In this episode of the Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman and Layne Fawns sit down with Dhruv C. Patel, co-founder of Syncurrent, to talk about AI, GovTech, and why local governments need better tools to access funding. The conversation highlights how technology can reduce friction, expand access, and help underserved communities compete for the resources they need.

Here are the five key takeaways from their conversation:

1. AI is most useful when it solves real operational problems

A lot of AI products promise big change, but the strongest use cases are often the least flashy. Syncurrent focuses on a real bottleneck: helping local governments find relevant funding faster.

That matters because many public agencies do not lack need. They lack time, staff, and systems. Dhruv’s approach shows that AI becomes powerful when it removes manual work and helps people act faster.

2. GovTech is a bigger opportunity than most founders realize

Most people think about tech through the lens of private companies. Dhruv makes the case that government is one of the most overlooked markets in innovation.

There are thousands of local governments in the U.S., and many still operate with outdated processes. That creates a huge opening for founders building tools that improve efficiency, access, and service delivery.

3. Product-led growth can work in government

Government sales are often seen as slow and complicated. Dhruv challenges that by showing how easier onboarding and lower pricing can reduce friction.

Instead of forcing every user through a long sales process, Syncurrent made it easy for governments to sign up and start using the product. The lesson is simple: even in government, trust and usability can drive adoption.

4.  Better tools can create better access for underserved communities

One of the strongest points in the episode is that this is not just a tech story. It is an access story.

Small towns, rural communities, and Tribal Nations are often at a disadvantage because they do not have the same internal capacity as larger institutions. When technology makes funding easier to find and understand, it helps more communities stay in the fight.

5. The future of GovTech depends on balancing speed and accountability

Dhruv does not argue for removing oversight. He argues for making systems easier to navigate.

That is an important distinction. Public funding should still come with rules, trust, and accountability. But unnecessary complexity should not stop worthy communities from accessing the support they need. The best GovTech products will move faster while still respecting public responsibility.

This episode is a strong reminder that innovation is not only about building something new. It is also about making broken systems work better for real people. Dhruv C. Patel offers a practical and optimistic view of how AI can help governments serve communities more effectively.

For founders, operators, and innovation leaders, the opportunity is clear: some of the most meaningful problems in tech are still hiding in plain sight.

Have a question for a future guest? Email us at innovators@alchemistaccelerator.com to get in touch! 

Timestamps

🤖 00:00:00 The next decade of innovation: human, chaotic, and uncomfortable

🚀 00:06:05 How Dhruv built Syncurrent from a consulting business into an AI-first GovTech company

💸 00:09:19 The hidden funding problem facing 90,000 local governments across the U.S.

🏛️ 00:12:10 How Syncurrent helps cities, towns, and Tribal Nations find grants in minutes instead of months

📈 00:14:05 Why product-led growth works in government and how Syncurrent made adoption easier

🌾 00:16:42 Why underserved rural communities may be the most important market in tech

📄 00:19:38 Why finding funding is only the beginning: applications, deadlines, and compliance

🔥 00:22:20 Why GovTech is heating up and how AI can expand public sector capacity

⚖️ 00:25:13 The debate around public funding: friction, trust, and accountability

📊 00:29:30 How easier access to funding could influence policy and future resource allocation

🧩 00:33:20 Resistance to GovTech, the status quo, and who gets left behind

🤝 00:35:18 How Syncurrent is building trust with governments through partnerships and referrals

🌍 00:39:27 The bigger vision for AI in government and why Dhruv sees technology as deeply human

📱 00:49:45 The access challenge: internet, devices, and making innovation more inclusive

❤️ 00:52:10 Why technology should help communities move forward, not leave them behind

Full Transcript

00:00:10:08 - 00:00:28:20
Dhruv C. Patel
I truly think technology is human, I think. Yeah, there are cases where, you know, the world is feeling overwhelmed. And to me, that that's totally valid. And I would never minimize anyone's pain. But the other side of me just says, you know, part of this is growing pains. A part of it is technology. There are going to be weird use cases to technology.

00:00:28:20 - 00:00:50:25
Dhruv C. Patel
There's going to be technology adoption that, you know, people may not agree with per their philosophical ideology. But at the end of the day, technology does what technology enhances capacity and informs and educates. It's on all the time. It's accessible. It's the universe. It can. It has the potential to be the universal constant.

00:00:50:28 - 00:01:20:09
Layne Fawns
What if governments didn't have to move slowly? Today's guest, Dhruv C Patel, is challenging one of the most accepted assumptions in public sector innovation. As the co-founder of CIN Current, Dhruv is using AI to help local and municipal governments unlock billions in funding that often goes unused. At just 26, he's built a platform serving more than 200 governments and partnered with federal agencies like the USDA and the Department of the interior.

00:01:20:12 - 00:01:34:27
Layne Fawns
This is a conversation about GovTech, mission driven innovation, and why underserved communities may be the most important market in tech today. Dhruv, thank you so much for joining us on Innovators Inside Today.

00:01:35:00 - 00:01:36:17
Dhruv C. Patel
Thank you for having me.

00:01:36:19 - 00:01:58:13
Layne Fawns
And it's great to have you here. So yeah, so that's that's a very impressive bio, especially at the age of, 26. And in just a moment, I think, you know, we're going to ask you a couple of questions about how how you got here to be sitting in front of us today. But I kind of I like to start these conversations off with, like, an icebreaker sometimes.

00:01:58:13 - 00:02:13:15
Layne Fawns
And so I have something that I kind of want to loop you and Ian in on, and that's, what is one word you'd use to describe the next decade of innovation? And, Dhruv, why don't you go first?

00:02:13:17 - 00:02:18:09
Dhruv C. Patel
What's one word I would use to describe the next decade of innovation?

00:02:18:11 - 00:02:19:21
Layne Fawns
Yeah.

00:02:19:24 - 00:02:45:11
Dhruv C. Patel
Human. Human. I believe technology is wrapping up its childhood and I think we're moving into its adolescence. And I think the adolescence of technology and the stage that it's at, it's going to be more human serving. I think for the longest time we've seen technology sort of mimic what sort of steam powered engines did in the early days of rapid advancements.

00:02:45:11 - 00:03:07:27
Dhruv C. Patel
But they weren't very human. The people running these steam engines and working in factories, it wasn't very human conditions. But as technology progressed and as we progress, you know, steam to coal, to oil, to alternative fuels, technology became more human serving or that innovation of manufacturing became more human serving over time. I think technology is going to be a lot of the same.

00:03:07:29 - 00:03:31:24
Ian Bergman
That is such a better answer than my one word, which I'm going to come to in a second, but I love it. It's a, Dhruv. That's an optimist's answer as well, though, that which I think I want to dig into in a little bit. So an I consider myself an optimist, you know, that I'm usually pretty cheerful and optimistic, but my word is chaos and in utter chaos.

