State of Gov Tech 2024: Startup Showcase Winners

All right, hello everyone. Dustin Haisler here from Government Technology Magazine. We're breaking down our In Case You Missed It this week. We've got a special episode dedicated to some of our winners from the 2024 State of GovTech event that took place just back in September, seems like just yesterday, in Kansas City. Now these companies all had the opportunity to share what they were doing in the market and the innovations that they were driving forth to government, and out of 23 participants, we have landed with 5 of the rock stars that had the most innovative and promising GovTech technologies as judged by all of the great judges that participated in that event. Now, the way it's gonna work today, it's gonna be a little bit different. So rather than me kind of digging into questions, we're gonna give each of them an opportunity to share with you their pitch for their company and the market, the problems that they're solving. I'm gonna come in sporadically and introduce the next one, And then we'll round up at the end with a question for all of them. So we're going to go ahead and get started with our first company, Forge. We've got Jillian Wildfire here to break it down. Jillian, thanks for joining us, and, uh, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much for having me. Uh, hi, I'm Jillian Wildfire, CEO of Forge, and we are clarifying city codes so everybody can build faster. Um, and that means energy, that means commercial, that means residential. Next slide, please. So everybody's had to deal with city codes before. I know I had to get some structural work done on my house, so I did a bunch of research. I submitted my structural permit and it got approved, which was great. And then I submitted my fire permit and they rejected it. And when I asked them why, they said, oh well, we don't believe your structural information is correct. And I said, no, no, they approved it already. They said, oh well, we don't believe that what they said was correct. So I had to work between The fire codes and the structural codes make those 2 departments spend time, 9 months in fact, talking to each other to agree on their own city codes, which was incredibly painful. And I've seen this problem as well in my work life. For Forge, I used to work with my 2 co-founders in solar software. And there we would often try to expand into new cities and try to bring our solar power to new places. And every time we tried to go into a new region, we had to pull back. We had about a 60% cancellation rate every time we went somewhere new because city codes are changing so frequently. They're different between different cities. It was very hard to figure out where we could go next. Next slide, please. And research shows that over 11% of all US construction spend goes toward this problem alone. That means people are spending time doing research. That means they're getting permits submitted and then rejected. They're having inspections rejected. And sometimes that means that they're having to get their projects redone. That's $238 billion every year of complete waste for the construction teams. And that means that if you're having these types of permit rejections or inspection rejections, you're having project delays, which means that you might have your funding pulled, which probably means you're going to lose your project. And if you're a smaller company, you might lose your company altogether. And when we talked to cities, we talked to a couple dozen different cities, they have similar problems. They're spending hundreds of hours handholding people through these issues, whether it's citizens or developers. They're accidentally introducing or finding code conflicts in existing codes like I talked about in the beginning. And then they, like developers, would love a national repository of codes where they can quickly go see what's successful in other cities and then put that and adapt that into their own codes rather than spending $100 grand on a consultant in a year or spending many, many days trying to do the research themselves with Similar cities. So enter Forge. We are AI to update and clarify city codes. It's pretty simple. Cities upload their codes. Our AI transforms that— those thousands of pages into a queryable interface where people can go in and quickly say, hey, I want to, you know, put an ADU in my backyard, or I want to build a new residential, or I need to put new solar in new areas. And we'll spit out a summary that anybody can understand and that they can use and dive down deeper and get more information so that they can feel confident in whatever projects they're doing. And then they can meet the city with a very informed perspective. And because that's saving cities hundreds of hours on handholding, they're going to keep their codes up to date, and then developers can feel confident the information they have is accurate and they can move forward with those projects really well. And when we've spoken with some of our design partners, GAF Energy, for example, they have said that often this would take them hours of work when they're looking to look in new regions. And recently we updated codes for them in Kentucky. And those codes being updated for them, rather than taking 4 or 5 hours into new metros, it only took them 45 minutes. So that's 5 times faster. That means that cities will have more people entering, and that will lower the costs for the people that are doing construction in their area. So it benefits citizens, it benefits the cities having more and more options out there. It means that their permits timelines will be shorter because there will be more correct information going forward. You have fewer permit rejections and inspections, and everything will run a lot smoother in your city, and there's more options for construction. instruction as well. Thank you very much.

