Episode 411 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Madeleine Smith, CEO & Co-Founder of Civic Roundtable.
We all know that building a startup is incredibly hard. But building a startup for the government sector? Many would say that’s insanely hard. The reputation of slow-moving bureaucracies, limited budgets, and legacy tech is enough to scare off most founders.
However, where others see obstacles, entrepreneurs like Madeleine see a massive, untapped opportunity. True disruption often comes from those who come into the equation with a fresh look and a different perspective. The result, an underserved industry that is hungry for modern tools to help them with their day to day workload.
That is the origin of Civic Roundtable, a government operations platform purpose-built for federal, state, and local agencies. Emerging from the Harvard Innovation Labs, the company is already trusted by public servants at over 1,500 agencies across all 50 states. With funding led by General Catalyst, they are modernizing how millions of government workers across 90,000 agencies collaborate and achieve their mission.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:17 How Entrepreneurs Should Think About Adding AI Into Their Platform
04:37 Madeleine’s Background & Early Career
05:24 Working at Mark43
07:38 Transitioning to Product Management
09:47 The Journey to Civic Roundtable
12:03 Customer Discovery and Validation
14:49 Initial Proof of Concept
17:04 Building the Government Operations Platform
20:14 Creating a Successful Company in the Government Sector
22:01 Achieving Compliance and Security Standards
23:25 The Benefits of Working with Past Colleagues
24:42 Funding Details from General Catalyst
25:42 The Latest at Civic Roundtable
26:47 Sales Strategy and Market Positioning
28:32 Fast Company Recognition
29:12 Looking Ahead
30:25 Advice for First-Time Founders as CEO
31:31 Building a Company as Non-Technical Founders
33:29 Advice & Encouragement for Female Founders
34:54 Involvement in Charitable Organizations
37:24 Personal Interests and Hobbies
Transcription:
Keith Cline (00:02)
I’m Keith Cline, the host of the VentureFizz podcast, where I interview the most fascinating people in the tech scene. This is episode 411, and today’s guest is Madeleine Smith, CEO and co-founder of Civic Roundtable. We all know that building a startup is incredibly hard, but building a startup for the government sector, many would say that’s insanely hard. The reputation of slow-moving bureaucracies, limited budgets, and legacy tech is enough to scare off most founders.
However, where others see obstacles, entrepreneurs like Madeleine see a massive untapped opportunity. True disruption often comes from those who come into the equation with a fresh look and a different perspective. The result, an underserved industry that is hungry for modern tools to help them with their day-to-day workload. That is the origin story of Civic Roundtable, a government operations platform purpose-built for federal, state, and local agencies.
Emerging from the Harvard Innovation Lab, the company is already trusted by public servants at over 1,500 agencies across all 50 states. With funding led by General Catalyst, they are modernizing how millions of government workers across 90,000 agencies collaborate and achieve their mission. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics like Madeleine’s background and getting her career started at Mark43 in a variety of roles, plus how this experience influenced her entrepreneurial journey.
pursuing a dual degree at Harvard Kennedy School and HBS, meeting her co-founder Austin Boral, and recruiting Josh Seiden, a former Mark 43, to round out the team, pivoting from a business social networking solution to building the government operations platform.
Creating a successful company in the government sector, the latest at Civic Roundtable, plus the details around their funding and looking ahead, advice for first-time founders as a CEO, and so much more.
Okay, quick side note. Did you know that you can watch our podcast interviews on YouTube? Head over to youtube.com/venturefizz to access our channel. And from there, you’ll find a library of content, including a podcast playlist. and while you’re there, make sure you click on that subscribe button so you don’t miss future episodes. All right, without further ado, here’s my interview with Madeline.
Keith Cline (02:17)
Thanks so much for joining us.
Madeleine (02:18)
Thanks for having me, excited to be here.
Keith Cline (02:21)
Likewise, I am so excited to talk to you because you’re building a company and ⁓ Civic Roundtable is a company that is growing very aggressively. And it’s a company that, ⁓ you know, we’re to talk about the details of what you do, but obviously it’s solving a very important use case. it’s a, it’s a company that is serving a industry that needs to be modernized. So that’s obvious. But when you launched the company, it wasn’t necessarily the same as it is now.
with that AI moment back when Chat GPT was first released and everyone was just like, ⁓ this just changed everything. And now entrepreneurs that had been building companies prior to that moment are now thinking like, wow, I need to be building out AI in my platform. How should entrepreneurs that aren’t AI native per se think about building that into their platform so that they are providing value to their customers and staying current and relevant?