00:03:32:01 - 00:03:59:10
Ian Bergman
And I'm going to I'm going to square the circle actually a little bit with what you just said, though. But like I do, I think when I think specifically on the next decade, I think we are going to continue to see change at such a pace that it feels that the humans in us cannot keep up, that the organizational infrastructure can't keep up, that we feel perpetually behind, that we feel that the rug is being pulled out from under us professionally and personally.

00:03:59:12 - 00:04:28:05
Ian Bergman
And I do think it's going to feel very, very chaotic. But the interesting thing is that I hope I and I believe that that chaos is going to lead to a convergence, if you will, of kind of like technology with sort of the most human elements of us, whether it's you know, headless AI agents that know us as people and act on our behalf, you know, whether it's things that reconnect us as individuals, I don't know, I do actually believe in that macro trend.

00:04:28:07 - 00:04:31:00
Ian Bergman
I just think we're in for a little bit of a wild ride.

00:04:31:02 - 00:04:58:16
Layne Fawns
Okay. See, now, this is interesting because my word, I think, is kind of, it's it's it's going to take both of your ideas and put them together and then I don't know, I guess I'll make a Venn diagram or something. Uncomfortable is my word. And I think that that's because a lot of what you said, drew, in terms of the adolescence in this, things progress.

00:04:58:16 - 00:05:25:14
Layne Fawns
Like during the industrial Revolution, things did start to become once again more human centered. But a lot of that has to do with things like the formation of the union and government regulations around workers rights and things, which is, I think, what we're here to talk about today to some degree, which is government, sort of adoption and regulation around different technology and end to end point.

00:05:25:14 - 00:05:42:21
Layne Fawns
I think that we're starting to see a little bit of that chaos in terms of how rapid things are moving versus how slowly bureaucratic processes move and that's how I feel about today's conversation.

00:05:42:24 - 00:05:43:27
Ian Bergman
That's my fun.

00:05:44:00 - 00:06:05:23
Layne Fawns
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I think to to start us off here, why don't you just tell us a bit about your background? What what made you want to start in current or what were sort of the pieces that fell into place to let that happen? And and why are you sitting here with us today?

00:06:05:25 - 00:06:35:04
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. Yeah, I would love to. So my name is Gypsy Patel. I'm from Chicago, Illinois. Shout out Chicago Bulls big fan. What to know and current. You got to know our last company highs. We were just your run of the mill consulting company. And as a consulting company, we had this product, which was like a blend of working with economic development organizations or governments and entrepreneurs, and we tried selling it initially.

00:06:35:04 - 00:06:52:08
Dhruv C. Patel
We tried selling it to the travel space. The 570, now 75, then 74, federally recognized tribes. And it was through my friend Brazil that we did that. And through that process, a lot of these tribes came back to us and they're like, we want to buy what you got. We need to look for grant funding. We need funding, we need funding.

00:06:52:08 - 00:07:10:26
Dhruv C. Patel
We need funding. And I'm like, man, what's with all these Dem funding obligate? Like, what are we talking about here? Let's go. We're trying to build the future. I'll find funding for you. How hard could it be to find funding? Can't be the last words. Yeah, right. And my even more. Previous to hive, I had been a grant writer.

00:07:10:26 - 00:07:32:20
Dhruv C. Patel
Grant wrote grants, grants, admin letters to poor funding partners, creating budgets. I've done the gritty work of grants, and so I'm like, okay, we'll just do it for you. And we started up like this, done for you service. And right around that time, my co-founder and I, who's still my co-founder, Matthew, had run into, well, I guess it was less running into more of a nice big introduction.

00:07:32:21 - 00:08:01:01
Dhruv C. Patel
One of my mentors, a friend of his, had sold his tech company and he's been doing AI for 30 years in machine learning. And so we got together and we were he was like, there's some real tech applications to what you're building, you know? And we were like, jump on board, let's do it. And so the three of us spun ups and current, Craig Mattson, who is our CTO now, and from that point on, it's been, you know, how do we become the funding tool for local governments?

00:08:01:04 - 00:08:08:28
Dhruv C. Patel
So we shut the other business down, winding down clients and really full sentence and grant and so.

00:08:09:00 - 00:08:27:00
Ian Bergman
You know, I, I spend half my life working with, startups and early stage and small companies. And one of my favorite things to do is just put founders on the spot and be like, great, give me your one liner. So what can you give us? Give us your one liner for sitting current. You told us what you do.

00:08:27:00 - 00:08:29:09
Ian Bergman
I actually I'm really curious to hear what you say here though.

00:08:29:12 - 00:08:40:03
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, yeah. So synchronous. A funding tool for local governments. We reduce the time it takes for local governments and tribes to identify funding from a months long process down to a few minutes.

00:08:40:06 - 00:09:09:27
Ian Bergman
And it's really interesting because when I think about recipients of funding. Right. And for Grant, whether it's through grants or others, I'm usually thinking of non-governmental organizations. They might be they might be, you know, nonprofits, they might be for profit companies during deployments. I'm usually think of the governments as the grant or as the funding providers. So, you know, tell me a little bit about your customer base.

00:09:09:27 - 00:09:19:24
Ian Bergman
Tell me about the problem that they face in accessing funding and how technology is able to, you know, help you better serve them for sure.

00:09:19:24 - 00:09:40:14
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. So when you think of your government, a lot of people, when they think of government, they think federal government, maybe they'll think state government. Rarely do they think city of Marquette. That's where I'm based out of today, right? Rarely do we think of city of X or town of X. That's most of the United States. There's 90,000 governments.

00:09:40:16 - 00:09:58:18
Dhruv C. Patel
And if we sat here, how long could you really if I asked you name some big cities or names of cities, how long could you go? Right. We could go to Chicago, New York, Miami, Houston. And you would you'd probably get to like 30, maybe 40 at most before you start hitting the, and us. Right.

00:09:58:21 - 00:10:05:22
Ian Bergman
And so, not to interrupt, but, if it wouldn't be the most boring podcast ever I want to do.

00:10:05:24 - 00:10:07:17
Layne Fawns
Yeah, that would actually be such a fun.

00:10:07:17 - 00:10:08:12
Ian Bergman
But I hear your point.

00:10:08:12 - 00:10:35:03
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done it. I recommend you do it. Yeah, yeah. No, it's the outtakes. And so now you're at 8998 or 92 or 808,000 or 80,000. Sorry, 80,999. Right. We're talking about 30, 40 big cities. There's 90,000 governments. These governments need funding. So you think, okay, let's use, let's use a fake city, cause I don't want to call anybody out.

00:10:35:03 - 00:10:56:21
Dhruv C. Patel
So let's say, you know, town of X, town of X is a government somewhere, and they need funding. And the reason they need funding is because how does how do towns make money? Towns make money through taxpayers. They make money through their budgets they make or they have money through their budgets. The idea that but there's only so many avenues to make money as a town, as a tribe, you have different mechanisms that are available to you.

00:10:56:21 - 00:11:03:13
Dhruv C. Patel
And we can talk about that at a later time. But for now, you think of these local governments and how they find funding.

