govWorks

On govWorks you could look up government auctions, jobs, agencies and websites; pay parking tickets, utility bills, property and income taxes and business licenses, with a full transaction history; and learn the basics of civics, register to vote and read community stories. Governments and companies could sign up as partners. Forbes named govWorks "Best of the Best" in its Best of the Web ratings.

I co-founded govWorks with Kaleil Isaza Tuzman. The company's rise and fall was filmed for the documentary Startup.com. We started the film as a PR effort and a business school case study; the producers turned it into a theatrical release, and now it's a case study again. Kaleil and I have started or run more than six companies together since.

One idea we couldn't pull off then was govAsk: answering citizens' questions in plain language from large, messy sets of government information. With today's AI, it's well within reach.