Plural and Damola Ogundipe: A New Era in Public Policy Influence

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Damola Ogundipe, the founder and CEO of Plural. Damola, welcome to the show.

Damola Ogundipe: Hi Jake, thank you. Excited to be here.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So, Open is a mobile app and a software company that resides in Venice, California. Raed Kawaja is not just the... Wait, let's start with Damola. So, Plural is an AI-driven software platform that helps organizations track, collaborate, and gain insights on legislation and regulations globally. Some of their clients include Google, Comcast, and a number of others. Damola and his co-founders created Plural to increase transparency and access to public governance information. Damola is a geopolitical history nerd, fitness enthusiast, a champion of education and access and equality, and a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Lot going on here, Damola, so appreciate you taking some time and excited to hear about your story. Uh before we dive in, where are you joining us from today?

Damola Ogundipe: From unfortunately cloudy and gloomy Atlanta, Georgia, which is rare for us.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Gotcha. Are you originally from there?

Damola Ogundipe: No, so I'm originally from Nigeria, uh Lagos, Nigeria. I was born there, moved to the US, immigrated to the US when I was five, and uh, and grew up in Minnesota, actually.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Ah, really cool. Well, you have a company you've created, uh, you're calling in from Georgia, you've got co-founders. Where are your co-founders located?

Damola Ogundipe: Um so I've got one co-founder in Minnesota, and my other co-founder is based in DC.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, it's a new world, distributed, and some companies are hybrid, some are going back to on-site. What's uh the structure of your company like, globally and locally?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so when we started Plural, um we actually always intended to be a remote-first organization, and we started the company prior to the pandemic. Um, so we really started like hiring people and building the company around late 2019, right before um the pandemic hit in like early 2020. And it's funny, after we raised our seed round, which was in December of 2019, I met with our lead investor and he was like, "So when are you guys all gonna, you know, open up an office, you know, mod stuff? It's cute, but it's time for y'all to, to get an office and start building this company the right way." Um, and then three, four months later, uh, it was... everybody was forced into living this remote work environment, this remote work world, um and we were already like kind of bursting at it and and knew what we were doing when it came to operating as a remote company. Um, so it was kind of nice to have the, the laugh at, at that investor. And you know, as everybody's kind of transitioning to either fully remote or or this, you know, remote-hybrid-in-person world.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, yeah, everyone's had to adapt, learn, grow, and figure out what's the plan for them going forward. We've talked to so many founders here—episode 140 now—and you know, we ask a question: Do you prefer hybrid or on-site or distributed? And uh you know, everyone has their own sand they draw the line in. There's no real right or wrong answer. It's, you know, what works for you. And um we've seen a lot of different uh opinions on that, but glad to hear it's working out for you the way you've structured it.

You've been around for a number of years, eight-plus years, if I'm accurate on that. Is that correct?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so we started the company or the organization in 2015, um and that was really just based off of wanting to create, starting a project around helping people, everyday people, get an understanding of politics in their neighborhood. Like, what's happening in your city? What's happening in your state? And then we realized that there might be a commercial opportunity, like a real, like tech business that could be built, as opposed to kind of this um services project. And we pivoted and started building out our software platform in 2019, and that's when we went through Techstars, raised some capital, and uh really started going in the direction that we're in now.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Well, you went through Techstars. Um, what was that experience like? What did you learn from that? And is this your first startup, or have you had a few before this?

