🚌 Issue #99: Building A GovTech Data Platform
Serial entrepreneur and Swiftly CEO Jonathan Simkin talks about the process of building a GovTech data platform and his insights on how to create a successful vertical software product
💬 Welcome to issue #99 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday.
This week, Claremont serial entrepreneur Jonathan Simkin, co-founder and CEO of Swiftly, discusses the process of building a GovTech data platform. He shares the inspiration behind Swiftly and the keys to crafting a successful vertical software product. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Building A Successful Data Company with Swiftly’s Jonathan Simkin
Claremont grad and serial entrepreneur Jonathan Simkin (HMC ‘10) is the co-founder and CEO of Swiftly – the leading transit data platform that helps transit agencies and cities improve urban mobility. Before that, Jonathan founded SwoopThat, an online textbook price comparison service. Rafter later acquired the company in 2012, where Jonathan joined as a Director of Product before he started Swiftly. Today, Swiftly’s technology platform is installed in over 50 cities from coast to coast, improving transportation services for millions of riders each day.
Jonathan was recently featured and recognized in Mass Transit magazine’s 2023 40 Under 40 Awards, spotlighting individuals pushing the transit industry forward. He was also interviewed by VC David Paul on the Capital Stack podcast, where he shared the founding story of Swiftly, discovering the technology opportunities in the transport industry, and how he overcame the fear of failure in navigating the public sector:
Why public transportation? Give me the genesis of why you wanted to work on this problem.
Well, I so I was born and raised in San Diego, and I grew up my entire life driving a car from A to B. I was fortunate enough to sell my first company, which brought me from San Diego to San Francisco. I was living in the city, and right around that time, I was seeing pink mustaches everywhere on cars. So Lyft was just getting up and running. Uber was getting up and running.
I ended up selling my car and becoming fascinated with all forms of mobility. I started taking a lot of public transit, and I started to see this big difference in the rider experience between the information that you could get to take private forms of mobility versus public forms of mobility. Public transit is this thing that's really, really essential to cities and towns around the world. Yet a lot of the technology that was being used to power it was very legacy and very antiquated. So I thought there's a really big opportunity to rethink the technology that powers one of the most important forms of transportation around the world. And so that was the birth of swiftly.
In your discovery, what did the stack look like when you started to talk to these agencies, in and around public transportation?
Well, at the time, even the concept of real-time information for riders was relatively new. So rewind 2014, most of the technology that agencies were buying was for internal use only like things to manage the transportation network. They were buying tools that were predating terms like cloud-based computation which was before AWS was even in existence.
A lot of the software deployed was very legacy and built before any form of data standard existed for the industry. So there's this huge gap of information between some proprietary information internally used for operations and then ultimately, riders didn't even know where the bus was. And so what happened was when Uber and Lyft really came out, it all changed overnight, right? Because everyone in their pocket could see their actual vehicle moving in real time that they had requested. They knew exactly when it was going to arrive and people wanted that same experience. I wanted that same experience for public transit to actually know where the bus was, when it was going to arrive, and be able to rely on that information.
So we came up with a method that used not the software that agencies had purchased, but the actual physical infrastructure that they have put on to vehicles, which oftentimes included GPS. We created a way of using that GPS source that was already in the vehicle and just now starting to be shared with apps to rethink the entire flow of data and information to riders. This is a pretty interesting moment where Uber and Lyft changed what riders expected to see and what they wanted, but also Google was just starting to work with agencies like Portland Trimed to create new data standards for the industry so that agencies could actually share information with apps like Google Maps, Transit Now, Apple maps, and other applications. So it's just right at the very beginning of that.
We founded the company in 2014. When we did that, actually, there was very limited real-time information. Going back to like 2010 or 2007, that's when some of the standards are really starting to brew, but I would say only in the last three to five years that they became mainstream, where a majority of agencies are starting to adopt them.
What was your wedge to get into this? What was the one thing that was your MVP to prove out all these different features and functionality to become Swiftly later?
Finding that wedge or that low-friction path to at least get your foot in the door is really important. A vast majority of our work is not necessarily displacing but complementing or augmenting. Then over time, we tend to take on more and more. But the wedge was really this real-time information piece. So if you rewind back to at least 2016 when we're starting to really ramp up our deployments, and even today, it's a vast majority of what we do.
Agencies have made very large investments in physical infrastructure in their vehicles. They’ll buy routers on their vehicles that have SIM cards, 4G and 5G, hopefully not 3G anymore, although we still sometimes see and it just doesn't work. But those routers brought internet connectivity to the vehicle. They also brought forms of GPS onboard. Separately, agencies buy GPS systems because you need to know where your buses are. So agencies have already made this big investment in physical infrastructure to provide raw GPS data so that riders and their staff know where the bus is in real-time or the vehicle if it's not a bus. We do a lot of work with other modes too.
At the same time, for most agencies in the country because of the static form of GTFS, the schedule is commonplace. Now that's been around for over 15 years. They've already made investments to publish their schedule because they know that riders need to see that. So the big wedge that we did was to take that static GTFS that almost every agency already has and to take any form of GPS data, which almost every agency already has and already publish publicly, to apply modern algorithms and data science to those two forms of data to actually more accurately predict when the next bus or train will arrive at the next stop. We were then able to show that we could do a 20, 30, sometimes a 50%, or higher improvement in those ETAs that riders rely on every day to decide if they’re taking public transit or not.