All right, thanks, Gillian, for that. We're going to put up the URL here so you can learn more about Forged. I definitely want clarity to my city's code, so really appreciate you sharing that. All right, we're going to move on to our next company now. We're going to— I'm going to invite to the stage Roselle Safran, the KeyCaliber company. Tell us a little bit about what you've got going on.

Thanks, Dustin. Glad to be on the stage here. So my startup, we can get to the slide in a second. It's in the cybersecurity and cyber resilience space. And the reason why I wanted to start up KeyCaliber in the first place was because I used to work for the government and I felt all the pains that folks in government now are experiencing. So I worked at the Executive Office of the President during the Obama administration. I was leading cybersecurity operations, so defending the network used by the White House and the rest of the agency. And before that, I was at the Department of Homeland Security in the division that was called US-CERT at the time, now it's CISA. And it was helping both federal, state, and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure to improve their security posture. So I've seen a lot of what, what works and what doesn't work. And I saw there was a technology gap. And that's why I said, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fill that gap with KeyCaliber. Now, what we see often these days from a cybersecurity perspective is that organizations are being hit with ransomware attacks, and they're causing— these ransomware attacks are causing tremendous problems. So sometimes organizations end up going down for days, but sometimes it's on the order of magnitude of weeks or even months. And so from the perspective of a government agency, then they can't provide their services, they can't complete their mission. And that is an absolutely crucial issue for any organization. And so that's what we're tackling head-on with KeyCaliber. And I do have one slide, just the one slide, which covers how we do this. So we are using machine learning and we're using the security logs that the organization already has. So we're not intrusive in any way. And we're showing here are all the cyber assets in your environment. And that's, that's a challenge, just getting, getting your, the, your brain around everything that's happening because these environments are so complex and so dynamic. And then from there we show these are the ones that are most critical. So maybe you have this whole world of issues to deal with, but you can narrow the scope to the ones that are mission critical. And then from that perspective, you make sure they're backed up, you make sure they have their security controls on it, and if there's any issue that's comes up, you know that those get prioritized. And so that's what we allow organizations to do. And this is all in an automated, data-driven, machine learning-driven manner so that you don't have any painstaking manual steps to it. That's it for my slides. And so with that, we have customers that are as large as Fortune 1000 companies, and we also have smaller ones as well because this type of problem of not being cyber resilient. It stretches for organizations of all different sizes. And beyond that, if you are working with a service provider, if you've outsourced your, your IT, or you've outsourced your, your security functions, we work with those service providers as well. So we team up and under the hood, they have KeyCaliber technology that they're offering to their clients. We can do a one-time assessment so you can see a snapshot of, okay, here's how I'm doing right now, and get some lay of the land and an understanding of what needs to be done in the here and now. We can also do a full deployment where you're getting this information continuously because as your environment changes, then you're going to want to be able to adjust to make sure that that you're reducing that cyber risk and improving your security posture. So that's what we focus on, and I'm happy to speak with any folks who might be interested in learning more about KeyCaliber. Their website is there. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn, and my email is roselle@keycaliber.com. Thank you. Take care.

Roselle, thanks so much for that. You know, cybersecurity is one one of the hottest things and still the top priority. So such a critical issue and appreciate you breaking down what you're doing there. Next up, I'm gonna invite Erica Olsen with Madison AI to the table to tell us what you are doing for GovTech.