Madeleine (03:18)
Yeah, it’s such a good question. It’s been such an interesting and fun time to be building a company just because there’s so much more you can do now with tools and with kind of your own imagination than you could do even five years ago. I think from our perspective, we didn’t set out to become an AI company necessarily, but the minute we started solving real problems for our users, which are government workers, and we’ll get more into that, I’m sure, in the conversation, it just became so immediately obvious the new ways you can dream up the how behind you solving those problems. Our big belief with AI is
that if you’re not integrated into workflows, if you’re not owning contextual data, if you’re not in the flow of solving a real problem, AI can easily be a bolt-on to your strategy and a box check. But if you think about it as a ⁓ mechanism to solve real problems, it can do a lot of good and can save a lot of folks a lot of time. So we’ve been super pumped about opportunities with AI and can tell you a lot more about that when we get going.
Keith Cline (04:10)
Yeah, and I just think from my own use, ⁓ I see some lovely amazing things that Google’s doing with Gemini. I think it’s awesome. So I have the Google Suite, so I’m using Gemini primarily versus OpenAI. But then I’ll be in a folder in Google Drive, and it’ll be summarizing one file. like, I don’t know if it’s kind of a little bit of overkill, Google, but nice try. Right, so all
Madeleine (04:21)
Hmm.
Yeah, thanks for playing.
Keith Cline (04:37)
Alright, so let’s talk about your background story. So where’d you grow up? What were you like as a child?
Madeleine (04:43)
Good question. grew up right outside of Boston, the Boston suburbs. Grew up in a big family of Boston sports fans. Also grew up in a family of folks who are really excited about leaving the world a better place. My mom spent 30 years working at Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston. And I was just inspired by her work. Went on to study political science and just was excited about the opportunity for how can we make government, which is this behemoth thing that is often really hard to understand, even the scope and scale of what it is. ⁓ we make this work better to make our communities better places. And that led me on a journey through political science and also into tech and now to start Civic Roundtable. So that’s a little bit about me.
Keith Cline (05:24)
Alright, so you went to Harvard and then you graduated and you landed at Mark43, which Matt Pellega, if I’m pronouncing his last name right, so he was guest on my podcast, episode 150. I’m up to 400 plus now, but an amazing story, right? So how did you get your career started working there?
Madeleine (05:34)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that was an amazing first job out of college. So I had studied criminal justice as an undergrad. It was right in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Everybody on college campuses was just reckoning with how do police departments work today? How should they work? How should we think about this in our communities? And I was really excited about the Mark43 opportunity because, those guys were seniors in college when I was a freshman. I had heard about their success. It was like an exciting startup born out of Harvard. ⁓ But also because it was an opportunity, especially and the role I had. I was the implementation associate. So I was traveling all over the country, meeting with police departments. I think I hit 200 cities by the time I left there, ⁓ talking to cops in Fresno, California and also in Camden, New Jersey, ⁓ and really got an appreciation for what is local government on the ground. ⁓ When you think about the 22 million people who work in local government, you’re thinking about people who are working on public safety, but also people who run schools, run transportation, they work in public health. The scope and scale is massive and that job was an amazing crash course in how do build a company in that space but also like what does this work actually look like in practice and talking to people and shaking hands and just developing a lot of understanding for what that work really means.
Keith Cline (07:03)
Yeah, because the tech for Mark43 was basically the backbone of the police operations,
Madeleine (07:10)
Yeah, so we were the 911 through case management lifecycle. So someone calls 911, you need to send police officers to the scene. You want to track what happened, all the evidence, all the conversations. You want to move that case through court. We were really the operating backbone for police departments. And part of what was exciting about that was just better data and transparency into what’s going on at police departments, and then also better ways for folks to actually run the process and follow the rules and things like that.
Keith Cline (07:38)
Now eventually your career progressed to a position in product management. How did that come to fruition?
Madeleine (07:44)
Yeah, I think part of what I learned really quickly is when you roll up your sleeves at a startup, you can quickly become a customer expert if you’re listening, if you’re implementing, and if you’re really on the ground. So like I said, I racked up a ton of Delta miles. I was traveling every week, but came away as really a subject matter expert when it came to what does our product do for folks in the field? And what that meant is it was pretty, as the products started expanding and we needed more voices of customers in those rooms, there was a lot of opportunity to inform and shape that.
So kind of progressed from the implementation and customer success side of the house into the product management and growth side of the house. ⁓ And that was a really exciting ride at a company that was growing and doing really well with the team I loved. ⁓ When I started, the team was like 40 people. When I left, we were 250 or something like that. So a lot of growth, a lot of activity. We launched a ton of new products, met a bunch of really awesome people who I actually work with again today. And so that was a really defined, I think a lot of people in their first job at a one or two of them, you meet the networks that end up being really exciting to you and future opportunities you have. And it’s also just a crash course in the world of work and kind of the missions you’re excited about and all of that. So it was an awesome first job.
