Applying for government benefits is a slow, tedious process that often leaves applicants in limbo for several months. Advocate looks to help. Today on Found Becca and Dom are talking with Advocate’s founder Emilie Poteat, the company that helps Americans engage with federal benefits programs through its technology-enabled services platform. In this episode they discuss how the Advocate team is using AI to automate advocacy and get the wait time for people seeking aid to nearly nothing.
Applying for government benefits is a slow, tedious process that often leaves applicants in limbo for several months. Advocate looks to help. Today on Found Becca and Dom are talking with Advocate’s founder Emilie Poteat, the company that helps Americans engage with federal benefits programs through its technology-enabled services platform. In this episode they discuss how the Advocate team is using AI to automate advocacy and get the wait time for people seeking aid to nearly nothing.They also talked about:
(0:00) Introduction
(4:16) the status quo of applying for government aid
(8:56) Automating government services
(13:13) using AI to automate advocacy
(18:29) Finding the right investor fit
(24:13) Hiring for a social impact company
(30:00) Collaborating with government agencies
(32:00) Host discussion
Becca Szkutak
Hello, and welcome to found TechCrunch is podcast that brings you the stories behind the startup from the founders that are building them. It's me, your host, Becca scatec. And I'm joined, as always by the fabulous
Dom Davis
Dominic Davis.
Becca Szkutak
Hey, Tom, how's it going?
Dom Davis
I'm good. How are you?
Becca Szkutak
I am doing well. I am excited for the show we have today.
Dom Davis
So am I.
Becca Szkutak
Today we have on Emily Poteet, from advocate, which is a service platform that helps connect people to government services.
Dom Davis
And as always, we're doing our two truths and a lie. So listen carefully to see which one of these statements is the lie. And then after the show, we will tell you what the lie was. So listen carefully, is the lie that government agencies are resistant to this third party infrastructure. Too many people have to wait six months or more to receive aid or three, Emily started this business after a family member had a first hand experience with trying to file for aid.
Becca Szkutak
Those are all the makings for a good conversation. So definitely listen carefully, dear listeners, and here is our conversation with Emily.
Hey, Emily, how's it going? Good. How are you doing? Oh, you know, doing well hanging in there trying to trudge through winter. Thanks so much for coming on the show. My pleasure. Yeah, I think a great place to get started is why don't you tell us a bit about advocate. Sure.
Emilie Poteat
So at Advocate, we are going to ensure that all Americans are able to access any government benefit for which they're eligible. And we're starting with Social Security insurance pay. What that means is, if you've worked for a long time paid into the system and become too sick to work, you are actually eligible to access a public insurance product that will replace some portion of your monthly income and eventually give you access to Medicaid, so that you can meet your very basic needs when you're going through a big health crisis. So advocate is on a mission to make sure that all Americans are connected to the support that our social contract and our government is intended to provide to us. And
Becca Szkutak
I'm curious sort of how that works. I know, it's interesting what you say about how there are these benefits, it's hard to access them. That seems like a conversation about a lot of different government departments, even on the business side as well. I know people who do small business loans are always like, why don't startups ever look to this as a way to get funding? And it's like, they can't figure out how to do it. And how did you guys decide to tackle this problem, as you were building advocate,
Emilie Poteat
it was a personal story. I had a situation with my stepfather, David, who became very sick 12 years ago, now, you had a sudden and very big stroke, he was not going to be able to return to his his work. He was working at the Stop and Shop deli and Northfield, Rhode Island. And I thought, okay, I know that there's this program Social Security where he can get some of his needs paid for when health care eventually, I had a bumbling boondoggle of a year and a half attempting to qualify him for that program. And it was an individual instance, that actually had generalizability. As you noted, on the small business loan front, there are many, many government programs where there just lacks this front end infrastructure piece that will take the individual, all of their data and all of their needs, and translate those into terms that are extensible to the federal government. So I said the person can get out from the government, what they're entitled to what they've already paid for what the government is hoping to administer to them. So it was a emotional story. And when I looked into why it was that I went through that emotional journey, what I found out was that there are 10s of millions of Americans across a whole bunch of different categories that are going through a similar experience to the one that I had with my family. And speaking more systematically. I decided are a bunch of us decided that the prescription was not another nonprofit. He was not individual law firms. It was not that the government was out to get people but rather that there was a missing piece of infrastructure, like a bridge or a road, but technological infrastructure that would sit between the American public and its federal government. And so we set out to build it.