I love it, Dustin. So excited to be on the stage with my fellow colleagues and fellow startups, all really focused on how can we leverage AI to help run government more efficiently, more effectively, and quite frankly, to transform our community. So super excited to be here. What's up with Madison AI? So let's start first. Why do we call our product Madison AI? We named it after James Madison, who of course, as one of our founding fathers, super focused on good governance. And my work in local government over the past 20 years and co-creating this solution with local government, we found that one of the biggest pain points is the administrative burden. It is just part of running a good local government. So Madison AI is a knowledge assistant and a report writer to help AI enable or to help AI assist a government leader's daily or weekly tasks that have to be done, quite frankly, to run government. And generative AI is a perfect tech, and we're super excited to be able to be here working with it to help city managers, county managers, assistant city managers, department heads, division heads, management analysts, Do the things that we need in order to have a transparent and efficient government. And those are the things that are on the slide right now. Things like creating funding summaries, drafting staff reports. With Madison AI, you can go from normally what it takes maybe 5 or 6 hours to 10 or 15 minutes. It's a high-volume task to write and draft a staff report or a council report or a board report. It so happens that every single a meeting, right? Every single public meeting has a staff report that goes with an agenda item. That means on average, every meeting probably has 20 or 30 staff reports. So Madison AI can help cut the time down to produce those. You're always prepping for council meetings. Those take time. Madison AI can help do that. And then, you know, the counselor or the commissioner drops by your office, right? Asks, hey, tell me what we did for affordable housing last year. Yeah, what did we do for affordable housing last year? Well, instead of going back through all the minutes, and the agendas and the staff reports related to affordable housing, you can just pull up, you know, Madison AI and it'll tell you the answer to that. So that's what we're really focused on. That's a problem we're trying to solve. Pretty simple, pretty targeted, really focused on assisting, being the smartest, yeah, actually the smartest intern you've ever had on staff by enabling the institutional knowledge that is inherent in local government to help agencies complete these, you know, complete these items more efficiently and effectively. And our goal is to give 5 hours back to every city, city manager, assistant city manager, division head, and department heads. And when we do that, we can help agencies create capacity to do more things. And so I love that quote that's on the screen. We know, where has this been all my career? Absolutely. So that's what we're trying to get done. If we can jump to the next slide, I'll talk about how we're doing it. So quick diagram just to explain how this works. A lot of folks ask us like, what, what, like, how are you doing this? Well, it just so happens that cities, counties, other jurisdictions have tons and tons and tons of information locked up in PDFs and thousands of them, quite frankly. Things like minutes, previous staff reports, strategic plans, master plans, funding budgets, codes, laws. All sorts of other policies, ordinances, etc. And all of that information is the institutional knowledge of an agency, of a city, of a county. And what we've done is we're pulling together with some fancy tech, creating a data pile out of that information, and then using generative AI to be able to interact with it. So you can talk to it, essentially. That's how it's a knowledge assistant. or you can use it to produce those high-volume reports, quite frankly, that have to be produced for every council meeting, maybe for state reporting, fiscal summaries, community requirements, et cetera. One of the things that people always ask us is, how is it different than OpenAI? Well, what's different than OpenAI, ChatGPT, or Copilot is that it's closed, it's custom, It's not open to the internet and it only uses your information, only uses that local jurisdiction's information. So that's really important because we are not able to deliver these tasks accurately and completely without creating a custom closed dataset, essentially, that allows us to do this with the level of accuracy that's required. So, so again, there's a lot going on with AI. There's a lot going on with generative AI. The bar for government is high in the context of if you have to write a staff report on affordable housing and everything that was done over the past 2 years, you know, this tool, our tool needs to tell you everything that happened, not just some of it. And that's really, that's really the difference maker in what we're doing and the tech we're investing in that is like a plus-up from OpenAI or Copilot. So you can see the customers we're working with today. We'd love to have you as a customer as well. We're happy to stand up a pilot for you. if you'd like to try it out. And with that, I'll pass it back to you, Dustin.

Thanks, Erica, appreciate it. I definitely wish that I had a tool like that back when I was in government. So amazing to see that. And definitely, you know, as you're seeing as a key theme with all of this, these are made and designed for government agencies. So these aren't the kind of tools that you get out there that are enterprise where government's an afterthought. These are kind of made for government, and I love that dynamic. Well, I want to invite now to our stage John Petros with TappyGuide to talk a little bit about what you're doing in GovTech.