Keith Cline (08:58)
⁓ you visited 200 cities you said or towns and cities so was there one that you were like wow that place is amazing I never never thought I would visit
Madeleine (09:07)
I spent a lot of time in Fresno County with the Sheriff’s Office. ⁓ I was probably there once a month for a year. It was awesome. I met some of the smartest people I’ve ever worked with. We implemented a new product for the first time. And I just learned again a ton about how much creativity it takes to really build and deploy technology for these complicated environments where you need to think about security, but also there’s just so much going on in terms of the operating method and the procedures and things like that so Fresno was awesome I was there when the Starbucks downtown opened tried every restaurant ⁓ really got to know Fresno so have a lot of love for Fresno.
Keith Cline (09:47)
So what’d you do next?
Madeleine (09:49)
So after that, I had another stint at an awesome startup. I did another internship and then went back to grad school and really was focused when I went back to ⁓ HBS and the Kennedy School on what I had learned about the government world. Again, it was like this breadth and depth of folks doing mission critical work that I really care about. ⁓ COVID had just started and I think people were thinking a lot about what does local government really mean? It’s impacting all of our lives in these new ways. There was a ton of interesting attention on that.
And I felt like we had had this unique experience at Mark43 of learning about the technology role there. And so I kind of spent that whole grad school chapter really trying to build and launch Civic Roundtable with a classmate I met who was similarly passionate about local government in Austin and Josh, who I’d worked with for years at Mark43 and we shared a lot in common. Just in how we viewed the world, we were traveling together for a lot of that time. And so that’s kind of what my focus was. I think the big observation that led us to Civic Roundtable during that time was ⁓ so much of government technology is very siloed. You build a piece of technology for the police department, a piece of technology for the homelessness prevention apparatus or the VA or whatever. These systems don’t talk to each other and yet the work is so collaborative. You know, if you’re working a case in the police department, sometimes you’re referring to the homelessness prevention groups or you’re working with the VA or you need to talk to public health. There are very few tools that make those types of connections possible.
⁓ So that was sort of the inspiration behind what we ultimately decided to do, which was build an operations platform I can tell you more about. ⁓ But started that journey just literally interviewing hundreds and hundreds of public servants while in grad school. We probably outreached everyone we could find on LinkedIn and we were taking calls basically all day with folks to kind of inform that vision. So fun journey.
Keith Cline (11:40)
And were you part of the iLab too?
Madeleine (11:44)
Yeah, so we were in the iLab. ⁓ We were there almost every day. We had Austin and I both in grad school together, and then Josh, our third co-founder up in New York. So we were spending a lot of weekends in New Haven to meet in the middle and kind of work on the ground table together. Yeah, we were at the iLab. We were taking classes, and we were just trying to make this work.
Keith Cline (12:03)
Okay, so you have this idea, yet ⁓ I think some founders get tripped up in terms of that customer discovery piece of it to reach out to 200, or you probably reach out to way more to actually get the time of 200 on their calendar. So what advice would you have as far as, I’ve got this idea, I have this belief, but how am I gonna prove that it’s real versus just building something and hoping it’s a match?
Madeleine (12:31)
Yeah, it’s a good question, especially in grad school. Oftentimes you’re sort of thinking about entrepreneurship super academically. You’re trying to figure out, do I have a market match? Did I design the exact right prototype? Am I getting unsolicited good feedback? I think what we learned is that after a certain number of conversations, you can feel confident you’ve got the gist. Like you’ve talked to your users, you understand their pain. ⁓ And the minute you launch your first next thing, whether that’s the prototype for your project, whether that’s a quick pilot, you want to run, whether that’s an experiment you’re going to learn from. That’s where all the learning happens. And so if I could go back, I would not take back any of those conversations because they were helpful and they informed a ton of our vision. But the minute we started hearing the same things over and over again, the quicker you spring into action, the quicker you learn and just get better feedback.
Keith Cline (13:19)
And how did you know who to reach out to for that feedback?
Madeleine (13:22)
We were very focused on trying to build a piece of technology that could work with all different types of government workers. So we didn’t want to be stuck in the trap of we only work with the VA, we only work with police departments. We really wanted to build tech that works for all of government. So we wanted to interview a wide swath of people from child services to election workers to the parks and rec department to make sure we were hearing similar things across all these different sectors. ⁓ And so that informed a lot of it. It was also just who would respond to us.
