Pricing Your (SaaS) Product for Government

Pricing strategy is one of the most under-appreciated elements of a SaaS business. Many SaaS companies struggle with how to price their product. It’s a particularly tricky element in the govtech space given the unique and burdensome process of public…

The Future of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction

Can Good Sales People Sell Bad Products?

The very best salespeople can sell anything. When I was young, I distinctly remember my dad saying, “The best salespeople can sell ice to an eskimo.” I still believe that to be true. Give a great salesperson a great product and magical things happen. The…

Please. No More Dashboards.

The hot thing in govtech right now is dashboards. There are very few govtech companies not offering a dashboard of some kind. It’s a buffet line of dashboard cuisines; financial dashboards, demographic dashboards, open data dashboards, performance management dashboards. Please…

Pay people to attend public meetings

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.” 
 — Charlie Munger

I’ve spent my entire career either working in local government or working with local governments. I have a degree in…

Cities are approaching this Amazon RFP all wrong

The lunacy is in the logic, not the desired outcomes. 
 
I’m deeply interested in cities, so I found Amazon’s announcement of HQ2 quite interesting. As did every city leader and elected official in the country. The prospect of luring Amazon and…

Government Doesn’t Have a Tech Problem — Tech Doesn’t Understand Government

Things people say about government technology:

Government websites suck.

I can’t believe they use (insert legacy vendor), what a piece of shit…

The Business of Govtech: Getting to $100mm in Revenue

Is it possible to build a $100mm revenue business in govtech? Here’s an easy way to think about getting to $100mm in ARR:

• 1 customer pays $100mm annually
• 10 customers pay $10mm each…

Civic Engagement is still broken — and a huge opportunity.

When everyone agrees something is a problem, one of two things must be true; (1) There exist an opportunity to solve the problem, or (2) it’s not actually a problem.
 
A decade ago, Nathan and I started MindMixer because we…