Damola Ogundipe: Um, so this is my first startup, and I, you know, growing up in high school and college, I created some small businesses, like just like fun stuff. I, you know, one, one thing that I'm, my old friends and my friends from, you know, high school and college know me for is I used to sell uh sneakers on eBay. I was an eBay PowerSeller, and like, you know, had a relationship with an official Nike reseller that I would buy wholesale sneakers from. And me and a friend would, would literally like sell them on eBay and we created a little business off of that that was doing pretty good. So um, you know, my, my... I did have an entrepreneurial background, um, but I never had a tech startup. I never launched a tech startup. So, um in 2019, you know, after we had made this decision that we were going to pivot the company and we were going to build, you know, commercial software, um we applied to Techstars, we got in, and it was really a transformative experience. Um, you know, I had an idea of what it felt like to be an entrepreneur, um, but I didn't have the experience of what it meant to create a scalable, you know, technology company. Uh and Techstars was a great training ground for me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You mentioned in our last call that you had experience as a management consultant and you thought that was a really good background, really for probably any part of a business. Why, why, why do you feel that way? What, what has it given you as you've now continued to scale your company that you look back and, and know that that was kind of a foundation of helping you be successful in what you're building today?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, I think there are two things about management consulting that, that have been really useful for me. So the first one is, as a management consultant, you're there to solve a problem, right? The, the core part of your job is to go in, splash into an environment that's not super comfortable, identify problems, and work in a team-based format to, to solve those problems. And you got to do it pretty quickly, you got to show value. Um and that applies to entrepreneurship and to running a startup where you're essentially are identifying problems and you're trying to solve them for your customers. Um and the management consultant, the client is your, is your customer. So you have kind of a, kind of a embedded customer base as a management consultant. So that, that's number one.

And I think number two is, is just being in an environment that requires you to learn things really fast without a lot of information or a lot of data. Um, as a consultant, like you don't... the reason why you, you end up being qualified for that job in the first place isn't necessarily because of what you know. It's your ability to learn quickly and apply that knowledge. Um and I think again, that lends itself very, in a very straightforward way, to um to being an executive at, you know, an early-stage tech company.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know, any company that started has some story behind what inspired them to create it or maybe they identified a problem in the market, they figured that they could, you know, solve or close the gap. On what inspired you to start Plural, and what problem is it solving?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah. So what inspired me to, to start Plural, um it really came down to like what was happening in society, you know, in 2016, 17, 14, 15, 16, 17, like that time frame, um where I felt like there was a lack of information that was clear about what was happening from a political or policy perspective, um that combined with like, feeling the need to take control and power around, like information like that, um and wanting to empower other folks with, with really good information, is what led me to, to start Plural.

So kind of gave you an example of what was happening in, in that time frame, right? Um, you know, there was a black man in Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown, that was killed. That was an important kind of thing that happened, you know, in my life, and I immediately went out to Ferguson and I thought that that was something that I wanted to be... I wanted to participate in. And what I learned from that experience, um was that I wanted to uh help create power for when it came to understanding what's happening in your environment politically and through the public policy process. It's really important that we have a diverse mix in the United States of political action, of technology, of um information, of activism. Um and where I myself kind of gravitated towards was around political information and how that can empower people. That knowledge was, was what was really important, um and that's kind of what led me to start Plural in that first iteration, right, of "Hey, if we can get people to understand what's happening in their environment from a policy perspective, maybe they'll be able to make really important policy decisions that positively impact themselves in their community."

And then as we learned what was... how people were utilizing the technology we had built in 2016 and 2017, is when we realized that there was a, a really cool commercial opportunity to get our... to get technology in the hands of organizations and companies that do government relations, government affairs, policy research, policy work across the country and across the world.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: How did Google become a client of yours and what do they use your platform for?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so Google became a client of ours in 2020... yeah, 2022. Um and and that process was, was pretty straightforward, right? They had a need. They have a government affairs team, big government affairs, government relations team. Like I think your listeners will probably think of, of folks that work in that industry as lobbyists, right? So they have a big lobbying team, a big, big government relations team, um and they had a need for a software solution um that could help them um better manage, track, get intelligence and information on policy, on legislation and regulations that are moving across the country and across the world. Um and we're a great solution for that. So, um, I was introduced to, to that team, their policy team, and hit it off with uh with a few folks there that were... that championed our solution internally. And then we worked our way through the procurement process through that relationship building and procurement process, um and vendor management process, showed value through a short pilot about three months, um and then we were... we were able to win um some business from Google that we've now retained for... we're going on to three years. So it's been a great relationship with them. They've been really supportive and giving feedback, helping us continue to improve the product. We've also implemented um some GenAI functionality into the product and we use um uh Google's infrastructure uh to power a lot of that work as well.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Um, when you go into a company or you look at, you know, potential prospects, who are you selling to?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so we're typically selling... when we... when we sell to companies, we're typically selling to um government affairs, government relations... again, folks may know them as lobbying or policy teams... within an organization. And those teams at, at, at the corporate level, Fortune 1000 level, are usually like comprised of five to 50 people on average. Um some companies have much larger um teams that, that focus on policy, public policy, and some organizations... some companies have much smaller teams. It kind of depends on um the organization's priority. Obviously with um, you know, big tech companies, they're focused on policy issues like data privacy and and AI, and they want to be involved in that conversation not only at the federal level in US Congress, but also at the state level. There's a lot of state policy that gets moved because of the gridlock that has happened at the federal level.

