Watch the full conversation here: From Pre-Seed to Seed in less than 9 Months
A Database That Couldn’t Exist Two Years Ago
At Incisive Ventures we back founders who turn previously impossible problems into tractable businesses. Civic IQ perfectly fits that thesis.
- The problem: Selling to roughly 100 000 local governments (cities, counties, school districts, special districts) is fragmented and opaque. Procurement data hides in PDFs, public-record portals and Zoom council meetings.
- The unlock: Falling LLM costs now let Abbas’ team ingest multi-format, multi-source documents and structure them at scale. Two years ago the same extraction cost $10–15 per document, which was economically impossible.
- The result: Vendors finally get a single pane of glass that shows who bought what, when contracts expire and where new bids are brewing.
“Literally, this company could not have been built before 2023.” — Martin Tobias
From Hoboken-Based Engineer to GovTech Founder
Abbas grew up in Pakistan, moved to the US on an H-1B visa, and juggled two kids under two while coding nights and weekends. His data background convinced him that “AI will eat software” and that defensibility would come from owning a differentiated dataset rather than another wrapper.
Key early moves:
- Started hyper-focused: scraped only New Jersey to validate demand cheaply.
- Used cold Twitter DMs: Martin funded the pre-seed after a concise pitch on X.
- Prototyped fast: a rough demo, not revenue, secured the first $500 k.
Traction and Expansion
- Coverage: Civic IQ now covers roughly 80 percent of the local entities its customers care about, starting with fire districts, large cities and high-spend counties.
- Team: Twenty people, largely a globally distributed data-engineering pod Abbas already knew and trusted.
- Customers: From niche architecture firms to SaaS vendors—anyone who needs a precise entry point to municipal budgets.
The Fundraise Playbook (Pre-Seed to Seed in 9 Months)
- Prototype plus story beats early ARR
Urban Innovation Fund led the $3 M seed after just five days. They did not fixate on MRR; they saw a perfect fit with their “tech for cities” thesis and a clear moat. - Metrics that mattered
- Conversion rate from demo to paid
- Daily or weekly active users
- Evidence that customers use the data to generate real pipeline
- Believers over generic logos
“If a generalist VC asks you to come back at $200 k MRR, they are politely passing. Focus on investors whose thesis matches your market.” (Abbas)
Tactical Nuggets for Founders
Cold outreach still works
Abbas’ LinkedIn still said “Stealth Mode.” Investors scrape that status. A tight cold note plus a demo beats warm intros when you have zero network.
Prototype or it didn’t happen
With modern AI tooling you can assemble a scrappy backend in an hour. Investors expect something they can click, even pre-revenue.
Remote yet all-in
Off-shore dev shops rarely own the mission. Abbas hired committed teammates overseas who wake up excited to fix procurement rather than churn contract code.
Fundraise when the signal flashes green
Ten paying customers at $5K MRR and daily engagement can be enough for seed if the vision is big and the wedge is clear.
TL;DR
- Unstructured-to-structured data is the moat.
- AI economics finally make the model viable.
- Cold DMs convert when the story is sharp.
- A prototype beats a slide deck.
- Thesis-aligned money trumps come-back-later metrics gating.
- Equity is the product—offer ownership only to partners who accelerate your mission.
Building an AI-powered cure for a hair-on-fire problem? Tweet @MartinGTobias or hit reply
— Martin Tobias, Managing Partner, Incisive Ventures
