Curate: Funding press release

Contact: Taralinda Willis Curate Solutions 715.222.8699

MADISON, WI — Curate, the software company aggregating and scanning through local government meeting documentation, announced the closing of a $1.65 million round of funding. The round was led by Idea Fund of La Crosse with Allos Ventures as a significant contributor. 

Curate’s automation capabilities, powered by artificial intelligence, optimizes the time-consuming process of reading through minutes and agendas documents for market intelligence. Lobbyists and government affairs directors are able to track specific issues and local decisions that positively or negatively could impact their clients or communities and would otherwise go unnoticed.

“Curate is an essential tool for businesses and associations to monitor local decisions – there are 89,000 municipalities in the United States and keeping up-to-date with local decisions is an impossible task prior to the development of our software,” said Taralinda Willis, Curate co-founder and CEO. “We are excited to put this new investment to work to increase our team and accelerate our growth in all 50 states where local governments are having a more significant impact than ever on development, health, transportation, housing and economic issues that affect local, national and international businesses.”

Since 2016, business development and government affairs professionals from more than 125 business and associations in 21 states across the country have leveraged Curate to keep tabs on activity of key partners and gain a leading-edge on reliable, valuable information from municipalities.

Specifically, it’s CurateLOCAL product, used by businesses and associations, scans for discussions regarding hot-button issues and future ordinances. It’s CurateBUILD product, used by general contractors and engineers, scans for discussions regarding future construction projects, such as rezoning requests taken to plan commissions.

“Curate is bringing an innovative software solution to the overwhelming task of tracking local government ordinances, regulations, development opportunities and zoning rules, helping companies, large and small, better navigate and be alerted to local government issues that impact their businesses,” said Allos Ventures Managing Director, David Kerr. “We’re thrilled to be investing in Taralinda and the Curate team. They bring excellent experience to address the challenges companies face in keeping abreast of vast amounts of local government information that is typically very difficult to access, track and filter.”

Curate is the first software company to collect and store local meeting records from multiple states in one online location, enabling users to search their archives of more than five million minutes and agendas to date. Using natural language processing, Curate is able to pinpoint industry-specific keywords from discussions recorded in more than 200,000 minutes and agendas documents each week. Discussion snippets are displayed on Curate’s interactive web dashboard, which is customized for each company.

“The Idea Fund is thrilled to be partnering with Curate again in this round of funding,” Jon Horne, Managing Director of Idea Fund of La Crosse, said. “Curate has built out the initial concept as is now ready to scale. Co-founders Taralinda Willis and Dale Willis have incredible vision and direction in this solution to a decades old problem.”

This round of funding will help Curate expand nationally to fulfill the needs of its increasing customer base who do work across the country. Curate will also use the round to grow sales operations, reach new markets, and make continuous improvements to its technology platform.

Curate has raised about $2.2M in venture capital to date.

About Curate

Curate is changing the way people use municipal meeting minutes and agendas for market intel. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence, Curate automates reading through hundreds of these documents manually for leads on new construction or insights on issues hot in a community — enabling industry professionals to redirect their time and energy towards more face-to-face responsibilities and help them become the local expert in their market from anywhere. For more information, visit www.curatesolutions.com