Business Innovators Radio - Episode 4: The Intersection of Tech & Government with Sedale Turbovsky

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

In this engaging episode of Fractal Focus, Phillip Lorenzo sits down with Sedale Turbovsky, a serial entrepreneur and founder, to dive into the unique challenges and opportunities that arise when bridging the gap between the public and private sectors.Sedale shares his insights from over 15 years of experience, including his work with Open Grants, where he focuses on democratizing access to capital and grant funding through technology. From navigating human complexities to addressing privacy concerns in philanthropy, Sedale unpacks the realities of building impactful tech solutions in a space where efficiency meets bureaucracy.Fractal Focushttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/fractal-focus/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-4-the-intersection-of-tech-government-with-sedale-turbovsky

Welcome to Fractal Focus, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Welcome to this special fractal focus podcast episode. My name is Philip Lorenzo, and I'm with FYC Labs and with the Fractal Group. And today we have an awesome guest. And we're going to be relaxing, talking about a variable of things, and the state of tech in today's society. and my guest to do that is Sidel Terbowski. And I'm going to let him introduce himself. And I'm going to caution and context to everybody in this podcast.

We're kind of in this wide space with these moon pods. And there's people moving in and out. So if you hear background noise, forgive us. But this is the place that we want to have this conversation and really get into a few things. So with that said, Sidel, please introduce yourself to the world. Thank you, Phil. Super excited to chat with you about this stuff. I am a Sierra entrepreneur and founder.

I currently am also engaged as a brand ambassador and brand advocate at Fractal Group. And I'm super excited to chat about the journey I've been on. But the last 15 years, I've really been focused on the intersection of public and private sector data and the tools that you can build out of that. So the last company and where I'm currently working is a company called Open Grants, where we blend private data about companies and connect them to grant funding. But before that, I worked on companies that blended public data and private sector data about agriculture and helped farmers. I worked on a company called Carbon Blue where we blended private fleet data and public data about incentives to help people deploy alternative fuels and advanced vehicle tech. So I'm excited to chat about that journey because I have spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to work with the government and work with tech. And I'm a big fan of building things that democratize access to resources.

So that's me in a nutshell. It feels like technology is the perfect avenue to democratize resource. Because if you think about the internet and the ubiquitous of it, the availability, right? for people. If we think about the purpose of the internet in the first place, when it was created, it was for connection, right? So if you in a few words can tell me

would have been the biggest accomplishments and challenges that you've had in navigating that space and that synergy, I hate that word, but I have to use it because it makes sense between public and private interests and goals, etc. I think the biggest challenge that we've had, and I'll start with that, because the accomplishments are interesting, but I think the challenges are way more interesting. And the biggest challenge that we've had in building anything has been that, you know,

technology often, when people invest in tech companies or when we talk about building technology, I think there's frequently a failure to account for the human part of the equation. and that's always been the challenge. Like if there's a through line into, you know, 15 plus years of building SaaS and tech companies, it's the human equation. It's always challenging. And whether that's that, you know, the people who are in charge aren't really incentivized to use your platform or aren't incentivized to solve problems that you think should be solved

or that people think should be solved, it's always people at the end of the day that is not only the challenge, but I think also the opportunity. And I'll say that, you know, to the corollary to that is that our biggest successes have come from bringing and really understanding that human element and providing a solution that actually solves for the thing that people are looking to solve for, which is not always as obvious as you'd think it should be. Yeah, I would imagine that there is so much to. tangling interests, inherent goals, agendas, stepping into any type of partnership like this, right? That for the most effective path forward, there has to be so much compromise.

And I'd imagine you've had so much experience being exposed to that compromise or a lack thereof. And so in a few words or in as many words as you like, can you tell us about navigating that? side of it. Yeah, I think, you know, for example, with open grants, what we wanted to do was build a common app for grant funding. So there would be a lot of transparency and visibility on both sides of the aisle. People deploying capital could see the people who were looking for capital and easily connect with them and deploy capital to them. And the thing that we didn't account for is that a bunch of people

