Damola Ogundipe and co-founder Yemi Adewunmi, a former senior policy analyst for the New York State Assembly, built Civic Eagle to let ordinary people follow the bills that affect them. The product was good; the engagement wasn’t. So in 2018 they made the hard call most first-time founders avoid: they turned a consumer app into B2B software for the lobbying firms and advocacy groups that were already knocking on their door, the people whose jobs depend on knowing every proposed bill in their lane.
That is the company Damola brought to Startup Runway’s fifth showcase in Atlanta on November 1, 2018. Civic Eagle had taken in $400,000 and was trying to raise another $400,000 to $600,000 by year end. On showcase day he rehearsed the pitch with Startup Runway’s coaches, worked through his biggest non-fundraising blocker with a table of mentors in a mock board meeting, and then pitched the new B2B story live to an audience and a panel of investor judges, fielding the VC questions that a pivot invites. The same morning, Hypepotamus ran its profile of the pivot.
“We think it’s better for us to be successful as a B2B company so we’re not reliant on venture capital money and on their metrics for success. But we fully intend to go back and create products and tools for the citizens and residents of America.”
Damola Ogundipe, Hypepotamus, November 1, 2018 — the day of his Startup Runway pitch
The B2B bet paid off. Civic Eagle launched its legislative intelligence platform in 2019 and in May 2022 closed a $10 million Series A led by S3 Ventures, with Menlo Ventures, Consonance Investment Managers, Debut Capital and Colin Kaepernick joining, and early backers Backstage Capital, ffVC, M25 and Higher Ground Labs returning. Total funding passed $14 million. The company became Plural, serving more than 100 organizations, including Comcast, Google and Common Cause, whose teams have tracked and influenced more than 50,000 bills.
In May 2024 Damola came back to Atlanta for Startup Runway’s 25th showcase to sit on the ‘Where Are They Now’ alumni panel alongside Gently Soap’s Kristen Dunning, talking to a new class of finalists about the year of the pivot and what it took to fund it. Afterward he wrote to say he was glad what he said had resonated, and thanked the program for its work for founders and the ecosystem. The conversation was later released as an episode of the Atlanta Startup Podcast, which you can listen to below.
Damola still talks about going back to the citizen product once the business is strong enough to fund it. In 2018 he told a room in Atlanta that the mission was that everyone deserves an educated point of view on democracy. The company just took the long way there.