00:11:03:16 - 00:11:10:18
Ian Bergman
So so tell us about kind of the the revenue sources and the funding tree for all of these local governments.

00:11:10:21 - 00:11:37:05
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. So local governments, they make money through their taxpayers. But a lot of times in order to support critical services like roads, schools and hospitals, you have to go find that funding, right. The funding is made available through state dollars and through federal dollars. But the process of identifying that funding, you have to use old school databases made available through these state and federal governments, or you have to hire people to go do that as part time or full time jobs.

00:11:37:07 - 00:11:57:09
Dhruv C. Patel
But most United States are smaller governments that are run by smaller teams. The ability for them to go hire people to do that task is outside of reality. And so now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They need funding, they need funding for critical services, and they don't have the technology to make that happen. They don't have the staff.

00:11:57:09 - 00:11:59:12
Dhruv C. Patel
And so what do you do? You're locked.

00:11:59:14 - 00:12:10:12
Layne Fawns
So then how. Sorry, Ian, but, just, you know, for for our listeners, how again does your tech solve that problem.

00:12:10:15 - 00:12:33:13
Dhruv C. Patel
Then current what we do is we take all of the funding available, all of the paperwork, all of the documents, all of the files, what the funding is, what are the requirements are I analyzes the oftentimes there's location requirements. You have to be in a presidentially disaster or declared disaster zone, or you need a certain population or the region needs to meet a certain income requirement.

00:12:33:16 - 00:12:54:12
Dhruv C. Patel
We find all of that information. We organize a catalog, and the government can come in to or incom create your account. We need the name of your government, what type of government you are and just using that we can mash the two together. So RTI uses reasoning to determine okay you're based here. This is your population size. The good thing about government is that the information is public.

00:12:54:17 - 00:13:16:11
Dhruv C. Patel
It has to be public because it's a public entity. So we can find all this information publicly and we don't need it to be 100% accurate. The chances that your small town population went from 5000 to 15,000 is relatively unlikely. So if your population went from 5000 to 5500 across, you know, two years, that's great. That still works for us.

00:13:16:11 - 00:13:28:24
Dhruv C. Patel
And so we dig through all the our I dig through all of this information, we organize it and we matchmake the two together so city can come in through an account and you have your entire dashboard ready to go. All the funding available.

00:13:28:26 - 00:13:52:21
Ian Bergman
And so, you know, you completely make sense to me how, you know, modern technology can go out, crawl the government science places, publish, put some structure around all of the data. You know, present it that that like that makes a ton of sense. I'm kind of curious about the, the customer side of the experience, the technology experience.

00:13:52:21 - 00:14:04:27
Ian Bergman
So so the, the, the in this case, let's talk about the local governments. Right. What do they have to provide? How do they get started? With in engagement with some current.

00:14:05:00 - 00:14:25:29
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. Well, we're so we're also counter position in the market a lot of government technologies you need to contact a salesperson, do a demo. So through a demo go through procurement, sign a contract. And now you get access to the technology. For us penetrating the market was really important. And a lot of people in this space will tell you government sales cycles take so long.

00:14:26:02 - 00:14:47:24
Dhruv C. Patel
And hearing that over and over again, we were like, okay, well do they really have to? And so we built we kind of positioned we said let's do product like growth for those of you who don't know product like growth, you do the product to do the growing for you. And so what we did was we enabled users to sign up for free to make a free account, email, password, name your government, create a team space.

00:14:47:26 - 00:15:05:26
Dhruv C. Patel
That's it. You visits in current com. You go through that process and that's it. And now you're using this in current platform. The product should do the speaking for you. The reason government sales cycles take too long is for two reasons. One, the government needs to build trust with the vendor that the vendor is who they say or claimed to be in two.

00:15:05:27 - 00:15:35:17
Dhruv C. Patel
There's often when you're doing a sale at the government, you know you're expecting big dollars. Will big dollars have to go through a procurement process? You know, but that's when the dollars hit a certain limit that triggers the procurement process. If you can price your product below that procurement requirement, governments often are able to pull out a credit card or debit card and pay on the spot using public dollars because you're not charging $50,000 for, you know, a six month engagement where our lowest price plan starts at 49 bucks a month.

00:15:35:20 - 00:15:48:08
Dhruv C. Patel
And so for us, we wanted it to be super easy and super trustworthy for governments to come in and go, listen, our product is going to do the speaking for us. You won't be haggled by a salesperson. You might get a few emails from us, but that's it.

00:15:48:10 - 00:16:25:04
Ian Bergman
So, you know, this is fascinating. And I'll be honest, I think it's impossible to have a conversation about sort of efficient distribution of government resources without getting into appropriate distribution of government resources. So we're going to we're going to get there in a little bit. But for now, am I you know, when I think about the, the challenge that you're helping solve, you're basically unlocking access to funding and revenue streams for, smaller governments that just don't have the resources to go search them out themselves.

00:16:25:06 - 00:16:42:22
Ian Bergman
Is that is that a fair statement? And so who who benefits? Like, who are the who are your heaviest using customers? Who are the customers that are, you know, benefiting the most? And do you have any examples of what that has enabled them to do for their their constituents and their communities?

00:16:42:25 - 00:17:05:06
Dhruv C. Patel
Definitely. Yeah. So who benefits Amazon? Give us an example. Who benefits the most is most of the United States. Like I said there's 90,000 governments. You can sit here and list all the cities off your hand, but there's only so many. And so what about everybody else? What about your towns and villages and most of America, most of rural America, what coastal people call flyover America.

00:17:05:08 - 00:17:30:11
Dhruv C. Patel
What about those governments? Who who are they and where are they supposed to go? We I can't disclose this government. There's a government we're working with, and they had a job opening for a grant researcher part time, open for 2000 days before they found us. A job posting open for 2000 days is outrageous. It's outrageous. And so I contacted the city manager and I was like, hey, if you're just looking for research, you know, come look at us.

00:17:30:11 - 00:17:34:21
Dhruv C. Patel
And so they jumped on board and they were like, oh my God, we didn't know this existed.

00:17:34:23 - 00:18:10:12
Ian Bergman
But isn't that wild? I want to double down on this, actually. Yeah, yeah, you're right. A job posting for 2000 days. But two, they were trying to hire for a job to effectively just go look at this enormous distributed data set and find the relevant resources required. They were trying to hire the whole human do that thing. And then I think the thing that's really interesting is they weren't actually able to like, we talk about, you know, we can get lost in the just sort of like AI taking jobs versus augmenting productivity, whatever.

00:18:10:15 - 00:18:18:12
Ian Bergman
This is actually a really concrete example of technology dramatically increasing the productivity of a city manager in a way that they weren't able to do before.

00:18:18:14 - 00:18:40:26
Dhruv C. Patel
Bingo, bingo. That's that's the money right there. It's the fact that, you know, you have these beautiful communities and there's beautiful public leaders doing great work. But a lot of times they're so buried in administration paperwork and process that they can't actually do their job. And so we do is we want to eliminate that. We want to go, go do your beautiful job.