Thank you, Dustin. Hello everyone, great to be here. My name is John Petros. I'm the founder and creator of TappyGuide, where we specialize in smart city automotive mobility and transportation technology for people with disabilities. I'm going to present our slide, Dustin, the first one. Personal background about myself, I am an automotive engineer based out of Detroit, Michigan. I had the privilege and honor of working for the big Other personal background about myself is I have family members who were born with disabilities. Blindness is a genetic disorder that runs in my family. My sister, who you see here, she was born blind. Also have an older brother and 2 cousins who were born blind as well. The idea of Tappy Guide came back in 2017 before my sister got her guide dog. She had a real unfortunate situation with a rideshare platform. She was traveling from the mall to her apartment complex, and to make a long crazy story short, she got dropped off, lost, and stranded in an entirely different location. And When that situation happened, Anna and I started thinking about this happens a lot more often than it was reported. So I basically decided to take a step back from automotive, became an entrepreneur, and created a solution where we can help improve the quality of life for the blind, low vision, deaf, hard of hearing, wheelchair users, and seniors, helping cities and these transit agencies become smarter. The biggest, you know, gap in the industry is that first mile, last mile problem. When we talk about smart city and transportation, It's getting from point A to point B. But how does someone locate point A, and what happens after point B? Well, that's where solutions like Tappy Guide come into the mix by providing a wayfinding solution for these individuals and for the cities. Next slide, please. So the way that the app works is we've created a virtual-based call center in which we have live agents receive live data calls from our users. The first live data feed that we receive is a live cell phone video feed to understand what the real-time environment is that Second data feed that we receive is a live Google Map view so we can understand where that person is on the map. So if I was to use this as an example, if my sister is visiting downtown Austin, Texas for the first time and she's traveling via Capital Metro, which is their public transit agency, and she wants to visit the Texas State Museum. Once she exits the bus, dials into the call center, our guides are able to utilize these 2 datasets and guide Anne to where she wants to go. From the bus stop to the crosswalk The front building and then also provide indoor wayfinding as well. We've had the privilege and honor of launching pilots in the past. We've worked with the City of Austin, Texas, and Ford Motor Company as we were winners of the Ford City One Challenge. We are doing work here locally in Detroit with the State of Michigan and other stakeholders, looking to launch out in Las Vegas as well to help the downtown area become more accessible, and then also integrating into the transit agencies to help the transit section become more accessible as well. Also looking to work with whether it's an airport, hospital, transit system, sporting venues, university campuses, anything with an infrastructure, we can make it more accessible for all of our users. And it's not just only for people with disabilities. Cities can help become just more tourist-friendly by utilizing infrastructure data for people who are visiting maybe your city or your town for the first time. You know, you have people coming in, hey, I've never been here before, or if they're traveling through the airport, providing a wayfinding solution that's extremely detailed to provide the best experience possible for that individual. Next slide, please. So as we continue to grow, we're looking to work with different automotive companies to help the vehicle become more accessible. Autonomy vehicles as well is a big thing in some cities, helping users interact with these vehicles, locate them, and utilize them, working with different city resources. Like I said, you know, we have the privilege and honor of running all these great pilots and continue to work more. Accessibility is, you know, a big hot topic right now. Most importantly, whenever we work with cities and governments, we work directly with disability organizations in those pilot areas. We host workshops with those organizations. We get key points of indication and data for these users, backfeed all that user experience to the city to let them know where they can improve. So that is Tappy Guide. I appreciate everyone that connects, reach out, and we can further discuss. Thank you for your time, everyone.

Thanks, John. This is such an important area of focus as we look at the rise of all of these new types of technologies. We have to kind of keep accessibility in mind, and I love that applied to the built environment. And our last GovTech startup here is Voting Buddy. So I'm going to invite Dwight Williams, or Dr. Dwight, here to the table to break it down for us. Good to see you.

