Barely a few months after Fireflies.ai, the US-based speech transcription startup co-founded by a Nigerian raised $5 million in funding, a US-based political tech startup Civic Eagle co-founded by another Nigerian Damola Ogundipe has secured a $1.3 million seed round, bringing the startup’s total funding to over $2 million.
“ Raising early stage venture capital is a step in the right direction, and we’re excited that our newest investors, M25, ffVC, Incite Ventures, and Purpose Built Ventures, have decided to join us on this journey. But we’re just getting started,” Civic Eagle CEO Damola Ogundipe said in a statement.
Here Is The Deal
- This round of funding which actually started in September 2019 was oversubscribed by over $300,000 with investment led by Chicago-based venture firm M25.
- Other investors include St. Paul-based The Syndicate Fund, Incite Ventures and Purpose Built Ventures. The Syndicate Fund was founded in 2017 by entrepreneur Brett Brohl. Syndicate recently closed a $5.75 million funding round for its second venture capital fund.
- Civic Eagle will use the fund to hire for its team, as well as focus on R&D for its main product: Enview, a platform for government affairs and advocacy groups that makes searching legislature records easier, the startup said in a statement. Civic Eagle hopes to add AI and natural language processing capabilities to Enview.
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Why The Investors Invested
The lead investor M25 is an early-stage venture firm based in Chicago, USA investing solely in companies headquartered in the Midwestern part of the United States.
“As policy teams look to discover legislation and optimize around legislative intelligence, the platform and tools that Civic Eagle offers will be transformative to the way they work and drive results,” Mike Asem, a partner at M25, said in the statement.
A Look At What Civic Eagle Does
Founded in 2015 by Ogundipe, Yemi Adewunmi and Shawntera Hardy, the Civic Eagle mobile app helps people to understand politics. Its clients include groups like Comcast Corp. and The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Howecer, having businesses as clients (that is B2B instead of B2C) is a relatively new development for Civic Eagle.
The Power of Pivot in Making Sense of a Startup
The startup, Civic Eagle was initially targeted at consumers until 2018, when it realized that a B2B app would better attract investors.
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We started Civic Eagle in 2015 as a B2C company working on a mobile app to help people understand politics. From 2015 to 2018, we attempted to build our app and raise venture capital on the promise (really it was hope) that we would hit critical mass and monetize it. To put it plainly, it just didn’t work.
In early 2018, we came to the conclusion that what we were doing wasn’t going to work. Investors didn’t care, the app economy was saturated, and three years of working on a startup while maintaining full-time jobs was overwhelming. So, we had to make a decision. Either a) quit, or b)adapt and pivot.
We chose to adapt and pivot and pitched the new direction we were going, a B2B SaaS tool for policy professionals, to Arlan Hamilton during American Underground’s Black Founders Exchange. She bit, and wrote us a $25k check.
Consequently, all of Civic Eagle’s $2.1 million funding so far was raised after that pivot.
‘‘Between 2018 and early 2019, we raised $750k in a pre-seed round (through convertible notes) by leveraging our networks and the startup programs we were accepted into. Backstage Capital, Camelback Ventures, Higher Ground Labs, The Farm, and Techstars played critical roles in laying a foundation of supporters, mentors, and best practices to help with our fundraising efforts. However, growth is what kept us alive,’’ Ogundipe further noted in the statement.
The Nigerian Founder Behind Civic Eagle
Ogundipe started Civic Eagle only four years after graduating from the University of Minnesota, where he also played football.
Ogundipe recognized the significance of the fundraising effort, noting the relative paucity of black-owned startups that land venture funding.
Most people on the outside of the four digital walls of our company didn’t expect us to get this far. And, to be honest, I understand their previous pessimism. Black founders account for less than 1% of VC funding; my two co-founders are somewhere between the 40th and 45th black women founders to raise over $1M in venture capital; and political technology isn’t known to provide the type of return that makes a name for an early stage VC.
A Chequered Journey To $2.1 Million In Fund Raising
Ogundipe also noted the difficulty his team faced with Civic Eagle
‘‘The pain and struggle we went through between 2015 and 2018 made three months in 2019 nearly painless,’’ he said. ‘‘It took less than three months and 10 conversations to oversubscribe our seed round, but for three years we laid the foundation — we failed and learned; we became students of this startup game; we focused on building a product our customers want; and we leaned on our network of supporters and mentors.’’
‘‘Over the last two years, we’ve been maniacally focused on building a valuable product that our customers love, and building a company that attracts the most talented and passionate employees,’’ he further noted.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer.
He could be contacted at udohrapulu@gmail.com