We spent a lot of time driving around one of our sorry one of our first ⁓ Pilot customers was actually the Rhode Island County clerk. So the folks who do election administration state of Rhode Island We probably drove to every Dunkin Donuts in Rhode Island to meet folks in person for coffee Just to get a little bit of feedback that way So it was really a combo who would talk to us and also who we could reach fast
Keith Cline (14:16)
Right, because these discovery calls, hopefully they are your early funnel for sales too, right? Isn’t that ⁓ a fair assessment too?
Madeleine (14:21)
Okay.
Definitely, and especially in a world of government, it’s all about relationships and it’s all about kind of putting your money where your mouth is. Like if we go to folks and say, hey, we’re thinking about building this thing, if a year later we can come back and say, hey, we built it, that builds a ton of trust and credibility and folks can track our progress. And actually a lot of those early conversations ended up being folks we now work with today. ⁓ So worth it from a just breadth and depth perspective.
Keith Cline (14:49)
Okay, so what, and we’re gonna talk about the bigger picture of what you’re doing now, but when you first started, what was that proof of concept angle that you were focused on?
Madeleine (14:52)
Yeah.
When we first started, the big idea we were focused on was that so much of government are doing the same things locally and just don’t have eyes on what each other are doing. So city of Boston might be solving the same problem as city of Philadelphia. The police department in the counties next door, they all might be working on the same thing or training on the next new topic. And people just don’t know what’s happening nearby. So we were very focused on can we build almost like a secure Quora or Reddit that’s government focused people can just ask and answer each other’s questions. And we thought of it kind of as a social network for government workers to do that Q &A. And that was the initial prototype we were going to focus with. Like, hey, would you use this? What would it take for you to hop on? What would you be comfortable sharing and not sharing? And pretty quickly, we learned it’s really hard to build social networks. So the idea evolved pretty quickly from there. But that was definitely the initial inspiration.
Keith Cline (15:54)
Okay, were you getting a lot of false positives? Like, of course, that sounds amazing. Yes, of course I’ll use that. And then once you launch it, it’s like crickets. Maybe I’ve had experience. I might’ve experienced that before.
Madeleine (16:01)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you’re like, maybe I’ve seen that. Yeah, no, I mean, we had a lot of… A lot of folks in government work are there because they are passionate about the mission. They’ve been working on homelessness prevention for 30 years. They have a ton of experience and credibility and a ton of things they want to share with new folks in the field. So we thought, naively, that that would carry it into action, that those folks would be power users, they would share their knowledge, and that others who are new on the job would really benefit from that. I think what we undervalued is when people have a day job and they are under-resourced and they are already dealing with a backlog of thousands of emails they haven’t even responded to. To take an extra minute to log into a new platform to ask and answer new questions is really a challenging battle. And so that reformed a lot for us about just how do we meet people where they are? How do we help busy people get time back? How do we make that type of knowledge sharing mission critical and not a secondary thing to do? So I’m sure you have a lot of thoughts on that question too, but learned a lot really quickly on that.
Keith Cline (17:04)
Yeah, well, mean, I guess the, well, let’s talk about kind of like now, like, so eventually you like, you know, what was the next step and then how did you get to where you are today?
Madeleine (17:11)
Yeah.
Yeah, the next step from there was we developed a whole set of observations about just the collaborative nature of government work and also how much information already exists out in the ether through listservs that the government runs on, websites, hundreds of hours of meeting recordings, PDF shared, and just how hard it is to actually search and find what people need when you need it fast. ⁓ So I can give you an example of the type of problem we got really key. So, you know, government, 22 million people in state and local, 90,000 agencies, they’re doing all different kinds of things all over the country. It’s a really massive entity. ⁓ And when you think about, for example, the work of an office working on homelessness prevention, so much of that work is about coordinating the nonprofits working on that problem statement, you know, the homeless shelter, the food pantries, the nonprofits providing services, like jobs, training, temporary housing. It’s also all the other government entities involved in that. maybe you work at the state level. You have to work with every county, every city. ⁓ At a state level, that could be something like 2,000 different organizations that all need to communicate, collaborate, on the same page to make any meaningful progress in solving a problem like homelessness prevention. ⁓ So what we got really focused on is government is often the air traffic controller for all these really complicated problems. They’re trying to push out information like new grants, new guidance, new policies. People on the ground are trying to answer tactical questions like is there an open bed tonight in the shelter? What job training programs have openings? ⁓ And there’s so much missing, left to be desired by way of tech infrastructure to make those conversations happen. You have to have networks of people you know. You have to hop on the monthly Zoom call. You have to show up for the training and happen to bump into to the right person in the hallway to get answers. ⁓ So what we got focused on was how can we build an operations platform that just helps all of this work happen faster. So we’ve got basically three things. It’s a secure way of understanding who does what. So think of this as just the CRM, like who is working on what and what do they do? ⁓ We’ve got secure workspaces that help people just gather all that information centrally. So like who does what, but also what are they working on? And what was the last ⁓ time this happened? What did we do?