Dom Davis
And so what is the process right now for someone looking to get government benefits? Like how do you even begin to do that?
Emilie Poteat
It depends on what type. Our first vertical that we're looking at is Social Security disability pay when you're too sick to work full time. Right now, people work with individual attorneys, they go online, they fill out a webform. They work with the parole officers that work with social workers, they work with legal aid clinics to fill out paper forms. If you've ever been to the DMV or fill out a W two, you know that there's a feeling of actually that you're exposed to the inside of an engine without there being the user experience for you to catch you. That's the same that it is for disability pay the government do hadn't yet built the individual interface that we are setting out to build. So the way that people do it now is through the intermediaries that I mentioned. And those intermediaries have differing resources and support for them. They gather their medical records. In the case of our first vertical, they gather their vocational history, and then they they shove him on to forums and wait a long time years for an answer.
Dom Davis
So interesting, why hasn't the government created kind of this interface yet? They
Emilie Poteat
do have web applications. So you can go online. And I will have to ask them, I think I know the IRS. I mean, I have asked them a lot. And I think they, they do have web applications, Social Security, where you can fill things out online. The trouble is, it's kind of like, if you went and filled out a web application for college and you wrote down your name, you said, Hey, I think I'm good at science. And then you did submit any test scores, and you didn't submit any letters of recommendation nor your transcript, and you said, Hey, college, can I calm? They'd say, Well, we have to look into this. That's kind of what happens with government benefits. And so on the data aggregation piece, I believe that the history is the government thought this is a big burden for the American public, we will develop your case to determine eligibility for this one first program, we're starting with Social Security. And once we get the medical records of vocational info, we'll let you know, unfortunately, in practice that has resulted in years of wait time. And so when it comes to answering your question about why an effective interface doesn't exist, I will continue to ask that question. But what I can share is, it's been pretty magical and patriotic to work with the folks in the federal government this past year to collaborate on what we're building. And that has been one of the biggest, I would say blessings of last year.
Becca Szkutak
And since you mentioned it, it'd be good to kind of dive in to what exactly advocate is building because I know you said a bridge between people who need these benefits sort of make it easier for them to get it. But what exactly what that process look like, I can talk
Emilie Poteat
about the next year time horizon, and then 10 years from now, we're taking government benefits and support services one by one. So if you were thinking about different faff business, you'd think of business, our client segments, right now quote, unquote, our client segments sounds something like Social Security applicants, Veterans Affairs, disability applicants, and immigration candidates, things like that. So it's a weird way to use clients segmentation. But each of these applicant pools or client segments has a government department that handles eligibility for surfaces. And so what we're building is a machine or an underwriting engine that creates auto adjudicated cases from the start collaboratively working with the government in order to feed them the requisite data in terms that are extensible to them. So it's a back end engine. And eventually, we will have a self service portal similar to a new age TurboTax. But because we need to know what wins. First, we're holding back our own webform. Because we know that we need to control the quality of the data and ensure it's positioned appropriately, because we're helping individual people whose whole lives is riding on this. And
Becca Szkutak
you'd mentioned a little bit earlier about what it was like kind of working with the government orgs that are behind a lot of these different benefits in the areas you're looking into. And what has reception been like working with them? Were they excited to say to meet with someone who's trying to maybe fix a problem that they're aware of on their own end? Is there sort of any kind of friction there of when you're working with a huge government agency as a small company getting off the ground? What has that looked like of trying to kind of work with them to find the solution? Yeah, it
Emilie Poteat
has looked like, I don't know what elbow grease looks like. That's what it has felt like, it looks like it's been me just hustling to talk with people. So I'd say that the existence of industry, like just let's take the three verticals, I mentioned. There are accredited attorneys that work in social security disability representation, they go in front of judges, eventually they argue cases for years. Same things with veterans disability. Same thing with immigration, I could go on with this list for a long time. There are many parallel industries. And the reason that these industries exist is because the government said, Hey, this is really hard. This we have to outsource some support and outsource some advocacy of individuals to help us make sure that quality applications reach us. And so it's been a long history of collaboration. I think Advocate has just taken a step forward to say, well, it didn't want to be too controversial, but like, why did these industries need to exist? In fact, if you have a turnstile or infrastructure that sits between the individual and does in an automatic manner, the advocacy that many people are doing excellently in a small, regional, bespoke individual manner. And so speaking about the government itself, all of these industries are currently collaborating with the government. We have accredited representatives. I'm one and many of them work at Advocate, and they work with and on behalf of the federal government each and every day, and I'd say the vibes if you will. It's a challenge and I I have not met a single person or talk to a single person in the government who has said to me, I just really, you know, people are using this system, we're going to throw some sand in the gears, we're going to slow it down this it's been like the exact opposite. And so when it comes to friction, yes, it has been hard. We are currently a small team. But it has not been hard for any of the reasons that would be more cynical. It has been hard because we're a tiny little company trying to, you know, poke a giant central agency and say, Hey, can we help out? Can we help? We have a little different approach, can we help out here, but the you know, I called it a blessing. And I mean, it. It's been nothing but kindness, collaboration, and even going above and beyond the typical collaboration that's expected. In these industries, the reason they exist is because the government needed collaboration with private sector. And we're just taking a different approach to that private for to like fulfilling that private sector work.
