Justin Wenig looks back at his days at Y Combinator in 2019.
At the time, he was working with his first startup, CourseDog, which wanted to provide more modern tools to higher-education facilities, including tools that worked with state departments. He quickly learned that his peers did not like working with the public sector – too much bureaucracy.
Even finding out basic information, such as what a school district purchased last year, requires a lot of paperwork.
“Out of hundreds of startups, only a few of us were trying to modernize the way government and education function,” Wenig told TechCrunch. “Investors thought it was too slow, too bureaucratic, too hard to scale. And to be honest, they were not wrong. Selling the public sector was painful.”
He sold CourseDog to JMI Equity in 2021 for nine figures and remains on the board. In 2024 they launch starbridgeA platform that helps business sales teams monitor opportunities in the public sector so they can take action, such as submitting proposals or preparing bids for grants and budgets. On Wednesday, Starbridge announced a $42 million Series A led by David Sachs’ firm Craft Ventures.
Wenig said the biggest challenge in the public sector is that data is fragmented and inaccessible.
“Critical purchasing information is scattered across PDFs, agency websites, meeting minutes and old directories,” he said, adding that salespeople spend hours trying to piece together who to contact and other insights.
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Starbridge pulls public web data sources from such sources and puts the information in one place. Sales teams using the platform can view a ranked scoring, courtesy of Starbridge, of which public sector accounts are most likely to purchase new technology, and see updates such as leadership changes or new initiatives.
“Instead of chasing the noise, our clients have a clear, data-backed view of where to focus and when to act,” he said.
Wenig described his fundraising journey as “fun” and said the company met Kraft through a friend. Others in the Series A round include Ullu Ventures, Commonweal Ventures and Autotech Ventures. After first raising a seed round of $10 million, the company has raised $52 million to date.
Next, the startup plans to launch a “Starbridge Integrated Experience” so users don’t always have to go to the Starbridge platform to use its technology.
“Every competitor goes straight to your CRM, every question about an account can be answered straight from Slackbot, every job change loads straight into your sequencer,” Wenig said.
Others in this space include GovWin and GovSpend. Starbridge said it’s different because it built AI workflows on top of the dataset to make it easier for sales teams to use.
He remembers a time when he was raising money for CourseDog. “No VC was interested in talking to us,” he said. But now, in the AI age, the tide is changing, he said.
He further added, “Maybe no one wants to contest for office anymore, but they want to build.” “Seeing this new wave of mission-driven founders tackling real, systemic challenges makes me incredibly optimistic for the future.”