Where’s the latest policy guidance on X? And then all this analytics stuff on top of it that helps people just see what’s happening. And then think of AI as an enabler throughout. So if people want to find the right thing fast, that’s where AI comes in. We can retrieve it. We can generate a new one. We can get you going faster. So high level, that’s kind of where we keyed in.
Keith Cline (20:06)
Yeah, like it’s perfect use case for AI when like you think about all the information and how it needs to be summarized or there’s, you know, perfect use cases.
But when I think of this industry, and I’m sure you were getting a lot of constructive thoughts from others of like, you’re not going to be able to change the government sector. It’s legacy technology. There’s no budget. Like, so what were the naysayers and how did you overcome that?
Madeleine (20:31)
Yeah, I think people are skeptical that government knows how to move quickly when it comes to tech. I think people sometimes feel like it’s so backward. we hear a lot of really negative language about how archaic processes are, or paper-based things are, and it’s so hard to implement technology in spaces like that. ⁓ I would argue we’ve sort of seen the opposite. ⁓ A lot of folks who are mission-oriented and are really passionate about what they do want to do it the best way that they can. So if you go in with a tool that says, hey, we are listening to you. We’ve built something that’s going to give you back 50 % of your time and also give you better visibility into what you’re doing and how it’s working and help you tell your story. People get really excited about that. ⁓ And when they start to see, hey, we’re working with an agency that looks just like you, they get even more excited. ⁓ So I think a lot’s also changed, especially after COVID. lot of folks in government just had cycles buying technology for the first time. The workplaces had to go remote. They all had to set up Zoom, had to use tech in new ways. think it’s created an appreciation for the ways that tech can add value. ⁓ And it’s also, as the space gets bigger and bigger, which is so exciting, there’s so many more ways that folks are thinking about technology. And also trying to figure out what even it means to use AI in the government space. Like, how do you do that securely? How do you do that in a way that’s adding value but not putting government data at risk? So people are really engaged in that conversation. That’s been super exciting, too.
Keith Cline (22:01)
Okay, random question. So I always see these things like SOC 2, type 2 certified compliance. So how does one go through that process to get that certification or whatever the proper term is there? Because I would imagine if I was a government organization, obviously my information, I would need to be secure, right? Like pretty much every entity is the same. But ⁓ if you’re dealing with local, state, federal government, obviously there’s a… ⁓
Madeleine (22:03)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Keith Cline (22:31)
An important piece of security there. So what is that certification and how does one become compliant?
Madeleine (22:36)
Yeah, good question. We’re lucky that a lot of the folks we worked with early on are people that we knew from Mark43. So we brought in Alex and Alden, are Mark43-ers as their head of engineering and product. And they’d kind of seen this movie before. So built compliance software, run through these processes, knew how to do this out of the box. So we got lucky. mean, it’s a combination of choosing the right way of hosting your data. So we’re hosted an AWS GovCloud, which gives you a leg up on some of those questions. But also, it’s just earlier. On than maybe other companies that are in different sectors. We’re going through the audits, we’re filling out security questionnaires, you this is just part of our DNA of building in this space. So I would say, you know, a little above my pay grade, but we’ve got some really smart people on the team that knew how to do it. So yeah.
Keith Cline (23:25)
And that’s a great point, because I did notice going through some of the employees at your company on LinkedIn, that there was that original network of that Mark43. ⁓ So, as you were going about hiring for your company, so how did you think about that?
Madeleine (23:41)
Yeah. I think there’s always that magical moment when you’ve worked with folks at previous jobs where you just think I love working with this person. I trust their working style. I know I want to work with them again. I think we got lucky that there were some folks like that in our networks who were excited to build again in this space. So that mark 43 experience was a real exercise in like learning to trust other people and knowing that they do an awesome job and ⁓ being excited to work with the same folks again. And then from there, I think we’ve been really focused on bringing people who are excited about the mission, who care about government workers, who want to see government work better, and people also who know what they’re doing as far as their jobs, like especially in the world of AI. If you hire somebody at a more senior level who really knows how to use these tools, they can work really fast and they can do a lot of really good work with a much smaller team. So that’s also been a decision we made is let’s bring in folks who know what they’re doing and also can use these tools and we can get a ton of mileage out of a lean team to make a lot happen.
Keith Cline (24:42)
All so you did announce a round of funding. It was announced in February, 2024, $5 million seed round from General Catalyst. So what was that process like being a first time founder, raising capital from one of the top VCs in the country or the world?