00:18:40:28 - 00:18:58:27
Dhruv C. Patel
Don't spend time looking on the internet trying to find funding. That's we'll do that for you and we'll spend all the time and for us, it takes minutes for your human being. It takes weeks. Let us do the job and trust us to do a good job. And the product speaks for itself. So there's what's or what's the AI adoption risk for you?

00:18:58:29 - 00:19:18:09
Ian Bergman
So, actually, I want to ask one more question here, and then I'm going to shut up for a second. But I'm I'm kind of excited. But you've said you've talked about the volume of dollars that are sitting unused out there. You've given an example of the lengths to which city managers and others have to go to access it.

00:19:18:11 - 00:19:38:22
Ian Bergman
But I'm curious, is, is is that the heart of the problem? If you simply make accessing the dollars much more efficient with technology? Have you sort of delivered on your promise or is that just kind of the first step? Like where does this go next?

00:19:38:24 - 00:20:02:06
Dhruv C. Patel
It is a huge piece of the problem, but it's definitely not the entire problem because now you have to talk about, okay, now that I found a piece of funding opportunity, I mean, and, you know, fund all funding is maybe generous, but a side quest that your audience can take. And I encourage you to even, go to grants.gov and go find any funding and then go download the ginormous zip file and then go just like, pretend.

00:20:02:08 - 00:20:06:09
Dhruv C. Patel
Don't even do it. Just pretend to write an application and what you're going to find a lot of times.

00:20:06:09 - 00:20:07:14
Ian Bergman
Actually done that.

00:20:07:16 - 00:20:25:20
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. You see, there you go. You download the giant zip file. It's 120 page PDF about give rules and guidelines. And it isn't until page 23 that you learn that you were an ineligible in the first place. And hey, you were supposed to attend a webinar eight days ago that started late for and you just found the thing, right?

00:20:25:21 - 00:20:48:15
Dhruv C. Patel
And so for us, it's not only do we find the funding for you, we we have an opportunity detail screen that breaks down eligibility status timeline, steps to apply. So we tell you how many documents you'll actually need to do. And we'll bring the documents right up front for you. So we've seen opportunities where you open an opportunity and it says click on this web link to fill an application.

00:20:48:15 - 00:21:05:19
Dhruv C. Patel
You click on the web link. Oh, the page was moved in 2012 to this new page. Okay. Well let's go there now. Let's go there now and let's go there. And then it brings you right back to the source of funding. And the application is actually nowhere to be found. The application is a separate zip file on a website that you skipped over.

00:21:05:21 - 00:21:30:12
Dhruv C. Patel
And so, you know, that's the building. The application is a part of it. Following guidelines is a part of it following the, webinar schedule, the funding schedule, the application schedules are part of it. And then you have the entire world of compliance after that. So now that you've funded or you've written an opportunity and you've submitted it and you got it, now there's a world of compliance of you need to fill out these forms on this schedule.

00:21:30:12 - 00:21:36:24
Dhruv C. Patel
And if you miss enough forms and you're no longer eligible for a certain type of opportunity, the space is huge.

00:21:36:27 - 00:22:02:12
Layne Fawns
I think to one of the things that that you kind of touched on earlier was that really this all came about because of a hypothesis that you formed during a problem that you ran into with another company. Yeah. And so I'm curious as to what what does like outreach from underserved communities and underserved, and small governments and rural governments that outreach.

00:22:02:12 - 00:22:19:28
Layne Fawns
What other problems? So, you know, we've talked about the the volume of grants that there are to apply for, and then we've talked about the ridiculous length of the PDFs that they have to sort through. What other problems are they running into?

00:22:20:01 - 00:22:48:18
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, the biggest ones are capacity. And I know that's a blanket statement, but it's the fact that there's so much work to be done in the funding world and there's simply not enough people to do it. And so anything that helps reduce sort of the timeline in that effort is, is a generous help to local governments. And I think that sort of speaks to the broader set of government in, in, in its forms of you have outside of funding, you have permitting and you have interacting with the constituents that you serve.

00:22:48:18 - 00:23:06:17
Dhruv C. Patel
And they have questions. And oftentimes, you know, if they ask the same question over and over, you know, various people ask the same question, you know, where do I find this website or where do I find this? Or where's the public meeting agenda? Right. Government is a lot about serving the people. And while that's incredibly important, there are rules and processes to serve the people and you have to follow those.

00:23:06:19 - 00:23:30:03
Dhruv C. Patel
There's specific ways to do other specific documents. You have to follow looks. It's all standardized. But doing it, sorting it, organizing it, sharing it, it's like, you know, a lot of people say governments are adopting technology late. And so a lot of the solutions that you're going to see in government these days are solutions that you know, corporation solved for years ago, and now governments are keeping up to it.

00:23:30:03 - 00:23:52:09
Dhruv C. Patel
And the fun thing about innovating in GovTech these days is now you have AI. So if you're building AI first now you can put your AI first spin into it. And that's why government technology, in my opinion, is so hot right now is it's like it's taking the classic thing that SAS solved for corporations using AI first principles to go build a really awesome solution for awesome causes.

00:23:52:12 - 00:24:08:02
Dhruv C. Patel
You know, it's great building a company to go support other companies. Nothing wrong with that. But to me, it's even better when you can build a company to go help people. At the end of the day, you can see these tangible outcomes of oh my God, we found funding that worked for us and this was incredible. And thank you so much.

00:24:08:04 - 00:24:20:18
Dhruv C. Patel
You know, now we can afford that road that we need is there. And now we can afford that bridge. Like these are our outcomes or bridges or roads or people or schools and hospitals, right? That that fires me up, I love that.

00:24:20:21 - 00:24:49:00
Ian Bergman
So I, we can sense your energy. I love that you're energized by this because I think this is a big topic. You know, I'll be honest, though, I think whether you like it or not. By building a govtech company at the intersection, you know that, like, is right at the heart of how capital flows throughout the public system, you are going to get dragged into some really interesting and tough policy questions and discussions.

00:24:49:03 - 00:25:12:06
Ian Bergman
So how how do you think about that now as a leader of a tech startup serving the public sector, how do you think about, you know, let's let's start with, questions about, the distribution of funds in the policy that informs them. And then in a little bit, I kind of want to get to government innovation writ large, that little bit.

00:25:12:07 - 00:25:13:24
Ian Bergman
Let's just talk policy.

00:25:13:26 - 00:25:36:21
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. Well, synchronous policy is to be the funding tool for local governments and to make accessing funds that exist much, much easier for local governments and the status quo. So that's that's sort of our blanket policy as far as policy goes. For us, it's, it's that the money is appropriated through officials. The public, Alexios officials, and we trust the public's opinion.

00:25:36:24 - 00:25:54:03
Dhruv C. Patel
The officials go in and they do their business and they they set policies and agendas, and now they create these massive funding packages. And for us, it's okay. Now, how can we take this very complex funding instrument and break it down and organize it and get it to the people, the constituencies of governments, as quickly as possible?

