Real-time government analytics platform
FiscalNote is raising funds again. The startup, which moved to the District from the west coast in
September after a successful $1.2 million seed round, wants to raise between $6 and $8 million for "scaling our sales team and expanding our reach into Europe and South America," says Tim Hwang, cofounder of the company.
FiscalNote aggregates information about government regulations in real time. It also categorizes government documentation into 50 different verticals, helping users discern which pieces of legislation have the most effect on specific sectors. "Then we run analytics on top of that," Hwang explains, "to look at the probability of a bill passing." As a result, "FiscalNote is a really big opportunity for understanding government information and how it relates to business and financial markets."
Hwang's experience with databases (and their limitations), both as a candidate for public office in Maryland and as a field organizer for the Obama campaign, led him to conceptualize FiscalNote. "In each case, it was hard to get information," he explains. "I wanted the opportunity to create an information platform [to show data] in real time."
Hwang and his cofounders have built something that is clearly fulfilling a need: the platform has been live only since the beginning of 2014 and has already surpassed $500,000 in annual recurring revenue (i.e. subscriptions). The company has grown to a team of 20 that is "heavy on the engineering side," Hwang says. The team now also includes several seasoned advisors, including
Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School and former chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, and former New Jersey congressman
Mike Ferguson.
"We have a mixture of gray-hairs and new technologists to work on this problem," Hwang says.
In the future, FiscalNote will expand to international governments and incorporate "more and more verticals within government." He also says the platform is expanding. "We're moving more and more into individual filings and integration with [databases such as] EDGAR and the EPA."