YOLO — We are Launching C-Span for Local Government
The fun part about startups is taking detours along the way
I started Hamlet exactly 3 years ago with the mission to turn City and County data into something useful that residents and companies can understand.
Today, most of our customers are real estate developers, but we’ve also worked with PACs, Retailers, Data Center Developers and even CPGs. Today — I have an announcement.
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Hamlet TV is live on Apple TV.
We’re building C-SPAN for local government. It’s a streaming channel with the funniest, strangest, most human moments from city council meetings across America. It’s also on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
This is a weird side project for a B2B data company to launch. Let me explain.
Three years ago I ran for Orinda City Council and lost. But I got obsessed with something during that campaign — I started watching hours of city council meeting videos and using LLMs to understand voting patterns, who was persuadable, what arguments actually worked. It made me a better candidate.
Then I noticed: since COVID, almost every city in America started recording their public meetings. Planning commissions. School boards. City councils. Thousands of hours of video just sitting on government websites. Local government meetings are the largest single source of original content in America and almost nobody is paying attention.
My original idea was to build a media company that synthesizes all of this for residents. Make local government legible. Help people understand what’s happening without sitting through three-hour meetings.
Then out of luck, something unexpected happened.
About a year in, real estate developers started reaching out. They needed to understand how cities vote on specific issues so they could operate better.
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Turns out the same opacity that frustrates residents also frustrates businesses. And businesses pay for clarity.
Today Hamlet serves some of the largest developers in the country. We’re growing fast.
But I never forgot why I started this.
Everyone obsesses over federal politics. But local government is what actually shapes your daily life — the speed bumps on your street, whether that apartment building gets approved, your kids’ school budget. All of it happens at city hall.
And nobody’s watching.
That’s the problem Hamlet TV is trying to solve. We want to use humor as a device to get you interested in city meetings. We will intersperse serious things into the feed so you get a picture of the important issues in American democracy.
The bet is simple: humor is a gateway. Someone watches a 60-second clip, laughs, gets curious. Maybe they show up to a meeting. If even one person does that, it’s a win.
We also raised $5M to keep building.
The round was led by Sam Lessin and Yoni Rechtman at Slow Ventures, with participation from Crosslink Capital, Kapor Capital, Animo Ventures, Home Technology Ventures, Storyhouse Ventures, and Banana Capital.
Two asks:
If you’re a business that needs to understand what’s happening in American cities — real estate, data centers, retail, telecom, whatever — reach out. We can help.
If you want to watch democracy get weird, please follow one of our social feeds, or download the Apple TV app — we’d sincerely appreciate the support.
See you at city hall.
Sunil
