to continue innovating its product while scaling to more cities around the world.
Meet the Team
Tiffany Chu, Co-Founder & CEO
- Previously, Tiffany earned her Bachelor's degree in architecture and urban planning from MIT.
- Tiffany was a fellow at Code for America, the first UX hire at Zipcar, and is an alum of Y Combinator.
- Tiffany serves as a commissioner of the San Francisco Department of the Environment and sits on the city’s Congestion Pricing Policy Advisory Committee.
Dan Getelman, Co-Founder & CTO
- Previously, Daniel earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied Technology, Computer Science & Managerial Analytics.
- Dan started an education technology company, Lore, that was acquired by Noodle, Inc. in 2013.
Nicole Jordan, COO
- Previously, Jordan earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of California Davis in Civil Engineering and earned her MBA from the Wharton School of Business.
- She kicked her career off serving 10 years at PG&E working in a variety of roles. She honed her skills as a customer success specialist at C3 energy and Fond Inc. She joined Remix in the same position before she became COO in 2019.
The Start-up Society Assessment
- There is a strong trend indicating the mass movement of Americans to cities (see below). As the population becomes more concentrated on cities, there will need to be advancements in how cities manage and plan their transportation infrastructure.
- Remix has correctly identified and innovated around a growing pain point that is driven by urbanization, which is an accelerating trend driven by human nature.
- There is a clear market that fits the Remix solution as indicated by their users' testimonials. On top of this, there is a strong team behind the product that will drive the company to improve our cities and service the natural urbanization we are currently bearing witness to.
Go Deeper
Remix picks up $15 million to help cities make better decisions around transit
Remix raises $15 million to put transportation planning in the cloud
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to leave a comment, clap, and follow. Stay tuned for next week’s write-up, posted every Monday at 5 AM ET.
Authored by Arteen Zahiri, Rumeer Keshwani, and Elham Chowdhury