Dom Davis
And so where are you guys right now, in terms of the building process of your company,
Emilie Poteat
we are, I can talk about that technology platform. So we made a lot of infrastructure investments from a technological perspective over the first year, and recruited kind of our founding team, I would say, and our portion, I don't want to oversell it like 40 to 50% of the way through automating the Social Security application that I mentioned. And by December, we will have launched our second vertical. So remember, I was kind of talking about government agencies as client segments, we will be on to our second client segment by December of this year, and we expect to have within a certain band of complexity, the first automated application available in our first use case, as I mentioned, is the Social Security Disability Insurance product. And when it comes to our team, we are 16. Now we'll be 50 by the end of the year, and the important thing is we will be helping 1000s of claimants we have already 2000 on our books, well, many, many more at the end of this year. The reason why I know that to be true is you know, it can be satisfying to do something quick or automated. You know, this isn't like a an operational efficiency play. This is a time to money in pocket play. And it's like super critical for all of the clients that we serve. And so when I think about how I'm going to build this business, across each and every vertical, I have a big research list. And it says days from when an individual American files for benefit and days that they wait till they get their decision. And I know in my Excel document, I have it sorted by longest wait time first. And that's why we found ourselves in social security first. And so when I think about the build, I will not be counting in the way that I described it to you today all 50% automated, you know, 100% automated, there will always be humans in our business, this is a really important and human product, the most important thing is that we demolish the wait time to almost nothing. And so where we are in that build is like very early. But I have no doubt that with our team, and the collaboration that we are lucky to be a part of that we are headed in the right direction towards like diminishing the wait time very significantly, which I expect to exploit our growth,
Becca Szkutak
and maybe even just one step further into the product just for my own knowledge. How are you guys working to automate this? I know you are using AI, but kind of like what exactly does the underbelly of the product look like? Well, now,
Emilie Poteat
some of it is secret. But essentially what we are doing is there are a number of steps in government adjudication for eligibility. And so we are parceling out each and every one of those steps, determining the requisite data for that step and auto arguing the case in basically using like kind of infinite strategies, coming up with the right strategy, and then submitting that information. And so what you can imagine, if you were to take a step back and think about a government agency and all the seats, some of those jobs are data collection, other jobs, or as user first use case that in the case of Social Security figured out somebody's work history and what they did, it's just a diagnosis, or isn't a diagnosis, can the person really work? Like in the case of my Dad, can you do some job each and every one of those seats, if you think about them as an individual worker desk inside the government agency, we are breaking up each responsibility set and automating it individually. And then we basically are creating a chain. And that's why I described it as like a percent automated. It's basically how many of those roles can we capture the work of effectively with a certain degree of certainty and accuracy because again, this is not a game where we like hope to be kind of right, like we require that we are extremely correct, because this is people's entire livelihood.