Hey, it's great to be with you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me today. I'm just really looking forward to sharing with what we're doing at Voting Buddy. So you say, well, what is Voting Buddy? Well, basically, Voting Buddy is a tool that can be used— well, let's just take a step back. The election was this week, and for most of us, you went into the voting booth and you went to say, hey, I'd like to cast my vote. And you looked— if you did your due diligence, you might have known maybe 3 or 4 names on the ballot. Over half the names you were probably thinking, I have no idea who they are. And so Voting Buddy is here to solve that problem. With Voting Buddy, you basically, you answer a few quick questions and you enter your address. And then what Voting Buddy will do is it'll take that address and it will use your answers. And it's essentially like a dating app, but instead of matching you with romantic partners, it'll take your answers and match you with politicians that are like-minded, specifically within your voting district. So you say, okay, well, exactly how do you go about doing that? Well, first of all, my background, I'm an engineer, nuclear engineering specifically. My PhD is in nuclear engineering, but I'd say I always have had a passion for politics. So when I started as a professor at MIT, I started in the nuclear engineering department, but by the time I left, I was professor of nuclear engineering and a professor of political science. Basically, what Voting Buddy does is it takes the engineering background, couples it with the political science aspects, and is able to produce those results. We ran our pilot in 2022, and we were deemed, I guess, objective, impartial by the politicians, by voters, by the news media, and by academics all across the board. As a result, we actually have been invited into the classroom, so this year We're actually in the classroom with our objective analysis and our objective categorizations within political science to help high schoolers and middle schoolers learn about the political issues in an objective way, you know, politics, elections, and voting and all of that. So you say, okay, well, that's great for the voters. So what's the business aspect and how do you help the governance and politicians? Well, it turns out that— And next slide.

Next slide.

Okay, great. Yeah, and we can go one more slide beyond that. Okay, and one more.

Great.

Yeah, perfect. Okay, so yeah, what basically what you end up getting with the voters that are actually taking the quiz, we're able to anonymize that data and systematize it. And as you see in the black chart there, if you're a politician, then now we can provide anonymized data to you about your specific specific constituents. Of course, if you're a governing entity, then we can now provide information to you about the actual people in your voting district. So what that means is, for example, you can know if African American males between the age of 50 and 60 are socially conservative and fiscally liberal. And so we can actually provide that information to you. And one of the feedback points that we got back in 2022 is, Once voters are matched with politicians, they wanted to go a step further, which is what we're providing in this newest edition of Voting Buddy. And in this newest edition of Voting Buddy, once you get matched, you can click a button and you can follow that politician. You can click another button, you can instant message the politician, and another button, which we're still building out, you'll be able to donate to that politician. So again, you can take the quiz having no idea who's available, And by the time you finish your 5 or 10 minutes with Voting Buddy, you've actually been able to donate to a politician. What we learned with our AI is that Voting Buddy is a lot more powerful than we were thinking because, again, with all of the information about constituents that we're able to anonymize and systematize, we're now actually able to help just across the board when it comes to governing bodies and governing entities. You can, again, know Have exact pulse of what your constituents are thinking, an exact pulse of what you— as you can receive messages from them. And so again, that's what we're doing at Voting Buddy. We're really looking forward to what the future holds. And right now, just the way you can understand our business model, we basically have done the US proper and all of the states at the state level. When it comes to the actual counties, that's a lot more into the weeds, and that requires a lot more of our AI. So if you're a voter and you'd like to have access to the county level, we're building that out county by county because every county seems to want something different that they're reporting about their politicians and the information they're getting about their constituency. And so we provide the state level, the national level, up front. And then, of course, on a county-by-county, city-by-city basis, we can drill all the way down to dog catcher, sheriff, all the way down. So again, I hope you all are able to visit us at votingbuddy.com. It's all one string, votingbuddy.com. And hopefully let me know what you think, and hopefully you'll get a lot out of it. Thank you so much.

Amazing stuff. Thanks to Jillian, Roselle, Erica, John, and Dwight, and our partners at CivStart for making today's episode incredible. Incredible. Keep a lookout for a follow-up article where we're gonna dig in deep and also, you know, share more information about each of the companies that you heard today. And a recap of today's conversation will be available on your favorite podcast platform of your choosing. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thank you for spending some time with us to share all the great things that you're doing in your companies, and have a great weekend, everyone. Thank you.