I think listeners, you probably, you know, have heard about the, the debates and the conversation around um abortion and, you know, obviously like there's not legislation that's moving at the federal level, um, but there's a lot of legislation, a lot of policy moving at the state level, which is where people have been the most active. So, um that's like a social policy issue. The companies that we um serve, you know, they're focused not on those social issues, but on issues that impact their business, um that impact the technology sector. And we have... and our software helps them kind of navigate uh those issues at the federal, state, local level of government.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: So, if a company like Google is looking to, I don't know, learn more about a specific policy that might impact their organization, do they simply upload the policy into your platform and then your platform helps them understand, you know, in a faster way what, what the policy is about and some of the details of it? Or what's the, what's the problem the user gets to solve as a user platform?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so in any given year, um there are upwards of 300,000 um policy proposals that are introduced or considered in the 50 states, in DC, in Puerto Rico, in US Congress. So, you're talking about 300,000 different policy proposals in which there are often times hundreds of pages. So, we're talking about millions, oftentimes millions of pages of documents, and there could be one line in that document that has an impact on an entire sector or an entire industry for an entire company.

So what we're able to do, what our software is able to do, is find and parse the information that's really salient for um for the proposed uh bills, the proposed laws being able to identify like that... that there's going to be an impact in Maine when it comes to data privacy and what does that look like for an organization that has um exposure to legislation or laws that might be enacted around data privacy or around AI, um so on and so forth. So our technology is really about help... helping um organizations identify the information within proposed law, within public policy, that has a salient impact on them. And it's not their documents or their information that needs to be uploaded into our software. We actually pull in all of this data. We scrape it, we parse it, um we run it through, you know, processing to get an understanding of it, and be able to apply AI um to those documents so that we can parse and find and identify really salient and important things within those documents.

And then we have, you know, a workflow aspect to our software that then goes from "Hey, I've identified the things that matter to me and matter to my organization" to "Now, what do I do with this? How do I take action? Do I need to write notes on this? Do I need to share this with others within my team? Do I collaborate on this document or this information? Do I need to run a report? Do I need to tag this information?" So it's, it's that combination of helping them identify what's salient and then helping them work through the necessary steps and actions based off of what they've identified as salient to them and their organization.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Makes total sense. You know, AI is becoming such a part of almost every company and application and part of their discussion about their future product development or strategy moving forward. What are some interesting things, um, you're doing with AI in this, in this space? I know you mentioned a few things already, but can you go a little bit deeper there?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so uh Generative AI, um you know, with large language models, and I really think like AI in general is really well ser... well-suited for the legal tech sector. Like, we consider ourselves to be part of the legal tech sector, right? Like we're, we're dealing with uh large bodies um of documents, of text. Um so being able to use um and leverage large language models to parse through and identify again that saliency and and identify um and create summaries of large bodies of text um that are specific to this industry, into this field, has been really important for our customers, right? Being able to condense and identify what's important within a 200-page bill, um as opposed to three years ago or four years ago, having to literally read through the entire bill to analyze it, and then say, "All right, this is what matters in here," um is transformative for this industry.