Becca Szkutak
And another big factor at play here is security. Of course, when you're working with the kind of information that people would need to submit to get these benefits. It's obviously very personal information that of course could be detrimental if it ends up in the wrong place. How do you guys think about building security into this especially building this interface that is a little detached from the actual end product just because you guys are not part of the federal government? Well,
Emilie Poteat
we operate under all of the accreditation, HIPAA and sock to compliance laws that regulate the accredited representative industry already. So it's a bit of a boring answer. But that's how the industries are required to function. Now, that's one of the kind of basic requirements for holding and accreditation. So specifically, we, of course, are building those protections into our platform. But we were already required to comply with them previously, because again, it's not like any of these industries are new, they're not new. We're just Systemising the arguments that exists within them in a regional bespoke and individual manner. We are creating a system that does that. And one
Becca Szkutak
more question on the AI piece. Because I know you mentioned earlier that this, of course, will always be a human to human business, like there's no way to really fully automate the process, you always are going to have to have people involved no matter what. And so why does AI make sense as the solution here? Did you guys consider like other options as well? Or did AI always make the most sense for a certain reason? Or like, I'm just curious, like, why this ended up being the strategy that you guys went with, if it wasn't the first, it's
Emilie Poteat
just the shovel that we're holding today? AI is the pick or the shovel that we're holding to dig? It's kind of like saying, you have a factory floor, why'd you choose an electricity to eliminate it, it is just simply the most, it's the most self generative, and advancing technology that is appropriate for giant pools of rolls, and giant pools of disaggregated data. And we are bringing them together with the logic layer that I mentioned. But had I built this business five years ago, you know, I'm a social scientist, I guess a bit of a data scientist, I would have, you know, come up with some basic stuff, some, you know, natural language processing some logistic regressions, you know, boy, do I think this case wins or not, I think, today, I always kind of giggle when I go down the highway and I see like aI powered HR software, AI powered, whatever it makes me think of like, whenever electricity was invented, it's like, electricity powered, I don't hope, like automobiles, it's like, Yeah, no kidding. It's simply what did I call it is our shovel. The one thing I'll say not to diminish its importance to us. The one thing I'll say is, think about what we're doing. The government is beautifully sophisticated at 1000s of pages of rules and regulations and requirements and job responsibilities. How wonderful if you could create a system of all of that, because they are massive amounts of language. And so this shovel, if you will, of AI, is particularly suited to the quantizing the massive amount of qualitative data, that it just so happens that the government was kind of beautiful at writing down for us and making public for sure.
Becca Szkutak
more from this conversation right after a quick break.
Dom Davis
And I want to pivot just a little bit because I'm really interested to know how fundraising for this product was did investors get it? Did they not get it? Were they all over it, because it's a I
Emilie Poteat
would call it a seed round last year, this time last year. And that was probably the most challenging where I had the most work to do, where I had, you know, my vision teams credentials and a bit of traction. We just closed a preempted Series A, we didn't need to go to market on the series A and I believe that the vision is vast. And you know, we're talking about working with the entire federal government, you know, obviously, there's not an individual benefit and every government agency, but there's a lot of them, that has a really vast vision. And so where I found the big allies that are friends, and now our partners are at very large funds, who look at a mission like that one to say, Man, that's a moonshot, let's do it. We're has been more challenging as I'm, you know, I'm a diverse founder, I am the mom of three very young kids. I'm LGBT. I'm a woman founder. Lots of like, every little sticker would love that could be diverse founders on my on my founder card. And I'd say that I've had a pretty mixed to negative experience with really small impact funds that I would have thought would have been more excited by who I was. And so that's been an interesting thing to note. Whereas the super juridiction and all kinds of monster funds out there have been like, alright, Sign me up. Let's go to the moon. Emily.
Dom Davis
That's actually so interesting. Oh, my goodness, twins. That's so interesting. No, I mean, like, can you go more into that, like, What were they saying what was happening? Because that is kind of weird.
Emilie Poteat
I'm a little bit afraid to like, well,
Dom Davis
I know I get I get it, though I get it.
