Justin Wenig, a local entrepreneur known for his immense success with Coursedog, accomplished a huge feat. As a first step, he closed an impressive $42 million Series A funding round for his new startup, Starbridge. The round was led by Craft Ventures, which is managed by David Sacks. The round attracted investments from Owl Ventures, CommonWeal Ventures, and Autotech Ventures. A personal reflection on this major milestone for Starbridge! The Maryland-based company is on a mission to help business development teams operate at the speed of cloud through their business-to-government marketplace.
Wenig began his own foray into the startup world in 2019. He scaled Coursedog through Y Combinator’s famed accelerator, where his company built powerful, modern tools for institutions of higher education and worked hand in hand with departments of state. Under his leadership, Coursedog experienced tremendous success and ultimately sold in 2021 for nine figures to JMI Equity. Even after the sale, Wenig stayed on Coursedog’s board to help make sure the company had a smooth transition while he chased his next venture.
A good example of that is in early 2024 when Wenig launched Starbridge, a new platform where they help sales teams track and monitor opportunities in the public sector. The platform pulls together data from dozens of separate public web sources and organizes it all in one place. To improve usability further, Starbridge has built AI workflows on top of these datasets, simplifying the experience for sales teams.
Wenig described his fundraising adventure for Starbridge as “fun.” He experienced some early-stage difficulties piquing the interest of venture capitalists, but that wouldn’t stop Joseph from pursuing his passion. “We could not raise a dime, no VC wanted to even talk to us,” he said, looking back on the challenge of drawing in funding at first. But his tenacity was rewarded when he achieved the successful Series A round.
Today’s funding brings total funding raised by Starbridge to $52 million, including a former $10 million seed round. Wenig stressed that one of the biggest hurdles in the public sector is the fragmentation and unavailability of data. He sees Starbridge as a solution to this problem, stating, “Out of hundreds of startups, only a handful of us were trying to modernize how government and education worked.”
Starbridge is working hard to execute on its growth strategy, recently introducing the “Starbridge integrated experience. This exciting new capability enables users to tap directly into Starbridge’s technology without requiring direct access to the Starbridge platform itself. This advanced method is designed to use new digital experiences to drive increased user engagement and better, frictionless buying interactions to differentiate sales organizations.
Wenig’s partnership with Craft Ventures came about through a friend of Wenig’s. This innovative partnership serves as a powerful example of how impactful collaboration can be among entrepreneurial support organizations. Even more encouraging, he shared optimism about the future of mission-driven startups who are working to solve these systemic challenges. “Seeing this new wave of mission-driven founders tackling real, systemic challenges makes me incredibly hopeful for the future,” he stated.
Starbridge has created a unique methodology for doing public sector sales the right way. This transformation allows companies to better use data to inform and guide their impact-focused work. With its robust funding and innovative solutions, the startup is poised to make a lasting impact in an area often perceived as outdated and cumbersome.