Um so, similar to other legal tech companies, maybe folks that you know, organizations that work more so with law, where we work with legislation, so that's that's proposed law. Um so similar to them, like we're able to leverage um this new technology in ways that are, that are super helpful for, for our customers, because of the fact that we're dealing with large bodies of text and and being able to leverage large language models is like perfectly suited for that use case.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. I mean, it seems like every public company for the most part probably does need to monitor public policy.

Damola Ogundipe: That's what I tell them, right? That's our pitch.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Outside of that, you also think about just government workers. I mean, you know, look, if you're working for, you know, a governor, you're working for some leader in the public sector or even in the private sector, um you know, just the speed of being able to rifle through documentation and then come to the meeting with a clear understanding of what new proposed bills uh you know are about and what you should be considering discussing, or you know, that there seems to be an opportunity potentially for the government, too. You focus there? Do you have customers on the government side as well?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so um we have a really diverse mix of customer segments um and and government is one of them. So we do have um a lot of, of, of customers in that government space, from state government agencies to municipalities, um to counties, um because they, similar to what exactly what you said, they have to keep track of, of policy. And what we've found as we've grown our company is that um public policy impacts a person in every organization. We are, we are governed, right? Like, so being able to... if you want to be part of the governance, if you want to be part of shaping governance, right, shaping public policy, it's incumbent on you um to, or it's really important for you to be able to know what's going on, participate in the policy shaping process. Um and that includes uh government entities themselves.

So for example, um when we work with one of our customers or several of our customers, are cities or municipalities and they want to know what's happening at the state level. Um so they actually use our, our product to be able to keep track of policies that are moving at the state level. Another use case is some cities want to know what's happening in other cities because they want to borrow policy initiatives from those cities. So they'll use our product to be able to keep track and monitor um policy proposals in cities across the country. Um so we have a lot of different use cases and a get... a diverse mix of customers that makes our, our company, I think, really interesting.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well, you've raised $15 million, so your investors obviously think there's a problem you're solving that's valuable. Um to solve the company is distributed, you're in the US. Are you in other countries as well?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so we're in the US um in terms of, of, of our um our human resources, right? So we're in the US, we're in Colombia, the country, and we're in Nigeria.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, a lot of innovations happening, you know, globally in different parts of the world. And uh having come from Nigeria originally, what's the landscape of the business opportunities there? The people that you've hired there, um you know, kind of give us some insights there from the cultural perspective.

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so we're really excited about the work that we're doing on the African continent, and it was important to me and and uh my co-founders... one of my co-founders is also nigerian-american... it was really important to us to um as we thought about how we expanded globally, not just in terms of of headcount and who we were hiring, but also in terms of where, you know, our go-to-market footprint, right? Like where we were actually taking our product.

And what's unique about our product is that we are a data and a software company. It's... we are, we ingest data, we parse data, we use AI to understand that data and provide insights. And then we have software, obviously, that helps our customers manage and and and kind of sip through and work through that, that data. Um so when we go to market in, in a different territory or geography, um we first have to work on ingesting that country's public policy data or that jurisdiction's public policy data. So working towards that in a, on the African continent and starting with Nigeria, and now we're in South... we've done the same thing in South Africa. And then identifying how we... who is the market for that information is something that's been really fun and and challenging, but, but really fun and exciting and a really big opportunity. Um when we look at who is doing this work, like our competitors in this space, nobody has identified Africa as an opportunity, and to, like, really expand their operations and and provide a software solution uh that takes into account um public policy data on the African continent.