Emilie Poteat
advocate is solving a federal problem. For 10s of millions of Americans today. We are one company facing off to one federal government. There is analogous individuals and federal governments all across the world. This is not a $1 billion IPO. This is a five to $10 billion IPO if we go fast. That vision has a very high chance of complete failure. And when I was fundraising, the only thing that I had To say wouldn't fail was my personal results. And certainly, we had note subtraction, we have revenue, we have clients, I have a wonderful team. But mostly it was me standing in front of people and saying, because I told you so because I'm going to, and I'll say, I don't know what it was. But with a really small as LGBT funds, or a few of those women founded company funds I just found without fail, they offered me incredibly low valuations that I would never take. Or they said, oh, boy, boy, is that a big vision, I really, really need to see a lot more proof in Marquette for several years before I can really get behind that one. So I don't have a diagnosis for why that occurred. It might be knee like the the way that I communicate. But I endeavored to have every single one of those conversations with the confidence, poise and rigor of an average straight white man. And so when having those conversations I found that I was able to reach through, not to those whose mission it was to support founders like me. And so I don't have a diagnosis. But I do know that that was my experience
Becca Szkutak
that is so interesting to think about, especially because if you're raising a seed rounds, most seed stage companies don't have a ton of proof points and things they can lay out already, especially raising at that stage. But I do want to touch on this a little bit, because you mentioned it bit at the top of the call as why advocate is a company, a company that would go out and raise venture funding as opposed to like you said, more of a nonprofit or sort of a different kind of structure. And we had someone on the show a couple of months ago who was doing something similar with legal advice. And he said the same thing where he was like very adamant that this should be a company that should not be a nonprofit, this should not be sort of like pro bono work among different lawyers. And I'm curious to ask you the same question. Why did it make sense for advocate to be a venture backed startup, as opposed to some of those other routes that you could have taken for something in this area?
Emilie Poteat
Basically, there's a huge piece of technological infrastructure missing from our country. And it is critical, and it hurts individuals, and it deserves the very best minds and the largest pools of capital directed at it. It is a similar question to saying, Why does Lamar homebuilding exist? Why do the companies that build every single bridge and every single road and all the waterworks in our country, there are private sector companies that do that, because the problem is massive, and efficiency, and speed are required, because we are connecting individuals to the support that our social contract, meant to set up. So in summary, I'd say criticality, scale and speed, it's perfectly fine to have a services business or nonprofit, in these industries. And people do that. And they absolutely help individuals. Without a doubt, there is not an easy way to build a giant technology platform, and drive it to national level adoption in two or three years, without huge infusions of capital. Right. So it's like the content of what we're doing is social impact. But, man, I couldn't be more like if there was a way for me to accelerate our approach. You know, we just we closed the series A A week ago was preempted. If I can get some proof points, I'm going to raise the be immediately like, I cannot bring accelerant to this issue. As you know, it's like with all the strength in my being, I would choose to move this forward as quickly and with as massive scale as was responsible, because remember, who we're facing off to are like individuals like my father, who are like, certainly hurting, it drives my urgency. And it also drives in some ways, my caution, I appreciate your question on the compliance and things like that those are table stakes. But let's communications with our human in the loop with our team of experts that will always work with people regardless of what vertical or category that is the counterbalance to the other things that I'm saying?
Becca Szkutak
Definitely. Definitely in saying on the startup piece for just a second, because I know this had been an issue, especially with what happened with your father that had been ongoing that you had been looking into for a while before realizing the real scale of the problem and eventually launching advocate. What was it like actually deciding to take the leap to launch the company? And why was the timing right? How did that decision all kind of play out?
Emilie Poteat
The timing was so bad. My dad got sick again two years ago, and I was like, oh, yeah, that problem that was horrible what was going on with government benefits, and I looked into it again. So that was, you know, 12 years ago, and you're like, what do you do for 10 years, I worked in a variety of formal large company capacities, but two years ago, he did get sick again, and I was aware of services businesses in these industries. And I can't describe to you how bad the timing was. I just felt I wish I could give you a systematic like thoughtful answer. But genuinely, I was like, This is so crazy that this is missing. How has no one realized this before? I just have to do it. So I think I had a one week old or something. I was is working at Bridgewater Associates and I left to start I started a services business did this to figure out what was up basically with these industries, to figure out if the prescription for them could be something like the tech the infrastructure that we're building. And it was like immediately after that, I'd say the other thing is, when I started fundraising for the seed, which was last fall into the end of the year of, of 22, my dad had just died. And so you know, it felt very personal. I felt like, I apologize that this is like not a scientific answer. But I felt like I was being carried to do it. Like there's just like no outcome, except for me just doing it because this is missing. And the incentives were there to build it. And so why not just do it. But that being said, if you ask my wife, she would say that I am totally inappropriate on my timing. And, you know, three little kids and like private preschool, things like that. And I think if there's ever an idea if I can, like, share something, if there's ever an idea that feels inescapable, for me, it just like came to me. And I was like, and now I do this, no matter what I wish I could say that it was more upper brain, upper floor brain, but it was more downstairs. instinctual.
