Justin Wenig, a former Y Combinator founder, is on a mission to modernize how businesses engage with the public sector. His journey began in 2019 during his time at Y Combinator, where he worked on Coursedog, a startup aiming to bring modern tools to higher education institutions and state-level agencies. He quickly realized that few founders were tackling government and education tech—largely because of the sector’s reputation for bureaucracy, slow decision-making, and fragmented data. “Out of hundreds of startups, only a handful were trying to modernize how government and education worked,” Wenig told TechCrunch. “Investors thought it was too slow, too bureaucratic, too hard to scale. And to be fair, they weren’t wrong. Selling to the public sector was painful.” He sold Coursedog in 2021 for nine figures to JMI Equity and remained on the board. In 2024, he launched Starbridge, a platform designed to help business sales teams track and act on public sector opportunities. On Wednesday, the company announced a $42 million Series A round led by Craft Ventures, the firm founded by David Sacks. Wenig says the core problem in government procurement is that critical data is buried across PDFs, agency websites, meeting minutes, and outdated directories. Sales teams waste hours trying to figure out who to contact, what’s being purchased, and when new initiatives are launched. Starbridge solves this by aggregating public web data and organizing it into a single, searchable platform. The system provides sales teams with a ranked score for public sector accounts—indicating their likelihood to buy new technology—along with real-time updates on leadership changes, new projects, and budget shifts. “Instead of chasing noise, our customers have a clear, data-backed view of where to focus and when to act,” Wenig said. The company has now raised $52 million in total, including a $10 million seed round. The new Series A also includes investors Owl Ventures, CommonWeal Ventures, and Autotech Ventures. Looking ahead, Starbridge plans to launch the “Starbridge Integrated Experience,” allowing users to access its intelligence directly within their existing tools. The platform will embed into CRMs, Slack bots, and sales sequencers, so users don’t have to switch contexts to act on insights. “Every competitor goes right to your CRM, every question about an account can be answered right from a Slackbot, every job change loads right into your sequencer,” Wenig said. While competitors like GovWin and GovSpend exist, Starbridge differentiates itself by building AI-powered workflows on top of its data, making it easier and faster for sales teams to act. Wenig reflects on his early fundraising days for Coursedog, when no venture capitalist was interested. “No VC was interested in talking to us,” he said. But now, in the age of AI, the landscape is changing. “Maybe nobody wants to run for office anymore, but they do want to build,” he said. “Seeing this new wave of mission-driven founders tackling real, systemic challenges makes me incredibly hopeful for the future.”