And as your listeners probably know, and as many people probably know, um Africa is a big market. It's... Nigeria is the biggest economy in Africa, South Africa is the second biggest economy in Africa. Um when you look at how companies are expanding their, Fortune 500s and Fortune 1000 companies are expanding their global footprints, um they're looking at Africa as kind of that next geography to, to go after, and they need good policy information about what's happening um in that geography. So for us, it was a... we have a competitive advantage because, you know, we're a, we're, you know, African immigrants um and we know that, that geography really well. But we also think it's a really big opportunity when you think about how organizations are expanding their operations into, on the continent, and how we can be a great partner when it comes to their need for accessing public policy information and data.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Has it been well received when you've gone in and talked about your product and the solution?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, it has. It's been, you know, I think that what the feedback that we've received is, "It's about time." Right? That's the feedback that we've received, like, "Hey, it's like this is amazing. We... it's great that a, a company has finally saw the opportunity that's here to create a solution that could help, you know, an organization that's on the continent, that is, you know, that's a company, a commercial organization or even a nonprofit on the continent, have software and data that is um up to the standards of modern technology." And on the other side of that coin, it's important for US-based multinational corporations where they're like, "This is fantastic, because we have now... we can use software to manage our policy work not just in the US, but also within an African context." Um so I think that the feedback has... what we've... what the feedback we've received is, is one, 100% positive. Um, but two, and I think kind of shows the opportunity here, it's, it's kind of like a... it's about damn time somebody like saw how big this opportunity actually is.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: When you look at the opportunity in the US and now globally, how big of a market were you presenting that you could, you know, go after and attain and grow in?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, I mean, you always got to have a b... in that market, right? But uh, but all, all jokes [a]side, um you know, when you, when you look at at our market, um the, the, the beachhead and kind of like what's in front of you are government relations, government affairs, public affairs teams, right? Um and there's a lot of commercial organizations that, that have that component, that have that um department within the organization. And there's also a lot of nonprofit organizations, right? If you think of the nonprofit, uh, policy teams that exist, from the NAACP to Common Cause to League of Women Voters to, um, The Nature Conservancy, like all these nonprofit groups also have, um, a policy aspect to them where they're trying to be part of shaping public policy, right?

And the combination of the two, those commercial organizations and those non-commercial, nonprofit organizations that are all trying to shape policy, is a multi-billion dollar market in the US. Um, and that's what's just kind of somewhat obvious. What's not as obvious that we shared with our investors are the other organizations that, that also need to monitor policy, right? We talked about government. We also have, uh, many higher-ed institutions, where, um, we've... you know, where we work with, um, colleges and universities, and they've procured our software and our data for policy research reasons, right? They have researchers and academics and faculty and students that need to research public policy for, um, academic reasons, and we've been able to provide our data and our software to them, um, be their vendor in that regard.

So if you just look at even the, the kind of what's in front of you, the government affairs kind of public teams, public policy teams that have those, you know, actual people with those titles and their names that work at those organizations, and you add in kind of what's below the surface, right? Higher-ed, government, um there's even like small tech startups that, that need good access to public policy information and data, um it ends up being a really exciting opportunity.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really cool. If you look back eight years ago when you started your company, what's something that you learned you wish you would have done different that others can learn from as they look to build their own companies?

Damola Ogundipe: That's a long... I mean, I could spend 85 hours talking about and all the lessons learned. But I think the, the one thing is, one thing for sure, is more patience early on. Um and what I mean by that is not just patience with the product and patience with like what's going on around, but patience with yourself to give yourself the grace to learn and figure things out. And making sure that you're articulating patience to early investors, articulating patience to your customer base. What, what I've learned is that people will give you grace if you articulate that you need time to complete X. Now they'll hold you to that timeline, right? Right. If you tell a customer, "We will have a bug fixed in a day," the bug needs to be fixed in a day. But if you tell the customer, "The bug is going to take a week to fix and these are the reasons why," and request grace, more time, more often than not, they will give you that grace. Or this, this product, this feature that's on the product roadmap, will be delivered on a specific time. You let them know why it's that specific time, they will give you... they will give you grace.

But I think early on, you want to get everything done, and you, as, as an entrepreneur, and you want to do it as quickly as humanly possible, and it's... and that's where a lot of mistakes are made, and that's also where people will not give you grace if you make too many mistakes early on. So I think one thing that I would do for myself, or and I would... I would, you know, kind of tell all entrepreneurs, is to be really intentional about, um, the time you need to accomplish things, to finish tasks, articulating that. Because you do have to fulfill your obligations, right? People will hold you accountable, but to give yourself... to exercise patience and grace, so that you can actually have time to execute it to the best of your abilities, and to, and for your stakeholders to, to, to make sure that you're articulating, um, patience so that they give you that grace, um in order to execute. So I think that's, that's one.