00:25:54:06 - 00:26:20:28
Ian Bergman
Yeah, I love that. And you've picked a piece in kind of the the chain that can be dramatically accelerated. So, I think there are folks who would argue that friction, especially in government, is more is a feature and not a bug, that it probably shouldn't be too easy to access and spend public money, even if appropriated properly.

00:26:21:00 - 00:26:22:09
Ian Bergman
What would you say to them?

00:26:22:12 - 00:26:47:07
Dhruv C. Patel
It's a good question. Government money should be spent to quickly, even if it's going to the cause that it's appropriated towards. There should be friction when we're talking about public funding. Now, what you're what you want is you want assurance, the reason you want friction, the reason why when you go to buy a car and the car salesman puts up a really good page and you tell yourself, I need to think about it, is because you don't actually need to think about it.

00:26:47:07 - 00:27:16:08
Dhruv C. Patel
You might want the car and you might want to say yes. You just don't want to get hurt. You don't want to get screwed. And so when people say there should be friction in government funding, what you're saying is no, there shouldn't be friction, but there should be, as we should know for a fact that the money's getting to where it's supposed to go, that the people who get it are going to do good with it, that they're not going to do bad with it, that the money is getting spent for what it's made for, that you're not taking money for object X and you're applying it to goal Y.

00:27:16:10 - 00:27:37:08
Dhruv C. Patel
And so for synchro, what we do is that's why you elevate what the rules are and the policies and the and the and the paperwork surrounding it. You want to make it more accessible and you want to make it to my comment way earlier. You want to make it more human. You want to go. If you apply for this funding and you get it, here's what you're getting yourself into and here's what you're accountable for, and here's what you're responsible for.

00:27:37:10 - 00:28:02:15
Dhruv C. Patel
And that should be that shouldn't be friction. I challenge anybody if, if, if, if, if you put yourself in their shoes, you're an entity, let's say the all being entity and you're in charge of public taxpayer dollars and a community in earnest is coming to you and says, I'm the town of Dhruv, and we need, money for our school district because the children who are using the books are using them from the 1800s.

00:28:02:17 - 00:28:21:05
Dhruv C. Patel
And we would like books from the early 2000s. If that isn't too much to ask, can we have those, please? And you know that that school or that government and that school district in earnest are looking for these funds, and you can prove it. Why the heck would you say no? Why the heck would you say, yeah, go hula hoop dance 15 times and then you might get it.

00:28:21:08 - 00:28:26:16
Dhruv C. Patel
You wouldn't say that. You'd say, of course, local government, of course you can have that because I know who you are.

00:28:26:19 - 00:28:43:19
Ian Bergman
I love your enthusiasm and framing around this and and how you're able to carve out a niche that, you know, keeps you to an extent in your lane. And I also love the optimism. And we're going to. But but I have some I have some big questions for you about what I have to set.

00:28:43:21 - 00:29:06:12
Layne Fawns
I have a couple. Yeah. I just because I want to keep going on this topic because what I'm seeing, though, is that you, let's say in one state, you work with, all of a sudden, there's 50 rural communities that now have access to, say, a similar grant. Now there's there's a lot more competition that's been created amongst communities.

00:29:06:12 - 00:29:30:03
Layne Fawns
And so now what I'm wondering then is, you know, I think I know that you're not privy to that decision making process, but I wonder the what what is the effect on funding and who it's going towards as more people have access to your your, your, your tech? Yeah. What that looks like to you say in the next five years.

00:29:30:06 - 00:29:49:06
Dhruv C. Patel
Yep yep yep. So I have spoken to a ton of Senate committees about this as well. The people who are appropriating the money and their perspective is because this was an early concept that we, you know, we're kicking around of if we make it, what if we make it too easy? And to me, it's it's at first, you know, at first glance, at the surface level, you're like, okay, that could be a valid claim.

00:29:49:06 - 00:30:08:04
Dhruv C. Patel
But the more you dig into it, what do appropriators want? Appropriators again, what is the goal to get the money to where it's supposed to go? Appropriators want that. You know, that's a bipartisan objective is to get the money towards supposed to go. That's not that's not here or there. And so as a result, if there are, you know, let's say, okay, let's let's say let's roll with this.

00:30:08:04 - 00:30:33:19
Dhruv C. Patel
You have a funding opportunity, the funding opportunities to, rural communities to support your farmers. And there's only ten awards and 50 rural governments, all with the same level of need needed. And the government makes its decisions, whatever it is. And now ten communities get it and 40 communities don't get it. Isn't that well, you know, what happens on what happens is that the people who are making the funding still get notified that the other 40 need it.

00:30:33:21 - 00:30:52:16
Dhruv C. Patel
Government. The federal government especially, is spending. You know, they spent every single day going, what should we prioritize? They yes, every president has their objective. But at the same time, legislators want to know where to put money. I have my district. I want to know what my district needs are. If I deliver on my district needs, then I'm going to get reelected.

00:30:52:16 - 00:31:13:03
Dhruv C. Patel
And you know, you know how the incentive system works. And so for us, if we come in and we say we can optimize funding, well, you're going to you're in all funding, all funding going to go, no, what's going to happen is that these categories, there's certain categories that no one applied for. And now the folks in government know, hey, maybe we should appropriate money to that topic because it's not important.

00:31:13:06 - 00:31:29:06
Dhruv C. Patel
The other side of it is the other bucket of funding. You're going to exhausted and they're going to know, holy cow, that agriculture program or transportation for whatever really worked. We got the money to where it's supposed to go. We should we should double down here. There's a real need in the community in the United States.

00:31:29:09 - 00:31:55:12
Ian Bergman
I am really curious about if you're thinking about the the data set, the multiple data sets that you start to build over time and how they may, you know, impact other aspects of government efficiency. Texas fusion. Right. It occurs to me that, yes, you can, you know, right now, tell the appropriations committees hit this money is, you know, in demand.

00:31:55:12 - 00:32:19:24
Ian Bergman
This money isn't and that's high value data. But, you know, I you must be getting some signal the other way. You must be getting some signal from what are the local governments looking for? What do they need? How do you you know, do you see a way to connect to that signal to the policymakers, the legislators in a different way, and you maybe see some other or more esoteric opportunities that I'm not even thinking about for sure.

00:32:19:24 - 00:32:37:26
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, well, I'll clarify a point real quick. Are we engaged with these folks? We don't do any work with them. We don't currently, Bill. They're not our customers, lawmakers or legislators is what I mean. You know, we have friendly conversations. But, in that respect, you know, we're we are looking we don't know how to do that quite yet.

00:32:37:26 - 00:32:54:07
Dhruv C. Patel
I'll be candid, you know, but that is absolutely an interest area of how can I take the needs of so many governments and get them to what they and find funding solutions. And so, you know, we're exploring different ideas on how to do that. But yeah, that's that's where we're at today.