who deploy capital don't want to see all that stuff. And they don't want those people to see them. And the more we unpacked it, we realized that while there were places that had incentives, the government in particular, to deploy capital, there is plenty of folks within philanthropy who just didn't want to for a bunch of different reasons. But most of them involved that, like, they just didn't want to be bothered. And so that is a place to navigate. And what we ended up doing, what we're currently piloting, and I'm super excited, we'll be launching this towards the the end of the year in Philadelphia at BlackBod's user conference, which is going to be super exciting. But we're building an integration that kind of enables an interstitial space, because what happened was the people who were deploying capital said, yeah, we kind of like that idea,

but we don't really want those people to see us. And so we built kind of a barrier, like an in-between spot. And so that's really cool. And we hope that it'll lead to a lot more philanthropy money being deployed more efficiently. But yeah, it was a weird compromise that we had to work out where we're like, oh, they want it, but they don't really want it to be super visible. So we got to do a little bit of adjusting in how we're approaching it. And do you think that those common barriers or those guardrails that philanthropists set up in the face of technology, in your experience, is it come from a place of misunderstanding what technology can do? Does it come from a place? place of distrust in general of the people behind certain technological solutions. And I think,

of course, about humans being humans and responding to news pieces and articles and news stories about tech founders and all of that around it. So I'm curious as to where is that barrier resistance or is it purely just privacy? I just don't want anybody to know that I'm giving away this much money for a certain cause. I think it's mostly privacy. There's definitely this trust of technology in particular in that space, which is a whole different, I think kind of a different discussion. But in this case,

it was just very much about privacy. They're like, yeah, we don't want to show that to people. We're like, okay. That's it. Conversation's over. Yep, in the conversation. It's like you have the money,

so I guess you get to set the terms. Yeah. So in the time that we are in right now, which is, I believe, today is February 20th, 2025 when we're recording this episode, we are currently a full month into a new administration that has, for the first time, to my knowledge, had a leader in technology be at the forefront of government, movement of government efficiency, forgive that word, because I know that we're leading into that territory, but I'm curious as to that all of a sudden propping of someone in the technology space,

now in front and center government, how do you, as someone with experience of marrying public and private interests together to create good things, where do you think this kind of partnership is going to go as we look into the future and how does it affect the work that you do specifically? Yeah, I think, you know, I want to say something, which I have been reflecting on a lot. And I think that, you know, this new kind of paradigm that's being established looks a lot like what I would have done as like a brand new person in GovTech. Which is to say that I think that now, as having been spent like, you know, more than 10 years in this. I would approach it a much more different way. But it does seem like it seems like someone who has worked in tech their whole life,

just following kind of like their gut about what they think, you know, remaking this government should be. So where's that, first of all, it's certainly impacting, you know, our work with grants and my work in general, just because government for so long has been this very stable institution. Just from like a capitalism standpoint, it's always been like, oh, we can back government stuff because the government will pay its bills. And that has been called into questions, certainly. And so there's been this chilling effect around working with government. Because a lot of what I do is working with government, that's been, you know, it's definitely

put a damper on things. But I hope and my, my like optimism, you know, hopes that, What we arrive at here is the critiques that this current administration has offered about government, I think are fair and accurate, which is to say that it's inefficient. I think we all know that it's inefficient. And so fixing that at its core is wonderful. That's a great mission to be on. And figuring out how to do it in perhaps a way that doesn't dampen the economy and make sure that we're doing it an intelligent way,

I think that's the next step. But yeah, there's a lot to unpack on this one. I think there is. And ultimately, the biggest thing that we may be thinking about in the unpacking of that is the source of funds for good work. The source of funds and where does it come from, right? So in the case of a grant, you write up a grant, you get the report ready, you submit it to a committee. The committee reviews it depending on what the nonprofit is or if it's an actual government agency. And then they come with an approval or denial, right?

So if, in fact, we're looking at a shift and how we look for funds altogether, because typically a lot of nonprofits use a mix of government funded and non-government funded sources. So if I'm an arts institution, for example, I'm looking at the national arts education, you know, government committee. And then I'm looking at private, you know, funding work. So it's like that is going to be affected. That shift is going to kind of affect the regulation of grant writers of people in executive director positions and how they look at their fiscal budgets and where they can potentially

get their money from. That was a long way to ask or to kind of get your read on. We think about state level, right? When federal programs are spun down often, the response is, well, we want the states to handle X, right? So if the Department of Education gets dissolved, states are responsible for the education is the pitch. So do you think in the work that you do, would that shift also the focus of the software that you build to say, okay, this is going to be at a state-by-state level? And how does that affect the product launch, for example?