Number two, um, I would say, is, is it is really important to use lack of resources as a forcing function, right? Um, so, so it's okay to try to go out, raise a bunch of money. It's okay to try to go out, hire a bunch of people. But scarcity and lack of resources is a forcing function that will, that will push you to innovate, to be creative. And lean into it, accept it, and lean into it. Like, get what you need, find the resources that you need in order to be successful, but embrace that force function, embrace those lack of... the, the, the creativity that's necessary to breed innovation, or the, that, that force function that can breed creativity and innovation, as opposed to complaining about lack of resources, right? Or complaining about, like, "not being able to do X because..." and you've been able to... and you see your competitor having raised a bunch of money and you... and you know you would be that person or your company would be that company if you also raised that equivalent. No, it doesn't work that way, right?

So, so lean into, um, um that as a force function and use that to drive creativity, use that to drive innovation, as opposed to, um, using it as a crutch for lack of success. Um and I'm not speaking from experience on that, I'm speaking from observation, just by the way, like I, I think I was definitely, like, a "Hey, like we're going to do what we got to do, um and we'll make what we... with what we have and we'll make it work."

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really great. Yeah, we hear time and time again it's not the resources you have, it's the resourcefulness that you have that can get things done. And oftentimes, you know, startup founders start out with no money, they got to figure it out, they got to create and build, and you know, hope they get, you know, to a problem that's solving, you know, or a solution that's solving a problem. And, um so many times we hear this over and over, that, you know, you can get stuff done. You don't, you don't need the, the capital quite yet or the people quite yet, and, and they make it happen. So really cool to hear that.

Um what are you excited about at, to, 2024 for Plural?

Damola Ogundipe: As we look into to 2024, I... you know, it's an election year. Not... we're not an election software company, but, um, but it is an interesting time because we're in that legal tech, political tech space, so we're in an adjacent area. And, and an election cycle does have, um, do have an impact on us. So, being in a presidential election cycle, I'm really interested to see kind of like how, um, technology plays a role in it. And there's a lot of things to be concerned about, for sure, um, with how technology, um, and AI will can and will play a role in it. But there's also a lot of things that I think are, could be really interesting and stimulating, um, just to see what... how new technology plays a role in, in, you know, something as important as a presidential election. So I'm kind of interested and excited to see how all of that plays out, um, and then how that has an impact on Plural.

Um, I'm also just excited about, you know, growth, right? With New Years... with the, with the new year, and we're recording this... this podcast at the, the top of, of, of 2024. With new year brings new possibility, um, brings new goals. Um, we have really ambitious and really exciting goals for 2024, so I'm just excited about going to work, um chopping wood, executing on those goals, and seeing what we end up at the end of the year.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. I love that story. Um, I want to switch gears here and get a little more personal with you now, as a leader. Um, you know, as you look, uh, at creating innovation in the new year and just, just moving forward, where do you go or what do you do to think big or to brainstorm?

Damola Ogundipe: Um, I... so here are a few things that I don't know if any... if everybody will agree with, but I, I think it does have an impact for me. Uh, I don't do social media. So, I try to avoid it. I'm, you know, just like every other millennial, I do have an Instagram account, um, but I try to kind of limit my usage, and sometimes eliminate it outright. Um, I try to give yourself... give myself enough quiet time, um, just to be able to sit and think. I'm not a meditator, and I'm not going to purport myself to be, but I do think that just being at one with your thoughts, and, and seeing where your energy leads to, um, oftentimes yields exciting results, yields creativity, brings you to the problems that maybe weren't in your, like, in your immediate conscious, uh, but exist.

Um, so for me, that, that looks like walking outside, uh, when I'm taking a break between meetings, literally just sitting and not having any sort of stimuli. Um, it means, you know, listening to, or, um, taking a shower and not playing any music or, or podcast, eating without watching TV or, or listening to a podcast or listening to music... everybody should listen to this podcast, by the way, but listen to this podcast while you eat, but all the other ones, you can, you can...