Dom Davis
You mentioned you had another company before this, right? How many companies? Have you started? Just
Emilie Poteat
two, I did a turn around of one a few years ago in the insurance space, just love insurance. That other one is a services business that operates in the space that was a bit getting my feet wet into like becoming accredited, understanding what was going on, you know, a lot of the questions you've asked me have said, you know, wait, like, Could this be a nonprofit? Could it be, you know, a network of social workers and network of parole officers, that would be incredible if I could hand to them and infrastructure that made it possible. But for me, the last company was basically on the job training to understand what what was required here. Yeah, cuz
Dom Davis
I was gonna ask, What have you learned and your entrepreneurial journey as you, I guess, keep founding companies and what advice you brought from your first company compared to now I guess,
Emilie Poteat
what I have not learned is balance. My lead investor. Atler hippo from the seed round was, I was like talking to her one day, and she was wearing this bracelet, I said, like balance, like all these on it. And she was like, you know, my career coach said that I should give this to somebody who needs it more than me, she like handed the brain Listen to me over the table. And I gotta calm down. So that is, I'm not going to balance let me just put that transparently. Now, I'm not sure that's coming through in this conversation. What I have learned, though, is just like any job anywhere, if you're working for a large company, or nonprofit, or as a teacher, or anything, if you show up every day, remain completely resolute in the goal, you will just simply kind of recursively move towards that goal with new solutions. As long as you remember that the goal is immovable. And the training that you've had, like, whether it be in college, or in high school, or as a teacher, or as a nurse is all that you needed inside of you to appropriately professionally calmly, clearly walk a new path towards the same goal each and every day, no matter what nonsense or difficulty comes your way. I'd say that has been really instructive. Because each and every day, negative feedback and disappointments rain upon your head, you just have to think through to someone who helped you out with your learning earlier, and wonder who you would like to be in their eyes and just
Becca Szkutak
try again. And I just wanted to ask you a little bit about hiring for this company. I know you mentioned you guys have a small team already. But sounds like there are definitely plans to hire this year. Because this company sits at such an interesting intersection. Maybe you'd want to hire people who know about government policy I've experienced there are people who are on that AI side or the data science side. How do you guys think about hiring for this exact like specific type of company,
Emilie Poteat
we definitely do have an engineering team. And we'll continue to grow our engineering team. And in addition to that, many of the good people that I mentioned, both in the government and in private industries that are serving individuals just without a system are ones that we will bring in and are bringing into the advocate fold in order to operate on top of our system and maintain the individual to our human advocate Connection. You basically give the answer for me it is those two groups of people. I would say though, the thing that has been exciting and easier from now, if I think about myself a year ago, it's so helpful to do things like this and have a conversation with you guys and like communicate out our mission and vision because the good people I think are inspired by building something like this. I think there are a lot of builders out there and they are just kind of coming to us and so that has felt really uplifting and like a really nice turn that the company has taken and I personally have experienced over the last year change pretty significantly. That leads into Something else I
Becca Szkutak
wanted to touch on. I know companies like this that have this big, great mission, of course, it's a little more of a heavier area to tackle than say, as you mentioned earlier, maybe making optimization a little bit quicker or something kind of like in a realm where it's like you're making a business tool faster, or making an email process quicker. This is a huge issue, as you mentioned, for so many people, and does that ever weigh on you? Or sort of how do you navigate that personally, yeah, having this huge goal, this huge mission, but it does really affect a lot of people in a way that a lot of companies just aren't going to.
Emilie Poteat
Because I have so many young children and demands in my life, I think it's, it's basically super clarifying, for me to have such like a significant purpose. I don't know that I could care about automating email for a company, sorry for female automation companies out there. But you know, I was glancing over my shoulder. And I have a mirror behind me that uses whiteboard and I have 38 people written on it. And those are the number of ft clients who died last month waiting for their day in court to prove that they were too sick to do their full time job. So it does get more clear than that, for me. And I'd say it is probably the reason why that really nice kinda investor handed me the bracelet that said balance, and probably why it needs to be told to cool my heels more. But to me, it's kind of exhilarating and feels self actualized and incredible, that people could care enough about what we're doing to help advance this mission on behalf of those 38 people, of people like myself, father, David, have really all of us as we touch more and more verticals. Again, it's one of those things in the past year, that's been absolutely the best job I've ever had probably will be the best job I I've ever had. And it's something that I didn't exactly expect that kind of drive to come from something as you called it so heavy and difficult. It's like really what else matters? How about you, like keep people alive, and you make it so that they can buy groceries faster? Probably start there.