Using infrastructure that already exists, it takes us now oftentimes five to ten minutes to add a new agency into our platform. So it really is out of the box, using that infrastructure, that data that they already have. We see huge reductions in complaints from riders overnight because all of a sudden, you can rely on the information that you're using to take transit. The single biggest wedge, we don't have to do anything. We don't have to replace anything. We can use what agencies already have, those investments they've already made, to instantly overnight, dramatically change and improve the rider experience.
Check out the full interview to hear more of Jonathan’s insights on the process of building a successful verticalized data company. 👇
🤝 Claremont Introductions: Amer Shalan & Qvasa
If you're managing a Zendesk instance, Qvasa is here to help. Their pathways feature creates a map of ticket states and then uses AI to pinpoint specific issues within each path. Qvasa’s platform also employs AI for automated tagging and real-time trend discovery, alerting you to changes like ticket spikes, high wait times, or emerging issues. Think of it as New Relic for customer support, instantly notifying you of new trends, such as a surge in login complaints.
Qvasa’s co-founder, Amer Shalan, graduated from Claremont in 2013 with a degree in Economics and Computer Science. Over the years, he has worked as a Data Scientist at various startups. Most recently, he was an early employee at OpenStore, led by Keith Rabois and funded by Founders Fund. During his tenure, Amer played a significant role in scaling both the technology and the team from 8 people to over 120. Leveraging that experience, he’s excited to bring you Qvasa to help you better manage your Zendesk operations.
We would love to speak with any Claremont founders who are Zendesk users to see how we can help streamline your support analytics. If you're interested, feel free to grab some time on my Calendly or shoot me an email.
📣 Claremont Announcements: Sunil Rajaraman & Hamlet
Claremont grad and serial entrepreneur Sunil Rajaraman (CMC ‘01) is the founder of Hamlet - a new technology startup that transforms local information into accessible insights you can use and shares it via newsletter. Hamlet covers the details of real estate, crime, safety, business openings and closings, voter guides, and other local updates to help you positively impact your community.
Sunil recently shared that they launched Hamlet in another 35 cities across some new counties in CA. Check out their list of cities, or drop a comment on Sunil’s LinkedIn post if you also want Hamlet in your city. 👇
🏷️ Claremont Discounts: 10% Off for Hireflow
In our last issue, we featured Claremont serial entrepreneur and recruitment expert Arjun Lall (CMC ‘07), who shared a framework to build your own recruiting engine in 2023. He is the CEO & co-founder of Hireflow and its parent company, Rocket. Both of his companies build AI and automation to help high-growth companies make better hires faster.
Arjun just announced a brand new Hireflow with over 50 new customer-requested features, including team collaboration, AI insights, and a flexible talent CRM. Huge shout out to Arjun and the team for hooking up BTL readers with a 10% discount to try out their new features. 👇
DISCOUNT CODE: CLAREMONT10
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Delos & Juniper
Freddie Huynh (CMC ‘95), Georgi Dinolov (HMC ‘11), and Dong An are the co-founders of Delos Financial Technologies – a FinTech marketplace that facilitates the buying and selling of non-bank-originated consumer assets. By successfully promoting the responsible buying and selling of loans in their marketplace, Delos is contributing to increased access to credit. They’re a venture-backed start-up with a unique track record in credit risk, analytics, and asset management. They’re currently looking for a Head of Engineering to join their founding team. If you’re interested or know someone who’d be perfect for the role, check out the opening:
Claremont grad Christophe Rimann (CMC) is the co-founder of Juniper Behavioral Health – a SaaS startup that builds software to help behavioral health clinicians improve quality of care. Their solution is an IT backbone that seamlessly integrates everything from patient onboarding to billing and everything in between. Juniper is backed by top institutions such as a16z, Y-Combinator, and Craft VC. They’re hiring for several open positions:
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s must-watch 📺
Claremont professor and neuroscience expert Paul Zak was recently on the Growth and Scaling podcast to discuss neuromarketing and how this could be the key to business success. Paul is the founder of Immersion Neuroscience – a neuroscience software platform that measures people’s unconscious emotional connection to experiences or pieces of content in real-time.
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Congratulations to Claremont entrepreneur Devon Kinkead (PZ ‘83) and Micronotes.ai on their recent $7.5M Series C round. Micronotes delivers cloud-based digital engagement solutions to financial institutions that want to start conversations, develop relationships, and build trust with new and existing customers and members. Devon is the founder and CEO of the company.
This week’s top listen 🎧
With the recent launch of Base to the public, Claremont grad and crypto expert Jesse Pollak (PO) joined the Overpriced JPEGs podcast to share how Base can help get a billion people on-chain. Jesse is the Head of Protocols at Coinbase and the creator of Base – a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly blockchain operating on top of Ethereum.
Everything else you need to know💡
Claremont grad Asher Weiss (CMC ‘18) was featured by Forbes on how technology can improve the ticketing experience and transform the entertainment industry. Asher is the CEO and co-founder of Tixologi – a self-serve, blockchain-based technology firm. He shared how Tixologi’s services use blockchain technology to provide innovative advantages that are helpful to both venues that sell tickets as well as the consumers who purchase them.
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🍽️ BTL Snacks:
📚 Transforming Learning For Neurodiverse Students….. Business Insider recently featured Claremont grad and CEO Vanessa Castañeda Gill (CMC ‘18) and her company, Social Cipher, in their article on EdTech startups that are helping kids with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia in school. Vanessa and Social Cipher are part of a growing group of startups addressing the learning needs of neurodivergent students, from navigating complex social environments at home and school to providing resources for teachers on how to craft lessons that are inclusive for different learning styles.
Feedback? We love to hear it. Hit us with an email. 👊🏼