Um, so I think, again, I think it's just about like giving yourself the space to be creative, your... the space that your mind needs to be creative, to be innovative, to think big, um, and uh, and if you're a naturally big thinker, it will lead you there. Like, your, your energy will, will lead... it will go in that direction. So, I think for me, I just give myself that space and give myself that opportunity.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: It's really great, thanks for sharing that. Where... what do you do to keep the perspective of where the company's headed or to stay positive in the up-and-down journey of building and leading a company?

Damola Ogundipe: Um, so I am constantly paranoid. I will say that. Um, I think there... there's a quote out there, I can't... I don't know who it's by, but it's, it's just around, like, healthy paranoia, right? Like, I actually think it's a great... Gregg Popovich, "healthy level of fear," something like that. Where, like, having... there... there is a certain amount of fear and paranoia that you must have that keeps you on your toes. And I, and I definitely have that, where I'm, um, not to the point of of being overly concerned and dominating every aspect of the company, right? Like, there's a balance there. But trying to identify what... what can and might lead to failure, um, what can and might lead to, um, to a bad outcome or an outcome that I... that I find to be suboptimal, um, and just continuously trying to identify those, um, is what keeps you sharp, especially as an early-stage entrepreneur. Because you do have a little more control, right? If you're earlier-stage, like, you can put your thumbprints on things and move and move it.

Um, so, I try my best to, to just kind of find that... find that balance, um, so that... I mean, it works for me. I don't know if it works for, for everybody, but I'm just kind of staying on top of those things, and, and just always trying to surface what might be a problem, what might lead ultimately to failure, um is what I spend a lot of my time doing.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Um last question for you. Have you gotten advice from another founder or maybe from Techstars that you thought was priceless, that's worth sharing with the listeners?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, so the quote that always sticks with me is, um, from my managing director at Techstars, um and, uh, his... what... what he always would tell us is, um, the... what we're trying to accomplish as an entrepreneur, right, like, as a founder, is build a good company and then tell people about it, right? So it's not "tell people about it and then..." It's an order... like, build... build something good, and then your whole job is to build a good company and then tell people about it.

Um so, like, I kind of... it's just something fun that, that I... that I remind myself of is, like, "build..." I mean, just "build and tell," "build and tell," "build and tell," um and that'll lead to, you know, to growth. And telling isn't just telling, you know, strangers or, you know, podcast host named Jake... Jake... about it. It's telling your customers, telling other stakeholders, telling, telling investors, etc. But fundamentally, you have to build something good. So, build... build good, and then tell people about it.

Um and then the one that, like, everybody knows as a CEO: the number one job of a CEO—don't run out of money, right? So, I, every day, wake up: "Are we out of money? When do we run out of money?" Don't get to that date. Know when you run out of money, and don't let that date ever come, right? Keep pushing that date further and further back, um so, um, so yeah, that... those are just two things as a, as an executive, as a CEO for an early-stage company that, that I think about.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yep, I like that. That last one, that makes a lot of sense to me, for sure. Uh, so that's great. Well, as we wrap up here, um, if anybody wanted to find out about Plural or want to connect with you, where do they go?

Damola Ogundipe: Yeah, um, so you can go to pluralpolicy.com, pluralpolicy, p-l-u-r-a-l-p-o-l-i-c-y.com. Um, or feel free... like I said, I'm not... I'm not active on social like that, but feel free to shoot me an email: damola@pluralpolicy.com.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Well, appreciate you taking the time here today to come on and tell your story and have the courage to do it. Plural uses data and software to help government relations and public policy teams influence and shape public policy globally. Check them out, sounds really cool. Google uses them, why wouldn't you?

My name is Jake Aaron Villarreal, and I'm the host of the show. Um, I look forward to catching up with everyone on the next episode. Until then, Damola, have a great year. And to all the listeners, we'll catch up soon. Take care.

Damola Ogundipe: Take care, everybody.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.

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