Josh Penner for Inquisio.AI
Building the AI-Powered Solution to Solve Government’s Information Problem
Make Hay While the Sun Shines!
I don't suppose a Thanksgiving update will make much sense, but be assured we'll be building through the holiday break. Already, we have targeted customer interviews set up M-W of next week! Why are we pushing so hard even though we have decades of experience with the problems we're solving? Simple, we love chasing these problems down and building products that create lasting solutions for great communities.
I'm personally at the National League of Cities for the second half of this week, making direct contact with agencies across the US, and looking forward to building the relationships that will continue to help us make inroads into municipalities across the US.
If you or someone I should talk to are in Atlanta, shoot me a message. I'd love to connect.
In the meantime, see below for updates, progress, an ask, and a short story highlighting the fantastic nature of the information problem we’re tackling.
~Josh
CEO, Inquisio.AI
LOI's in Hand: 9
LOI's on Deck: 4
Beta Testing/Dev Pilot in Hand: 1
Beta Testing/Dev Pilot on Deck: 6
I'm in Atlanta through Saturday at the National League of Cities. Reach out to me if you are in the area and want to connect. Reach out to me if you're building something related to the public sector and want to collaborate. Reach out to me just to say "hi." All are welcomed and appropriate things to reach out to me for. 
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I had the opportunity to join Matt Brown on his "Secrets of Influence" series in his Matt Brown Podcast. The podcast episode should be out at the end of this week. Here's a link. Listen in if you want to hear how executive thought works in the public space, and how we're integrating it into our startup at Inquisio as well. 
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We’ve been in full engagement mode. Thought you might like to see a visual map of where we’ve been talking to cities, towns, counties, and adjacent agencies. 
We're super excited to introduce you to our new team member, Keith Newham. 
Keith is going to be an anchor for our development team. His background in software development, project management, and software leadership will help us continue to rapidly respond to initial customer insights while facilitating scalable solutions. Connect with Keith, please!
- Help me and other #TechStars cohort founders find potential customers by attending the Techstars Seattle “Connect our Companies” Event on 12/6 at 12 pm PST. RSVP here: https://lu.ma/t1ngxgz8
Not an update, but I think you’ll find this interesting.
The JLARC Website from Washington State provides excellent insight into the scale of the information problem facing local governments.
In WA state (not US wide) 2,452 Washington agencies are subject to the Public Records Act.
Of those the top 215 agencies reported receiving a total of 357,075 records requests in 2021.
Those agencies closed 185,196 of those requests ( 52% closure rate )
Those agencies averaged 20 days to complete a records request. ( 3,703,920 total days dedicated to the requests that were fulfilled )
Those agenceis spent $100m responding to the requests ( $600 per information request fulfilled )
Take a look at Lewis County (source below). A county of ~85k constituents. For context, 15 individual cities in WA state have a greater population than Lewis County. On any given day in 2021, clerical staff walked into work at Lewis County with a back log of ~265 records in queue. Each of those records taking on average 20 days to complete. And each of those costing the agency ~$600 per record (some math here is ~5-6 hours of staff time). 
This is one county, in one state, pulled for example purposes and not because they are exceptional (re: information requests) in any particular way that we’re aware of.
Local government’s information problem is fantastically expensive.
This is where why our passion burns to solve this problem.