The launch of Hamlet was quite personal for Sunil Rajaraman. Back in 2022, he ran for city council in a small California town. He lost, but the experience forever changed the way he saw his community and local governments. He recalled trying to become a better candidate by understanding how his city actually worked, what decisions had been made, and why. He found it impossible to figure out, describing the process as a total black box that was almost intentionally opaque.
Since COVID, many towns began recording and posting their city meetings online. That gave Rajaraman an idea for a company that could help people understand what was happening in local governments. That same year, in 2022, he launched Hamlet to do just that. The company uses AI to process thousands of hours of city council and planning commission meeting videos and turn them into useful intelligence. Rajaraman notes these videos are more valuable than traditional meeting minutes because minutes are just someone’s interpretation, while the video does not lie.
Initially, he envisioned Hamlet as a media company. However, real estate developers and political action committees soon started reaching out. Rajaraman realized that private companies also have to deal with local governments and want more insight into those city council meetings. For enterprise customers, the company tracks agendas and alerts them when relevant topics are addressed across target cities. It synthesizes what happened after meetings so clients don’t have to watch hours-long videos, and it lets them search the video archive to see, for example, when and how a competitor was mentioned.
Hamlet has raised around ten million dollars in venture funding to date from backers including Slow Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Bana Capital, and Kapor Capital. Rajaraman said they want to become the Bloomberg of this space.
Recently, Rajaraman announced he is expanding the company to launch Hamlet TV as a way to help keep regular citizens informed. The streaming channel is on TikTok, YouTube, AppleTV, and Instagram, and will spotlight important moments from council, commission, and school board meetings. Rajaraman said his company has already processed thousands of hours of government meetings for customers, some lasting over fifteen hours without a recess.
He and his team began curating funny moments from those meetings, believing humor could get people more invested in U.S. democracy. He reasoned that while people may not watch procedural videos, they will watch the funny stuff. The most surprising moment so far on Hamlet TV featured someone dressing up as a cockroach to address their city council about a pest problem. But Rajaraman says it’s not the funny stuff that surprises him; it’s how consequential these meetings are and how invisible they remain.
He cited an example from earlier this year when the Tucson city council rejected Amazon’s 3.6 billion dollar data center after months of planning, a decision likely seen by very few people. This isn’t Rajaraman’s first venture. He co-founded the analytics platform Scripted, was twice an Entrepreneur in Residence at Foundation Capital, and ran a publication called The Bold Italic which he sold to Medium.
He knows Hamlet TV probably won’t be a money maker and is doing it to get people more involved with democracy. He also plans to give away the Hamlet tool to local journalists for free, noting that while data is great, context matters so much. Next, the company is looking to work with government affairs, advocacy organizations, and renewable energy developers. Rajaraman believes democracy works better when people are watching, and Hamlet is trying to make that watching possible.