Because it's far easy to launch open grants when there's a federal database of grants available. And now if that's not available and you have to go on state level, now we have state-by-state approval. So I want your thoughts on that. And if that's even the right way to think about it. Yeah, I think that on one hand, perhaps it is the right way to think about it in the sense that there probably will be a big shift into like state spending. And there may be a lot more decisions from states about how to spend and what to spend. At the same time, I don't really think that many of the big federal programs that are domestic will entirely. go away. I think there's definitely going to be some reprioritizing and shifting. But I think one of the

things that has struck fear in people's hearts, but also, honestly, to my thinking, kind of made a lot of sense. Well, there's actually two things I'll mention. One is the reality of, like, IRA, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act. And what it actually did to support, let's just talk about EV charging infrastructure, for example. The reality of those programs is that a lot of that money got sucked into big kind of special interest groups. It didn't really get deployed to support charging infrastructure anywhere. And it was so slow.

And what we have to thank for charging infrastructure in most parts of the United States is private industry building charging infrastructure. And so on that front, I think that what is happening now may not only shift like where we look for funding and grants. But it also may actually give the industries the punch they need to try to move away more efficiently from government subsidies and grants. That said, you know, big programs like USA going away do fundamentally like shift the value proposition of something like Open Grants that tracks that stuff at the federal level.

And I think that what, you know, luckily we've done a pretty good job building also integrations at the state level and working with partners on and even local stuff. So we're pretty well prepared for that. But I do think, I think the bigger question is like, is that are those programs going to be around and at what level? And I think really where it comes down to, like I honestly don't see like the federal government budget shifting in terms of like where they're spending money as much as, how much money is going to get spent and kind of what's allowed in terms of what you're going to do with that money.

Yeah. And I think it's a whole different discussion. And that's specifically when it comes to grants. It's a whole different discussion when you talk about like all the different people that are getting fired and so forth. But like when it comes to grants, those are hard programs domestically to ignore because they're really significant for economic development on the ground. Whereas programs like USA and are a little bit easier to like do away with.

because they're not domestic. There's no congressional district for Kenya, right? And so unfortunately, it's pretty easy to, like, say bye to those programs because there's no people in Congress who are really incentivized to do one thing or another with them. Right. There's, like, a moral sort of thing to talk about for sure. But, like, you know, the folks in the incentive is, like, oh, I want to get voted back into office. And no one, you know, in your district is going to complain about USA that much, show that loudly.

you mentioned morals and this is a really fascinating topic for me which is always going to be about the challenges of proposing a technological solution and to come from it because often of course the proposal of any app is we're going to change the world we're going to change the way you do blank at a fundamental level when you propose that there is a degree of morality or there a degree of human empathy, perhaps, depending on what solution you're proposing, right? And so my question to you is, how much of a balance of morality versus revenue and versus being able to sustain said business or sustain said partnerships in order to make things effective? Where does that balance for you as a founder, for you as someone who has worked with different

agencies and companies and these solutions? where does that tie in and how does that leak into conversations about solving problems, about getting budgets done, about getting things done? Because it's easy for us to go into the hamster wheel of routine or the hamster wheel of the process of a thing. And it's hard to, and you could, I'll ask for forgiveness that this is not true, but it's hard to really step back at times from that routine when you're in it, to look at it from that 50,000 foot horizon and say, okay, what are the moral and

If any, of what we're doing. Yeah. Even if the path or even if the goal is altruistic and it is meant for a good cause. Yeah. I think more, I think now more than ever, it's really important to think through those things. But I spent a lot of time, I dropped out of school, but my favorite thing in school was economics. And one of my favorite things that, you know, I love to like just think about a lot was this idea of like these externalities, these sort of outsized impacts you can have without intentionally doing them.

And I think, you know, right now, the goal is to play the capitalism game. And I don't think you can get away from that with any real, like, and be a serious sort of person in this space. Because that's what it is. This is the capitalism game. And I think there's a whole discussion to be had about whether or not that's a good game or not and whether or not we should have a different sort of game to be playing. Yeah.