00:32:54:09 - 00:33:20:21
Ian Bergman
So here's the maybe one of the hardest questions I'm going to ask you today. Brace yourself. Yeah. Bring it up. No not really. But look, every time there is significant new innovation in process in technology and anything, there are resistors. There are people who are either left behind by the innovation because it changes the workflow.

00:33:20:21 - 00:33:41:17
Ian Bergman
Right. Or the highway is moving around the town, whatever it is, there are people who don't like it. You know what I want to know what you have seen in terms of resistance. Not just to like maybe what you're doing as a company, but to the concept of reducing friction and, you know, funding and grant discovery and application.

00:33:41:20 - 00:33:53:27
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, yeah. What is resistance look, look like in the space. Well, the resistance or the resistance is the perpetuation of the status quo and the status quo. You know, for the folks.

00:33:54:01 - 00:33:56:25
Ian Bergman
Who benefits from the status quo.

00:33:56:28 - 00:34:13:20
Dhruv C. Patel
Who benefits from the status quo? I don't think anybody in my perspective, I mean, you're asking a horrendously biased person this question, which is I understand why it's the hardest question, but that's my answer is no. No. I mean, who does right? Who does benefit? There might be some corporations that do this, and that's their entire bread and butter.

00:34:13:20 - 00:34:29:19
Dhruv C. Patel
And if they benefit okay, their business, they're solving a need. This is the way they're solving the need. I'm not against that. Everybody has to make a living and that's what they chose. Correct. But if you're what you're resisting is a status quo. The status quo is for some governments, they do have a team. Their team is a rock star.

00:34:29:26 - 00:34:47:13
Dhruv C. Patel
They have a giant Excel spreadsheet or another tool that they use to track all their funding, and they're kicking butt and they have zero problems. They get funding every year. They know which funding categories to go for. And that's great. They they're entitled to that position. They should okay, that's fine. But that's not again, we're solving for 90% of America here.

00:34:47:13 - 00:34:50:27
Dhruv C. Patel
That's not an 80% of America. I'll tell you that right now. Or else we wouldn't exist.

00:34:51:00 - 00:35:18:26
Ian Bergman
So let's take this to an equity of access perspective, because you really you say you're solving for 90% of America, and your customer base are the long tail of smaller governments. For the most part. I know you have relationships with federal and some others, but, you know, to some extent, you know, you've if you've solved the problem, on the product side, now you have a distribution and awareness, problem in front of you.

00:35:18:27 - 00:35:57:04
Ian Bergman
So how do you get in front of these government organizations besides responding to job report job, posts? How do you, you know, how do you build awareness? How do you build trust and trial and usage, and how do you maintain confidence that you are serving, the small town of Minnesota, you know, population 112, just as well as, just as well as, you know, a larger metropolitan area or Lorain County, Ohio, or, you know, a mid-sized tribe.

00:35:57:08 - 00:36:23:26
Dhruv C. Patel
Definitely, definitely. Yeah, it's two answers. One answer is the opposite of your last question. Who are the resisters? We find the enablers. We find the people in government who are already wanting more to to increase access. They want more access to technology. They want more efficiency and funding. We find those those are our partners. So recently, synchrony partnered with the Massachusetts Municipal Association and the Michigan Municipal League.

00:36:23:29 - 00:36:50:11
Dhruv C. Patel
There are a few of these leagues around the country, and all they do there are these incredible nonprofit institutions, and they spend their time working with their governments and their state, and they solve for their problems, whether it be insurance, lobbying needs, communication, networking, what have you. They're the sort of anchored partner in government. And so, you know, we've been working with the Michigan Municipal League for about a year now, and they are just incredible.

00:36:50:11 - 00:37:14:28
Dhruv C. Patel
They have incredible foresight, incredible wisdom, incredible knowledge and incredible trust. More recently, the MBL, for sure, it, it partnered with a state agency, labor. Yeah. Labor economic opportunity office, the state of Michigan. It's a state agency. And they created the my funding hub. It's like the state tool that organizes all the state funding and federal funding for governments in Michigan.

00:37:15:00 - 00:37:36:17
Dhruv C. Patel
Well, we partnered with them recently to power that tool to provide all the funding opportunities inside of that tool. Cool. And so they have this network of about, I want to say a couple hundred, maybe more than a couple hundred governments. And for us, it's let's partner together, let's power this incredible tool. Let's see, please let us use a little bit of your trust with these local governments, because you're this awesome figure of authority.

00:37:36:22 - 00:37:43:27
Dhruv C. Patel
And in exchange, we'll bring technology innovation, which you want to provide to these governments because you know them best. That's partnering with the enablers.

00:37:43:29 - 00:37:44:29
Ian Bergman
Yeah.

00:37:45:01 - 00:38:06:17
Dhruv C. Patel
The flip side of it is, you know, again, the bread and butter of each other. Right. So how do you get to governments? We get to governments through each other. We talk the talk, but we also walk the walk when the government signs up and use and grant, they go, wow, this is actually incredible. I think my friend Becky, who works in the public office in another government, would love this.

00:38:06:17 - 00:38:34:19
Dhruv C. Patel
And she tells, you know, her friend. And then she tells her friend. And I mean, that was the early days of concurrent. We started with ten governments in Michigan, and we had a press release, and that press release ballooned us to 70 that week. And it was a press release. But it also we found that for every seven, for every ten people that signed up to send seven or more on average, seven, refer at least two or more people inside or outside of their organization to send grant, which is incredible.

00:38:34:25 - 00:38:43:13
Ian Bergman
That is incredible. Either these are metrics that any VC would look at and say, you know, a little bit of wow, for, what is effectively a B2B organization.

00:38:43:15 - 00:39:03:29
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's trust is so important for government. And we want to earn their trust. And the way we do that is to make the product incredibly accessible. And once you do that, you just have to prove that you have a good product and you're not going to break their trust, which we would never. And then all of a sudden you go from like, I said, 10 to 70 to 80 to 100 to now 200.

00:39:04:01 - 00:39:27:14
Layne Fawns
Okay, let's I want to take this conversation outside the scope now of what sin current can do. What you know, now that you've sort of not cracked the code, maybe that's not the right phrase, but sort of, you know, you know, sort of, you know, found your way in with regard to, you know, this the solution in this problem area.

00:39:27:15 - 00:39:36:18
Layne Fawns
What other possibilities do you think there are for, for, the government adoption of different kinds of tech?

00:39:36:20 - 00:39:58:01
Dhruv C. Patel
Yeah. Oh, man. I could spend hours. You could you can make an entire podcast, you know, dedicated podcast about that. Again, when I said, you know, back to my early answer, I kept I hate to keep referring it, but the reason I referred is I truly think technology is human. I think, yeah, there are cases where, you know, the world is feeling overwhelmed.

00:39:58:04 - 00:40:16:28
Dhruv C. Patel
And to me that that's totally valid. And I would never minimize anyone's pain. But the other side of me just says, you know, part of this is growing pains. A part of it is, technology. There are going to be weird use cases to technology. There's going to be technology adoption that, you know, people may not agree with per their philosophical ideology.