Madeleine (24:45)
Thank
Yeah, I think a couple of things. One is we were really lucky to have relationships at GC, both because of the Mark43 journey. So there are folks who really understood our backgrounds as a team and could vouch for some of our team skill. ⁓ But also because we had just gone through grad school at HBS, where we were introduced to a ton of VCs. We had a bunch of connections in. And also, we’re able to basically run through some processes with other VCs, learn a little bit about how to tell our product story. Especially in a sector that sometimes is viewed as really unsexy, we had to learn how to tell a story about value and durability and product opportunity. ⁓ And so all in all, we were really proud about the fundraise and really excited about working with GC. And it’s been really great so far.
Keith Cline (25:44)
What’s the latest with Civic Roundtable, kind of state of the state of number of employees, you whatever you can share.
Madeleine (25:50)
Yeah.
Totally. So Team Now is 20 people. We’re trusted by users in over 2,000 different agencies. So we work in all 50 states. We do mission critical work. So we work with basically a majority of election officials today, so the folks who are printing ballots and who are making sure that everybody can vote. We work with those people. We do work on homelessness prevention. We do work on public health. So name a topic that government touches. We’ve definitely got some product on it.
Keith Cline (25:58)
Wow.
Madeleine (26:21)
We’ve been doing a ton of work on the product front to just keep building. We’re super excited about opportunity in this space, the depth and durability of our ideas. ⁓ And we’re hiring a bunch of new roles. So continuing to grow, really excited about that initial success, and ⁓ excited about opportunity. think it’s a sector that’s growing in a product category that we are starting to create here, and we’re just excited.
Keith Cline (26:47)
And what is your go-to-market? Like, do you have a ⁓ dedicated sales team?
Madeleine (26:54)
Yeah, so lot of government sales is really relationship building. So we’ve got a sales team, but the way it works is oftentimes you’re getting referred through word of mouth. So do good work, invest in your customer success. If folks really like what you do and believe you’re solving a problem, the main thing that happens in government is if people like you and they want to buy from you because they think your product is solving a real problem, then they will. And they’ll show you how to do it, and they’ll help run you through the process. So that’s been really our sales method is go on site, show people, what we do, work with existing customers and projects to really show the value versus tell them about it. ⁓ And then that’s been the main way we drum up business.
Keith Cline (27:33)
And is there like a, like what you’re doing is more like current, right? But are there competitors that you’re seeing out there or is it still that underserved industry that you’re hopefully building the market later?
Madeleine (27:46)
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of ⁓ new energy in the sector, which has been really exciting. think it’s a space that could use a ton more entrepreneurs. Like, I’m the biggest proponent of more GovTech entrepreneurship. ⁓ In our specific product category, we’ve really seen competition with the status quo, like people stitching together combinations of Microsoft products and monday.com and a CRM that somebody else is managing at a different agency and a group and you know so we often are going to them and saying hey you can do all of this in one tool like would that save you time energy and money. ⁓ We are excited about the energy in the space I think it creates more opportunity for us and for others too.
Keith Cline (28:32)
Civic Roundtable is recognized by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies for 2025. How does that even come to like, did you just all of sudden get this random email or was it something you applied to? Like, how do you get that whole distinction?
Madeleine (28:45)
Yeah, it’s something you applied to, but there’s a huge gap between application and recognition. So I think we applied, ⁓ and then almost eight months later heard back. So it was really exciting. I think we almost forgot we had applied. So that was a big boost for the team. I think it feels good to be recognized for doing work uniquely in a space that doesn’t get that much air time. ⁓ So that was awesome and a big boost to our team. People are really excited about that.
Keith Cline (28:58)
Right?
Congrats. What’s next? Looking ahead.
Madeleine (29:15)
Looking ahead, think a couple of things. So one is we’re just very proud of the success stories we’re seeing with our product, whether it’s like agency in New Jersey, trying to end veteran homelessness. We’re kind of working with them and watching as they make amazing progress towards some of those goals or another project on extreme heat in Arizona. ⁓ you know, world’s getting hotter. They’re trying to figure out from public health perspective, what do we do? How do we keep everybody safe? ⁓ it’s been amazing to be in the trenches with people who are doing problem solving. ⁓ What’s next for us is like we want to tell these stories. We want to help be almost like a marketer for the world of state and local government and help kind of build products that make their jobs easier and then help highlight their stories. So that’s kind of what we’re thinking about on the company front. We’re also really trying to you know we’re aggressively building a lot of new really cool stuff. So we’re growing the team to try to make that possible. We see a ton of opportunity. We’ve got a very long laundry list of the 30 new ideas we need to build out, frame out tests based on what we’re hearing and think that we’ve got a really interesting distribution network of customers to deploy these things to. So very pumped about that too.