Becca Szkutak
Unfortunate that puts us right at time. So we are going to have to wrap there. But thank you again, Emily, for coming on the show.
Emilie Poteat
Thank you guys so much.
Becca Szkutak
That was our conversation with Emily Dom, what was the lie?
Dom Davis
The lie was that the government was actually excited, I guess, to work with new companies and third party infrastructure about stuff like this, which I actually find surprising.
Becca Szkutak
I find it surprising on the one hand, because it's kind of what I asked her about, like the security concerns, of course that come with this, especially with like plugging in a third party that's going to take stuff like your social security number, which you don't have to worry about when you apply to government stuff, because like 30 have that information. But on the other hand, the government was probably like, Oh, you want to build this for us? Great. Like we don't want to do it. So like I am surprised, but I definitely could see maybe why they'd lean in. Yeah.
Dom Davis
And it's also really, really early. Because working with government is just hard in terms of how slow it is and how ridiculous it is. So I imagine that right now everyone's excited. But as the product develops, and as just working with bureaucracy kicks in, I imagine that things might get a little bit more challenging,
Becca Szkutak
for sure. And I think this could be one of those things to where, obviously a very different company in a very different business model. But I spoke to a startup recently that is taking care of loss and found and originally I was like, Well, why would stadiums and arenas care if the people who went here like retrieved their iPhones? Like I was like, why do they really care that much. If you leave your water bottle that you're gonna come and find it, and the guy was like, I don't think you understand when people leave something important, how much they call and email and call and email and drive these people who are not focused on Lost and Found per se, like that becomes their whole job. And I'm wondering if that's maybe why some of this openness from the government comes from because if they aren't fixing the system themselves, I'm sure they've got people who just spent all day on the phone with people being like, where are my benefits are like, Why can't I get this to work? And like maybe they do want to cut some of those inefficiencies, but the government's not very good at trimming the fat, so they're probably just happy someone else is willing to try for
Dom Davis
weight sidenote, when I was a kid, I went to Coney Island and saw that there was a lost and found section for children and it scarred me to this day. But I know I was just thinking about like, they were like kids just in this area. And I was like, What is this and it's like Lost and Found for kids. And I remember thinking oh my gosh, oh my god. What is this? Yeah, I I can see. Yeah, the government would rather just have someone else do it because lord knows they're not going to do it can't get it done. And it's good startup idea, especially
Becca Szkutak
to because it is money that is set aside. I've always wondered actually what happens because this is not and like I brought this up a bit too on the call like the Small Business Bureau is the same boat in this way where it's like they have all this money set aside for small business loans each year but it doesn't get fully used because so many companies don't think they're fit or like startups like, well, if I raise VC, I can't do that, which is like not 100% True. And so like some that gets left over, and I'm always curious what happens with the leftover government money? Does it just go to defense? Probably, if
Dom Davis
I was gonna say, it's not going to infrastructure, that's for sure. But the government is so confusing with everything, like even thinking about I don't even know not that our generation will get Social Security benefits. But I was like, I don't even know how you apply for benefits now. And that process, it seems like everything is so confusing. So having a company that just makes it easier, or error applies, like I don't know, a millennial aesthetic to it would make this probably a lot easier for a lot of people, because the government has a lot of stuff. And it seems like we've been talking to a lot of companies who've been working with the government. And they're saying, yeah, the government wants to do better. They just don't know how or they can't, right the moment No,
Becca Szkutak
and I think that's why this feels like a good use case. For AI. Even though it's like the one hand, I brought up the security concerns, of course, you get that with AI, if it's learning what you're putting in your docs, that means it's learning your address and your social security number. And it's like learning those things. If you're using that kind of an application in that way, at the same time, like Emily made the good point that there are actually rules and like they are written down. And that is real data that we know to be correct that the government put out that they can use to train the model to help people find these benefits and fill out the forms. So that part of it I'm like, That makes total sense. Because that's the thing I keep hearing more and more from various AI startups is that if they're working in something like legal or something like this, where it's like, there are set and defined rules to build off of like, that makes such a difference. It doesn't have to guess like, if you ask it about something, it can actually go and pull the individual rule because they exist.