00:40:17:01 - 00:40:43:17
Dhruv C. Patel
But at the end of the day, technology does what technology enhances capacity and informs and educates. It's on all the time. It's accessible. It's the universe. It can. It has the potential to be the universal, constant government, whether it be big government or small government or whatever form of government. Government we've agreed as a society, as a central node, the central node power schools, it it governs businesses to the best of its ability.

00:40:43:17 - 00:41:04:10
Dhruv C. Patel
It governs its people. It's in managing of the people's taxpayer dollars, and it supports the ideology of the community. Right. It's a central node. And so if it's the central node, we should do everything in our power to support the central node because of its very essence as the central node of society. And so there there are thousands of use cases of technology.

00:41:04:13 - 00:41:17:12
Dhruv C. Patel
The world has done such a great job innovating for the corporate world. And well, that's beautiful. And and we've accomplished a lot. Again, it just takes me back to let's support the people. Let's support this. Let's support the central node of society. And how do we do that most effectively?

00:41:17:17 - 00:41:17:27
Ian Bergman
Well, I'm.

00:41:17:29 - 00:41:19:20
Layne Fawns
Okay. Oh go ahead.

00:41:19:23 - 00:41:23:02
Ian Bergman
Now go ahead and finish your thought I want to think about this.

00:41:23:04 - 00:41:59:05
Layne Fawns
Okay. So then we get into this conversation quite often with, with our guests with regard to I'm just thinking about barriers because I agree with what you said, but I'm thinking about the idea that especially with regard to AI, it's evolving so rapidly beyond what government regulatory services can keep up with it in terms of legislation. So things like should there be, you know, age restrictions on this or, you know, what are the, you know, ethical or legal ramifications of having something like this?

00:41:59:12 - 00:42:08:23
Layne Fawns
So what does it look like for, for governments to adopt AI solutions without having regulatory structures in place?

00:42:08:25 - 00:42:29:17
Dhruv C. Patel
Yep yep yep yep yep yep again okay, last time I promise, referring back to my previous questions when I said, technology, it's in his childhood and we're leaving that and heading towards it's adolescence, right? When you're a kid and you see a candle in your mom's out around, you might stick your hand in the fire, and that might hurt a lot.

00:42:29:20 - 00:42:57:03
Dhruv C. Patel
And so but then you learn, hey, if we stick that finger in the candle, that's probably not going to feel too good. And so when we're thinking about technology, like I said, especially in governments especially, you know, we're saying unregulated technology or there's no regulations. Okay. I to me that's yeah, that is a reality. But at the same time, you know, Albert Einstein didn't ask his local municipality if E equals MC squared.

00:42:57:08 - 00:43:14:27
Dhruv C. Patel
Right. He just kind of figured that out, right? We kind of just built a light bulb. We kind of just made the steam power engine to. There was no rules for that. We just did it. And then society said, Holy cow, wait, you can print 14,000 textiles in an hour. Wait a second. We should probably think about this a little bit, right?

00:43:14:27 - 00:43:36:28
Dhruv C. Patel
And we just slowly evolved humans. This is why I particularly love working with tribes in the tribal world is their timeline is severely different than what you know, the Western world observes as timelines. But there's this principle, and I encourage everybody not to sort of take what I'm saying as gospel and go do your own research on tribal history and tribal principle and tribal philosophy.

00:43:37:00 - 00:43:57:03
Dhruv C. Patel
I'm not a spokesperson for that. But what I will say of my education is there's this concept of seven generations, right? My friend zeal, who I cited earlier, is Anishinaabe. And this concept of seven generations is, you know, we need to make a decision, but the decision we make should be good for seven generations. We need to be thinking, well, and that's very different than, you know, me and you.

00:43:57:06 - 00:44:19:08
Dhruv C. Patel
We think, okay, next quarter, what are my KPIs next quarter? What are my deliverables? You know, in 60 years, what type of legacy do I want to leave. Right. It's a completely different. Our human perception is so tiny to reality. The reality is, is that AI regulation will be a hot topic long after I'm done. But in the meantime, why should we stop innovating?

00:44:19:08 - 00:44:40:18
Dhruv C. Patel
Why should we stop dreaming and believing and looking to the moon and thinking that we can go there one day? We shouldn't. That's on my opinion. We do need to be safe, I agree, but safe is relative to the inventor. And if the inventor wants to push it, then they're sticking their hand in the fire. Yeah, and if that's what they choose to do, then they may succeed or they may get burned.

00:44:40:21 - 00:45:11:16
Ian Bergman
Well, and, you know, to carry to carry the metaphor. Right. We can all watch and observe and try and apply the use of fire to our own lives, to our government relationships, etc.. I do, you know, I do actually think this is really interesting because I appreciate that you are coming from this, not just from an optimistic perspective, but from a perspective that and these are my words to tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but that there is an inevitability to the advance of technology.

00:45:11:16 - 00:45:39:05
Ian Bergman
And we're talking about AI today. We were talking about telecommunications or manufacturing or whatever it was, locomotion and mobility a while ago. But there is enough inevitability. And so, you know, to an extent, as innovators, it's incumbent on us to recognize, you know, where we are inexorably going. And applying any changes needed to our institutions, our products, our technologies.

00:45:39:05 - 00:46:06:26
Ian Bergman
And I'll be honest, you know, there's one of these maxims. It comes up a lot, right? But it's it's true. I actually don't think we think about this enough. Right. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction is always found in the gap. It's found in the gap between, you know, like how big your house is next to your neighbors. It's found in the gap between the experience you have buying a car or buying a widget on Amazon, versus how hard it is to go find the, you know, the product you're trying to buy from the government.

00:46:06:27 - 00:46:34:00
Ian Bergman
Whatever it is. And, the idea that, you know, you are able to, jump right in and say there's this huge expectation gap, right? There's this expectation gap that has been set that of course, we should be able to quickly find and research a publicly published data set of, you know, grants and apply, you know, and you're able to shut it down.

00:46:34:00 - 00:46:59:05
Ian Bergman
That leads to that leads to satisfaction. And I feel like there's going to be a million of those around government services. And it's kind of all of our job as innovators to keep, to keep the, the platform caught up with what the constituency and the citizens think is possible in the world. And I mean, it's really interesting, like passport applications.

00:46:59:07 - 00:47:25:00
Ian Bergman
My, you know, friend of the podcast, Alistair Krall, who runs the Functional Government podcast, which, you know, I don't know if you've heard of it, but you should check it out. He's taking a look at, awesome Canadian federal, government and technological innovation. He's done a deep dive into things like passports. And this is in Canada. But actually it looks pretty similar to the U.S. and to a lot of countries.

00:47:25:03 - 00:47:57:06
Ian Bergman
And it's absolutely wild. Once you sort of step back and say, okay, I accept that in this world, everybody believes that communication can be instant, that we can validate identity in a myriad different ways. Right? Banks do it every single day that we can, you know, that we can share information between databases seamlessly and with high A30, once you accept that, then what we are doing with passports looks crazy.

