Opinion
Mastronardi: Unlike SurveyMonkey, Polco Took Data Privacy Seriously for Government
“It's I had some voter file verification, but it was unlike survey monkey took privacy seriously. So it was really a good fit for the public sector.”
Opinion
Mastronardi: The public sector needs its own Bloomberg terminal
“I feel like the public sector needs a Bloomberg terminal for the public sector.”
Insight
Mastronardi: Founder Optimism and Perfectionism Can Blind Them During Hiring
“Like, I think to be a successful entrepreneur in the first place, at least for me, I feel like I'm an optimist. I want to make positive change, positive impact on the world. And I'm also a perfectionist, which like drives me to do well, but I think those two t…”
Opinion
Mastronardi: Public sector needs a Bloomberg terminal equivalent for municipal benchmarking
“I feel like the public sector needs a Bloomberg terminal for the public sector.
They need some way for them to see, am I making progress on key initiatives?
How do I stack up against other cities in my state, in public health, in economic development, all thes…”
Opinion
Mastronardi: AI will enable proactive policy recommendations beyond municipal dashboards
“And so I think it undersells the vision a little bit because AI is such a transformative technology.
I think we can go even beyond a Bloomberg terminal suite of dashboards, maybe even like proactive policy recommendations and evaluation.”
Opinion
Polco won the public sector by prioritizing privacy, unlike SurveyMonkey
“And we had built this platform. It's I had some voter file verification, but it was unlike survey monkey took privacy seriously. So it was really a good fit for the public sector.”
Insight
Mastronardi warns that founder optimism and perfectionism can impair critical candidate evaluation
“Like I think to be a successful entrepreneur in the first place, at least for me, I feel like I'm an optimist. I want to make positive change, positive impact on the world. And I'm also a perfectionist, which like drives me to do well. But I think those two th…”
Opinion
Mastronardi: Americans have grown complacent and apathetic about civic participation
“I feel like we as a country have just unfortunately grown a little bit complacent and apathetic about civic participation.”
Assertion Supported
Mastronardi: Polco Acquired a Higher-Revenue Legacy Competitor With Wisconsin's Backing
“Even though they were bigger than us in terms of revenue, the fact that we were a software company and scalable made it possible for us to merge, or technically we acquired them. With some backing from the state of Wisconsin.”
Insight
Mastronardi: High-performing early employees often fail as roles scale
“You do something that works, but then you try to add some scaffolding with your team around you to scale it. And you've got some people who are great in one role, but as you grow, they in that role again, don't work. And so you kind of hit these like starts an…”
Disclosure
Mastronardi: Polco Is Probably Raising New Funding to Capitalize on AI
“We think we've positioned ourselves really well for AI and some of our traction coming together, so probably doing a fundraise, but”
Disclosure
Polco targets a 4:1 to 5:1 LTV:CAC ratio across products
“We have a few different products and putting them in different ways, but if all of them can hit like a four, four or five to one, man, it's just, that's great. That's our target.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Polco leveraged state backing to acquire a legacy competitor with higher revenue
“Even though they were bigger than us in terms of revenue, the fact that we were a software company and scalable made it possible for us to merge or tech technically we acquired them. With some backing from the state of Wisconsin.”
Disclosure
Mastronardi: Polco Founded to Stop Governments Relying on the Vocal Few
“And this was our mission from the beginning is our mission to today is we wanted to hear like collective intelligence will bring more thoughtful people into providing input during like a brainstorming stage. And then with that data and every other piece of dat…”
Disclosure
Mastronardi: Polco targets a 4:1 to 5:1 LTV to CAC ratio
“Right now we're trying to get, you know, pretty, we have a few different products and putting them in different ways, but if all of them can hit like a four, four or five to one, man, it's just, that's great.
That's our target.”
Disclosure
Mastronardi: Merging State and Local Sales Funnels Broke Polco's Analytics
“And honestly, it's something that I was excited about our work together getting much better at this, but we made the shift where a lot of our infrastructure was really struggling to keep up because we started selling to States, but the sales motion was very di…”
Disclosure
Mastronardi: Combining state and municipal sales into one funnel disrupted Polco's reporting
“We made the shift where a lot of our infrastructure was really struggling to keep up because we started selling to states, but the sales motion was very different than our local governments. And we had them in one single funnel and it was confounding everythin…”
Disclosure
Polco plans a new fundraising round to capitalize on its AI traction
“We think we've positioned ourselves really well for AI and some of our traction coming together, so probably doing a fundraise, but”