Dom Davis
Yeah, a good use case for AI. I imagine no one likes being on the phone for like six hours arguing about benefits. So this is a good use case for AI. Definitely. Yeah.
Becca Szkutak
And one of the other things that was interesting was her luck, and lack of luck with the fundraising process, because that definitely surprised me. On the one hand, it surprised me that she had luck with the big firms and not some of the more specialized firms. But on the other hand, the one thing that stood out to me is this government piece of it American dynamism, and like Andreessen, they're all over that. And like, I feel like firms are really into companies that work with the government in a way that they weren't even like two years ago, which still to me is like crazy. I remember covering a firm, literally summer 2022, who was helping their whole shtick was like, oh, we'll invest in companies that could have a government contract, and we'll help them get it. And like that was like they struggled to like raise LP money, because LPS really, that's one thing. Now it's like, that's all anyone talks about. It seems like it's AI, and it's big government. So I feel big VCs are like, that's very in their moment, right now.
Dom Davis
Yeah. Cuz like when I'm thinking of like an Impact Fund, I imagine they don't have as much, splashy, splashy capital. But also, this is like a really early business. And it does work with the government, which is a nuance for sure. And it especially needs a lot. I imagine it needs a lot on the firm side as well, in terms of just knowledge and understanding of how to navigate working with technology that that will be used by the government. And I imagine those are resources bigger firms would have who's on the American Diane NISM. Team at a16z. Like, I don't know, like, I imagine there's just a lot more knowledge there. But I don't know what was going on with the Social Impact Fund. But I imagine that it had something to do with the product being really, really early, maybe.
Becca Szkutak
Yeah. Which like I get, because like she said, like, this is a moonshot, of course, even though the basic concept of this of like, oh, making it so people who are entitled to these benefits can get them easier, like saying it like that sounds easy, but government's hard. And like you said, yeah, she's still building the product. So it's like that just maybe too big for a fund that just can't take that kind of risk on that vision, I guess would be how I would put it.
Dom Davis
Yeah, that's that would be my guess. Yeah.
Becca Szkutak
The one thing is that some of these more like focused smaller funds, they probably get pitched, like if they're, like demographic specific, like she was saying, like funds that invest in women or funds that invest in members of the LGBTQ plus community. They're getting pitched by every founder who fits those categories, too. Yeah. So it's like, I wouldn't be super surprised by the fact of it just being like, there's a lot of competition for those dollars too, even though of course, they're deemed an overall venture like niche, but the reason they exist is because they know they're filling a gap. It just maybe like these funds are not the right size to fill that gap, if that makes sense. Yeah, that's
Dom Davis
also probably it. I mean, I imagine as the company grows and launches and starts kicking off, she could probably go back to some of the impact funds,
Becca Szkutak
for sure. Yeah, cuz it's like if you can show even that like this helps 100 people or like a small sample set of people just to show that it works. I mean, that makes such a big difference. cuz like, if you had this setup the government's like, cool, you can use this. I mean, like that could happen pretty early in the journey. And that would make a huge difference in like what the risk profile would look like for sure.
Dom Davis
Yeah. But otherwise, I think it's cool that there's a lot of innovation happening in this space that's making the government stuff easier. I keep thinking of that bounder we spoke to with that legal aid. No, yeah. And it seems like paperwork, just like apps that help us get through government paperwork, and all of the nuance and headaches that come with existing in this country. It gives me hope for our generation, but I don't know what the latest report is, but I don't think that we're getting Social Security. Oh my god. So maybe another benefit of
Becca Szkutak
this was something else I guess. Yeah. Found is hosted by myself. TechCrunch Senior Reporter Becca Skuta. Alongside Senior Reporter Dominic Midori Davis founders produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Cal our Illustrator is Bryce Durbin funds audience development and social media is managed by Morgan Liddell Alisa stringer and Natalie Kreisman TechCrunch is audio products are managed by Henry pic of it. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.
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