But I set all that aside because, like, what I would say and what I think is like, okay, we're playing the capitalism game. That's what we're doing. I'm not going to try to play some other game because this is the game that I've bought into. And, you know, I'll leave it to other smarter people to think about the other kinds of ways that they can tackle that. But what I think is fun is within the capitalism framework.

there's very interesting and compelling ways to do things that don't harm people. And there's really smart and innovative and interesting ways to create good in the world while making money. And I think one of the coolest things is that as we have developed more technology, there's a very interesting kind of technology-enabled ways to do this super efficiently. And so one of the first things that we did at Open Grants was we fractionalized some of our cap tables so that bounty hunters, bug bounty hunters, as well as people who contributed data to our platform, could actually own some of Open Grants. So that the day that it becomes a billion dollar company, they get compensated for how they've contributed. And we did that at the height of like the crypto, crypto was like pump and it was 20-20. There was money everywhere, and everything got funded all the time, and it was beautiful.

It was a beautiful time in Silicon Valley. And when we did that, we did it more because crypto was super high, and everyone was doing Dow's and everything else. But now, in the face of AI and agenic workflows and conversations about whether or not we'll even all be working in five years, it seems more relevant than ever that this kind of like fractionalized ownership and shared equity is an interesting approach in the capitalist lens to, you know, navigating this stuff in a responsible way. But yeah, as a founder, I think it not only is our goal, but like for me, I think it's

more about also the survival of the company, right? Like I watched Uber and Lyft get taken to court in California. And that was wild. And then the whole time it was happening. I was like, you know what? If the CEOs at Uber and Lyft had decided to just fractionalize some equity and make it liquid through tokenization for their employees, they would never have been in court. This is about protecting your business. And it's like, this is a smart move.

As a capitalist, I want to create a billion dollar company. I also don't want to have peasants beating down my door, not to use the word peasants. But that's just a metaphor, right? But like, I don't want that situation. that sounds awful. And I don't want to get sued. It seems like an investment that you can make for fairly low cost to really help people who are contributing.

And I think that the alternative is like revolution, right? Like a whole, a very like beat the rich sort of thing. So I think you got two options. And I just think, like, there's a smart way to go, and then there's a way where you've got to, like, either, you know, board up the walls and keep the hordes away or, you know, or share and be smart. And, like, it's not going to cut into your profit.

Like, the profit margins of these companies is insane. Like, it's not going to cut into your profit margin that much. Yeah. And it does seem worth it. And I think especially as we think about AI and how it's replacing work and people, it seems like the way to go is to figure out ways to share that wealth, even if you're not necessarily sharing the means of production, figuring out ways to support labor and folks who are contributing their data or whatever. It's a thing that I think about with shareholder activism.

You know, sometimes there's shareholder activism for more profit, more profit at all costs. And then there's other times their shareholder activism, aka Costco, right? They kept DEI initiatives, regardless of the trend of spinning those down, where the shareholders stepped up and said, no, we think DEI is important. That's a very optical thing, perhaps. But I wonder if that is, if shareholders, and there's a stuff because a lot of shareholders are not individual shareholders going to meetings. A lot of time it's a hedge fund manager. It's the management companies of these funds.

that actually participate in those stockholder meetings. But I also imagine it would be a mix of that and also, you know, keeping the hordes away, for lack of a better word, because there will be a requirement, I think, at some degree for a shareholder participation in this, right? And I have to say, I didn't mean to use that metaphor, but I do think... No, but it's...

That's something they would say. There's a relevant to it for sure. And I also think it's really interesting that, like, I know... I know playing. of people who would be more than happy with that, right? They can think that one of the traps that capitalism or people who are leaders and business leaders think themselves into is that like that other people have the same ambitions they do.

And that's just not true. Like some people just want to do their thing, clocking, clock out, or not clock in and clock out. And they just want to live their life and chill and smoke weed all day or whatever it is. And like, there's plenty of people who, who have you said, hey, I want you to be the CEO, they'd be like, F that, no. Like, that sounds terrible. And I think that you get that in your head.

