After spending much of 2022 with our heads down working on something new, we're happy to finally share what we've been up to.
We started Civin in 2020 as a consultancy, but we always knew we wanted to build our own products someday. Last year, we decided it was time to make that happen. Our original idea was to build the tools we wished we'd had when we were in government. But once we started digging in, we realized that there was a much bigger need: to help smaller communities achieve the kinds of things we were able to do in Boston and San Diego.
When we were building those cities' analytics programs, finding the right tools and adapting them to our needs was a pain point, but we made it work. For smaller cities and counties, though, that's not an option. It takes teams of engineers and million-dollar budgets to build a local government data stack from the ground up, no matter whether you have fifty thousand residents or a million. So for small- and medium-sized communities, incremental progress may be possible, but the goal of becoming truly data-driven is often out of reach.
We're going to change that, starting now. We've spent the past year building plans and prototypes for a new analytics platform, one that's specifically designed to give every community the ability to use their data to its full potential. Now those plans are becoming a reality. Our tools are built on the lessons of more than a decade figuring out what works in local government, so that every community can benefit from the experiences of those who have done this before.
Our platform is coming together, and we have early pilot projects in the works. We've also raised some initial investment, and as of today, we're excited to announce that we're part of the Techstars Anywhere accelerator cohort for Winter 2023. (We also have a swanky new website and logo, but that's probably less important.) Going forward, we will continue to build out the platform with early users, and will be making it widely available later this year.
The first time we started talking about what data tools local governments need, it was at a meeting of city CDOs at Harvard in late 2016. Nearly seven years later, it's finally happening. We'll share more about our progress over the coming months, and in the meantime, reach out to us if you want to talk more. This is just the beginning, and we can't wait to show you what comes next.
We started Civin in 2020 as a consultancy, but we always knew we wanted to build our own products someday. Last year, we decided it was time to make that happen. Our original idea was to build the tools we wished we'd had when we were in government. But once we started digging in, we realized that there was a much bigger need: to help smaller communities achieve the kinds of things we were able to do in Boston and San Diego.
When we were building those cities' analytics programs, finding the right tools and adapting them to our needs was a pain point, but we made it work. For smaller cities and counties, though, that's not an option. It takes teams of engineers and million-dollar budgets to build a local government data stack from the ground up, no matter whether you have fifty thousand residents or a million. So for small- and medium-sized communities, incremental progress may be possible, but the goal of becoming truly data-driven is often out of reach.
We're going to change that, starting now. We've spent the past year building plans and prototypes for a new analytics platform, one that's specifically designed to give every community the ability to use their data to its full potential. Now those plans are becoming a reality. Our tools are built on the lessons of more than a decade figuring out what works in local government, so that every community can benefit from the experiences of those who have done this before.
Our platform is coming together, and we have early pilot projects in the works. We've also raised some initial investment, and as of today, we're excited to announce that we're part of the Techstars Anywhere accelerator cohort for Winter 2023. (We also have a swanky new website and logo, but that's probably less important.) Going forward, we will continue to build out the platform with early users, and will be making it widely available later this year.
The first time we started talking about what data tools local governments need, it was at a meeting of city CDOs at Harvard in late 2016. Nearly seven years later, it's finally happening. We'll share more about our progress over the coming months, and in the meantime, reach out to us if you want to talk more. This is just the beginning, and we can't wait to show you what comes next.
