Justin Wenig remembers his days at Y Combinator in 2019. At that time, he was working on his first startup, Coursedog. The company aimed to provide more modern tools to higher education facilities, including those that work with state departments. He quickly learned that his peers did not like working with the public sector because there was too much bureaucracy. Even finding basic information, such as what a school district purchased in the past year, required a significant amount of paperwork.
Out of hundreds of startups, only a handful were trying to modernize how government and education worked. Wenig told TechCrunch that investors thought it was too slow, too bureaucratic, and too hard to scale. He admits they were not wrong, as selling to the public sector was a painful process.
He sold Coursedog in 2021 for a nine-figure sum to JMI Equity and remains on its board. In 2024, he launched Starbridge, a platform that helps business sales teams monitor opportunities in the public sector. This allows them to take action, such as submitting proposals or drafting bids for grants and budgets. Recently, Starbridge announced a forty-two million dollar Series A funding round led by David Sacks’ firm Craft Ventures.
Wenig said the greatest challenge in the public sector is that data is fragmented and inaccessible. He explained that critical buying information is scattered across PDFs, agency websites, meeting minutes, and outdated directories. Vendors spend countless hours trying to piece together who to contact and gather other necessary insights.
Starbridge pulls public web data from various sources and consolidates the information into one place. Sales teams using the platform can see a ranked scoring system, provided by Starbridge, which shows which public sector accounts are most likely to purchase new technology. They can also see updates on leadership changes or new initiatives.
Wenig stated that instead of chasing noise, their customers have a clear, data-backed view of where to focus and when to act. He described his fundraising journey as fun and mentioned the company connected with Craft Ventures through a friend. Other participants in the Series A round include Owl Ventures, Commonweal Ventures, and Autotech Ventures. To date, the company has raised fifty-two million dollars, after previously raising a ten million dollar seed round.
Next, the startup plans to launch the Starbridge integrated experience. This will allow users to access its technology without always having to visit the Starbridge platform directly. Every competitor can be viewed right in a customer relationship management system, every question about an account can be answered from a slackbot, and every job change loads directly into a sequencer.
Other companies in this space include GovWin and GovSpend. Starbridge says it is different because it has built artificial intelligence workflows on top of its datasets to make the platform easier for sales teams to use.
Wenig remembers when he was fundraising for Coursedog and no venture capital firms were interested in talking to them. But now, in the artificial intelligence era, he says the tides are shifting. He continued by saying that maybe nobody wants to run for office anymore, but they do want to build. Seeing this new wave of mission-driven founders tackling real, systemic challenges makes him incredibly hopeful for the future.