Keith Cline (30:25)
What advice would you have for other first-time founders as a CEO of a tech company?
Madeleine (30:31)
I think a couple things. One is authenticity plays. think if you are yourself, if you believe in what you’re doing, and if you run it the way you want to run it instead of emulating the way that you might have seen somebody else run it, good things happen. You can build your network organically. You can build trust with your team and also trust with your customers. So I think that’s one. Maybe another is ⁓
Don’t be afraid to try the new things. think you asked this at the beginning of the call, but you know, we started this company in a moment when there was a sea change of how you build companies and a ton of new opportunities to do things with new tools. ⁓ Leaning into that was super worth it. ⁓ We’ve been lucky. You we built like no code versions of our tool for $3,000 just to get started. think years ago that would have been a team of 20 and a couple million dollars. You know, we were able to be scrappy and totally new ways of the word. So don’t be afraid to continue to try the scrappy things to make it work.
Keith Cline (31:31)
Actually, it’s a good segue to my next question because you and your co-founders are not technical. So building a platform that obviously is technical, we’re using like bubble at first, like what we’re using for no code. Were you really?
Madeleine (31:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, we started with No Code. We started with Bubble. We quickly learned, you know, to build for government, can’t be building in Bubble. So that we got off that quickly. But in terms of just having something to showcase to our users, that’s how we got going. I think my takeaway on that is we live in a new world where you need technical people on your team to run your vision and make things real. working with Austin and Josh, who are amazing people who I trust deeply, who, you know, we have an amazing working style, the three of us doing it with people who you really trust and love and are excited about, you know, the same type of progress and on the same page. It doesn’t matter if your skills are 100 % overlapped or 30 % overlapped or you can kind of game it out, you know, to be the perfect set of co-founders. But I would rather work with, you know, people who we all are marching towards the same thing and really excited about that and willing to go the extra mile 10 times out of 10. So.
Keith Cline (32:38)
So I publish every Monday unless there’s a holiday for the podcast. So today I have Paul Holder, the founder of OnRamp, who, you know, they announced their series day last week and they were built on Bubble initially too. They eventually moved off, but yeah, it’s, mean, it just, it was before the Pure Vibe Coding movement happened. So Bubble was a viable solution. So really cool. ⁓ Yeah, go ahead.
Madeleine (32:51)
Yeah, cool.
Yeah.
Yeah, one more thing, sorry. Vibe coding is also such a powerful way of, know, customer has an idea. Team goes dark for 24 hours. Vibe codes the 90 % prototype, comes back to the customer call and is like, we heard you, here’s what we built. You know, maybe it’s like a way of searching all your government websites to make your job, you know, you can bring these ideas to life so fast and people love it. So that’s been awesome.
Keith Cline (33:27)
That’s so awesome. All right, we need more female founders. I’m a dad of two daughters in college and I would love it if they pursued an entrepreneurial path. So what advice would you have for words of encouragement of more female founders taking on the role of building companies?
Madeleine (33:45)
Yeah, I love this question and have so many thoughts, but I’ll try and keep it brief. think a couple things. One, ⁓ obviously we need more female founders working in tech, but there are many female leaders out there in and around your industry. Find the ones who you really respect, whether it’s their leadership style, whether it’s how they think, how they communicate, and follow them. I found that so helpful. There’s been so many women, a lot of them public servants themselves, whose style has really helped me figure out my own voice as a female founder and leader. That’s maybe one. I think the other is don’t be afraid to put your elbows out a little bit and play the game. ⁓ I think that takes a level of confidence. And I think sometimes our male counterparts have an easier time doing it. So don’t be afraid to play the role. Put your elbows out. ⁓
Find the shortcuts where they exist and play the game a little bit, especially in ⁓ startup world. And then I think the last one, I said this earlier too, but authenticity I think plays out. Be yourself, be who you want to be. And I think that will come back around. anyway, I hope more female founders take the mantle. So excited for that. We’ll get your daughter’s.
Keith Cline (34:51)
Yeah, same, yeah, great advice. Yeah,
1000%. All right, so you’re also involved with Bridge Over Trouble Water, so talk about that.
Madeleine (35:01)
Yeah, it’s an amazing organization based in Massachusetts. They do work with homeless youth. Really, the idea is sometimes when a kid is having an issue at home or, you know some pieces rocking them from their traditional structure. They just need a place to crash or a little bit support for a temporary period of time and don’t need to be put into, quote unquote, the system. And so Bridge Over Troubled Water is an amazing organization that provides that sort of landing spot for young kids in the city of Boston. And it’s been an amazing thing to be involved with. I’m super passionate about that mission. I see that work all the time from the public sector perspective. But it’s been amazing to be part of an organization on the board just learning about how to participate there and think one thing I really care a lot about is being present in the place that you are and I love the city of Boston so being involved in that way has been really rewarding.