00:47:57:09 - 00:48:18:26
Ian Bergman
And I wonder how many lists, how many, how many other problems like that exist within government where smart innovators can just pick one and just say the gap between what it should be and what it is, is so big and that, you know, I can build a product and it's just going to get adopted. We're not going to list them all, but there's got to be a thousand to those.

00:48:18:28 - 00:48:39:09
Dhruv C. Patel
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And especially in the international stage you sometimes you have the governments adopting which I know sounds outrageous but it's true. We are. I was at I was at IMF, world Bank 20, 24 spring meetings and we had a government session, government technology session. And I mean, some of the stuff that different countries are adopting and doing.

00:48:39:09 - 00:49:00:04
Dhruv C. Patel
The, David Eves, he's with, he's a professor at the London School, and he is just the most I encourage everyone listening to check him out. I've had a few conversations with him. He's very, very smart. The stuff he talks about going on in India, Latin American countries, especially with financial technology, there are I've heard comments.

00:49:00:04 - 00:49:14:10
Dhruv C. Patel
I've been the Indian a very long time, but I've heard comments that in India, it's more common for people to pay with a cell phone than it is with cash or cars. And I just that to me, it like that is true in the United States to a certain degree, you know, with Apple Pay and all that stuff.

00:49:14:10 - 00:49:33:26
Dhruv C. Patel
But I'm hearing India takes it to an entirely different level. And what I'm also hearing is that the Indian government at the time was largely responsible for that adoption, that they promoted it, that it was a form of economic mobility to turn phones into wallets. And that creates, you know, the incentive to be able to spend easier and not have to track money.

00:49:33:26 - 00:49:45:21
Dhruv C. Patel
And that's, that's I mean, that's again, again, you're talking about the central node, right? We're talking about central nodes here. The most important nodal note to society. When we innovate here society gets better. And who doesn't want that?

00:49:45:24 - 00:50:09:23
Layne Fawns
I think a lot of this, though, operates under the assumption that everybody has a smartphone or that everybody has access to the internet or things like that, because I was thinking about how, like for like fingerprints processing, say, like here in Canada, they do this thing where like they've got high tech, you know, UV lighting to, to take your fingerprints.

00:50:09:26 - 00:50:39:22
Layne Fawns
And then they send that information digitally to Ottawa, and then you get a letter in the mail letting you know that your fingerprints have been processed. It's not an email. It's not a text message to your phone. And I was mystified by that until I realized that, well, because there are a lot of people like people that I even know in my own city that like the access to the internet or, you know, having a smartphone is still, to a certain degree privileged access.

00:50:39:25 - 00:51:00:12
Layne Fawns
Yeah. And so I think that that's something to consider too, is that then if we were looking at like putting pressure on government systems to adopt certain things that are technologically advanced, then you have to democratize access to the simple pieces that need to be put in place in order to make that happen. So internet should then be a lot cheaper or free.

00:51:00:14 - 00:51:28:10
Layne Fawns
You know, that there, you know, regulations on how much you can charge for a basic smartphone and things like that. And so this is why, like, I know that I keep saying regulation, regulation. But it's just I see all of these different things that need to be put into place in order to create the access that we're trying to give to these underserved communities or underserved, you know, populations in, you know, in, in certain regions.

00:51:28:10 - 00:51:51:07
Dhruv C. Patel
So, yeah, that's totally a fair perspective. Yeah. For us, it's it to us, you know, Mark and Jason has this topic of technology as a substrate, which I love. The technology is the growth material. It's a the social construct already exists. And technology is just the enabler, the substrate, the growth material to make that happen. And that's kind of what you're commenting on, right.

00:51:51:07 - 00:52:10:26
Dhruv C. Patel
As far as the accessibility goes. That's above the scope of concurrent. I wish we could provide everybody on the planet a nice, laptop with some internet. But for the time being, even the communities that need it the most. I mean, like I said, some grant works to tribal nations, right? We have with with 57 federally recognized tribes last I checked, using this current platform, I've engaged with a lot of them.

00:52:10:28 - 00:52:30:05
Dhruv C. Patel
I've talked with dozens of tribal leaders. We've done hundreds of tribal consultations, tribal communities to have the internet access gap. True. But a lot of times, you know, they have what they have, but they still want to be in the fight. You know, they still want to. Yeah, they're still here. They don't want to be left behind. You know, I've talked to, you know, oh my God.

00:52:30:08 - 00:52:51:08
Dhruv C. Patel
There's a tribe in Minnesota I won't again. I don't have the permissions. I won't disclose their name. But there's an incredible tribe in Minnesota that we work with. And I just love the people there. And there's this older lady, we're talking 70s, 80s grandma who works in that tribal government. And she loves our technology. She doesn't love technology generally, but she loves our technology because it's simple and easy to use.

00:52:51:10 - 00:53:05:05
Dhruv C. Patel
And hearing her talk about her experiences and current, that's like, again, that's what we that's that's what we're here for. And those are her words. I won't disclose her, but those are her words. Is I don't want to look. I don't want to be left behind. Dhruv, thank you for building technologies. I don't want to be left behind.

00:53:05:12 - 00:53:17:28
Dhruv C. Patel
I agree, I don't want you to be left behind either. Not everybody in your community has a laptop, but you have a computer and you can find funding. And if we can find funding together, we might be able to support the ability to go get more laptops for less in community.

00:53:18:00 - 00:53:45:06
Ian Bergman
Yeah. Well, you know, Dhruv, I think actually that is a really good, kind of note to close on because if there's one consistent theme on this pod with all of our guests and I think we've hit on it, it's that, technology and innovation properly applied, ensures it helps ensure that people aren't left behind is the way that, you know, these existential issues get solved.

00:53:45:06 - 00:54:07:29
Ian Bergman
And I love I love what you've been doing. Thank you for coming on. Innovators inside sharing what you've been building with concurrent. I think you have picked a tight, cleanly scoped, incredibly important, you know, problem. Space to go tackle. And do you know what I love? I boy, I did I I'm not saying this to pick on you and your engineering team or anything.

00:54:08:02 - 00:54:31:26
Ian Bergman
You've done something where the innovation is not technical. You are you know, technology has caught up to the place where it is, where you can apply in smart ways the capabilities that exist in the world to a problem that was really hard and unsolvable ten years ago. And that is what innovation is. And you've built a whole bunch of amazing technology to do it.

00:54:31:28 - 00:54:50:29
Ian Bergman
But really, you know what you've really done is you've gone to process and customer innovation. You said there's this huge gap between what should be possible and what we're doing today, and let's solve it. And if you're doing that for government, that in the end benefits all of us. So thank you for coming on. Innovators Insight. Dhruv, thank you for sharing your story and engaging with us.

00:54:50:29 - 00:54:54:23
Ian Bergman
And we can't wait to hear what you and some can't do next.

00:54:54:26 - 00:54:56:03
Dhruv C. Patel
Thank you. Thank you so much.