Sure, the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of D.C.’s rising startups from last quarter here.
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Creating social change can feel like an insurmountable goal, especially with the amount of misinforation and disinformation on the web. Countering that information isn’t easy either, which is why in 2019, Mindy Finn and Rebecca Coffman created Citizen Data, an advocacy data and analytics platform that empowers organizations with actionable information to create positive change.
D.C.-based Citizen Data refers to itself as an “Insights as a Service” (IaaS) platform. Its team of data scientists, engineers, analysts and strategists create proprietary products and tools to empower mission-aligned organizations with insights to help advance political and social issue campaigns. Citizen Data’s offerings include dynamic dashboards, cluster modeling, qualitative research and message guidance, among other capabilities, to give organizations an upper hand in creating socio-political change.
“In service of our mission, we’ve taken a lean startup approach to building our products and company. We don’t build ‘for’ but rather ‘with’ our customers who are the subject matter experts.”
“Citizen is building a platform — not just a product suite — focused on democracy-building. There is nobody in the market like us,” Coffman, COO at Citizen Data, told Built In in an email. “In service of our mission, we’ve taken a lean startup approach to building our products and company. We don’t build ‘for’ but rather ‘with’ our customers who are the subject matter experts.”
So far Citizen Data says it has demonstrated its product-market fit in the short term but hopes to deepen its expertise and make its tech platform smarter over time. The startup also plans to expand its market reach in both corporate and government sectors, in addition to leveling up its partnerships, marketing and overall impact.
To further this growth plan, Citizen Data is expanding its team. It currently has open positions across its web development, product management, engineering and growth departments.