Keith Cline (35:53)
What advice would you have for others that want to get involved in different charitable organizations? Sometimes, you just like, you’re like, wow, I wish I could do more and give back, but how do even get started? How do I find a place that needs volunteers? like, how do you, how do you, yeah.
Madeleine (36:06)
How do you even get going? Yeah, I think there’s two ways to kind of be involved. There’s volunteering your time, and there’s also giving money. ⁓ I think there’s also organizations where you can be involved.
sort of more in a volunteer capacity, show up, really be present, physically do something. And then there’s others where you’re more involved on the advisory side. I see tons of value in both. It just depends on kind of what you’re looking for. But many organizations need all kinds of folks at the table, whether it’s to offer your advice. Wherever you work, you have some unique vantage point, some skill set you can bring to the table. And many organizations could benefit from that. So big proponent of figure out which mission it is and how you want to be involved. And there’s certainly opportunity even if you just reach out cold I’m sure folks will respond to that so everyone’s always looking for more people at the table.
Keith Cline (36:56)
Well, so do they, is there like a website that kind of aggregates these volunteer opportunities or is it sometimes broadcasted on their own website or is it just like, you know, best to reach out cold?
Madeleine (37:07)
I think a combination, maybe that could be our next startup ideas, aggregating some of this. I think that there’s maybe more websites for volunteer opportunities than board opportunities, but both are on the table for folks. I think, yeah, building relationships and showing the interest is the main thing.
Keith Cline (37:11)
Yeah.
Three apps you can’t live without can’t be Slack, email, or your calendar.
Madeleine (37:28)
I think Spotify, there’s always music on in my apartment, can’t live without it. ⁓ I think ⁓ the notes app, I write everything down, I share notes with everybody, personal, professional, you name it, I probably got 100 notes going every day. And then a toss up between… the Aura app, where you can send photos to your parents or your siblings or whoever else is tracking your family photos. Or ⁓ maybe the Rain Sounds app. I always listen to that at night, just to zone out and have a little white noise going. So take your time.
Keith Cline (38:02)
Those are great ones. Yeah, the aura, you always have to explain which aura you mean. Not the ring company, not the… Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s awesome. Okay.
Madeleine (38:08)
Yeah, yeah, not the ring on the frame, the photos. Yeah. I was going to say, for a report, but I didn’t think that would be good for my Boston. Yeah, for my Boston sports fan. But yeah, that’s a runner up.
Keith Cline (38:17)
Bleacher Report? Amazing content, amazing content. right, podcast or book recommendation for entrepreneurs.
Madeleine (38:29)
I am a huge, I love how I built this. I think the stories are awesome. I love listening to just the whole backstory and the personal stories of the founders. So I love that one.
Keith Cline (38:40)
The inspiration why I started doing this. I had my basement redone and I was painting and I discovered it and I just burned through so many episodes. I’m like, Boston needs a tech version of how I built this. Yeah, totally.
Madeleine (38:52)
So yeah, so that’s why I love this podcast too. So excited to be here.
Keith Cline (39:00)
All right, outside of work is, know, when you do have some free time, what do you like to do?
Madeleine (39:04)
I go to a million concerts. I watch a lot of Boston sports. I’m a big Celtics fan, also a Patriots fan. And I churn through reality TV like nobody’s business. So you name a show, I’ve seen all of it.
Keith Cline (39:18)
Which the recent concert that you went to that you thought was amazing.
Madeleine (39:23)
I went to a Doechii concert about a month ago. She’s very cool up and coming. And I think that was an amazing concert because it was a small venue and she’s definitely about to be a massive, massive star if she isn’t already. So that was a really cool one to be at.
Keith Cline (39:38)
⁓ And again, I’m a huge power Spotify user and I listen to all different genres and everything. And somehow Dochi became suggested or something. So I listened to her album and it was amazing, like amazing. Like it actually brought me back to, know, when I was in college, more of that rap sound, you know, so it kind of like her style brought me back to like my college years versus maybe some of the more recent artists. So I think she’s amazing. Yeah.
Madeleine (39:43)
Hmm.
Yeah. ⁓
It’s awesome. That’s cool. All right. Spotify power user. Awesome.
Keith Cline (40:11)
Alright, Madeline, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through your background story. Obviously, all the great work that you and your colleagues are up to at Civic Roundtable and obviously all the great advice.
Madeleine (40:20)
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