Like, you're like, oh, everyone was to be the CEO. I was like, no one wants, like, people don't want that. Like, I love, you know, I have a lot of different, like, sort of groups in my life of people. And I like spending time with different folks because you do get, like, you get in your little bubble of being, you know, a founder, CEO. And then I go spend time with other people who are just like, yeah, we just want to, like, float on the river all day. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's also a way to live life, is just flow on the river all day. And so I think that there's enough different people in the world and there's enough money and resources in the world where you can have a capitalist system where you're still getting profits. You're still having shareholder activism to the extent they even want to be engaged.

Yeah. And you still are getting work done. and there's not an uprising because some people don't have enough. That's, there's so much we can talk about. This episode won't nearly earn, I mean, it won't nearly pack what we've earned through this conversation. We can talk about this for, I think, four hours and be, you know, still without resolution to a degree. So what are your main milestones or goal? that you have for this year.

And it kind of reflects a little bit what we talked about so far. But what are you thinking about wanting to accomplish this year, especially thinking about the topic of navigating this new space of tech and philanthropy and granting and public private partnerships? Like, where are you at? Yeah. You know, one of the things I'm most excited about is that, We have, I've been excited about this for years as I've watched, like, you know, I just think my very first company, I had to go get an attorney who I paid 10 grand to or something to, like, incorporate it and then had to go to a bank to get, you know, an account.

It was just awful. And like now, you can, you can spend up a whole Delaware C Corp with stock and everything else for like $500. And it takes you like three days to get your E-I-in and you can get a big. bank account in seconds, minutes. The time it takes now to create something that can impact the world and change people's lives is like you could do it in a weekend, perhaps, right? It's very possible to ship something to market that can make money in a pair of days. And then it's even more possible to build the actual infrastructure of the company alongside it.

And so, again, you can get something out there in weeks. And what I am particularly excited about for this year is that there are all of a sudden a whole new pool of talent that's been fired from the government. And while I think that's probably sad and shocking for them, I don't think it's like the worst thing that could happen to them. And I do, like, while I don't agree with some of the methods and other things the current administration is doing, I do agree that, like, government is too big and too inefficient to really function in a society that is technology enabled the way we are now. And my co-founder at Open Grants, and I actually wrote a piece about this, about how we, there's like significant threats from dictatorships, places like China. that can move because they can make unilateral decisions so much more efficiently than a democracy. And what I'm excited about and what I'm interested in investing in and seeing grow is people building tech that can make democracy function in an agile way. So things like direct voting, things like, you know, paying taxes efficiently.

Like all these, there's so much opportunity. And now, and now you don't need to raise $5 million. and find a bunch of engineers, like, to do that, right? Like, you can just do it. It's so cool. So I am cautiously optimistic and hopeful that the people who are losing their jobs or the people who find themselves outside of government now suddenly can take all their learnings and all that knowledge

and help us build tooling that makes democracy work in the modern world. Like, we should have direct voting. It doesn't make sense that we do things the way we do. And a lot of the reason we do them that, the way that we have, is simply because we've always done them that way, which is the worst decision to, like, it's a terrible decision to make for that reason. And so I'm, I'm excited about that. And I think that that is, like, you know, there's the two sides of the corn. We can either do really evil, terrible things. It's always a double-edged sword with technology.

But hopefully we can also do amazing things and build stuff that ensures that, like, the Democrat. process and the ideals of democracy can carry on and operate, but that they can operate in an agile and efficient way. And so I'm going to play devil's advocate for one tiny moment, although I, you know, everything you said makes a lot of sense. But the counter argument is always going to be, especially from experience veteran government officials, checks and balance, checks and balance. You're always going to hear that, right?

it's like, hey, if something is efficient, quote unquote, where is the check along each point? And so that's very relevant right now. And my question to you is if someone were to approach you with that argument, what would be your potential response? And again, this is very situational. So we don't know how that would be addressed to you. But what would you think about if someone would say, hey, yeah, great, that is efficient, but who's checking, who's making those decisions along the line?

in that process. Yeah, I do, I think that that is a great argument and something that is like a flag to put in the ground. But I also think that the way that government has functioned has been so inefficient. Yeah. That even bringing some efficiency to it will have gains while you can maintain those checks and balances. Yeah.

Now, there's a whole different discussion that you had like about politics and so forth. but like functionally, things like direct voting, for example, still present, you know, those checks and balance, especially if you're still, like, auditing that process, right? Yeah. So I do think, like, on the one hand, yeah, if you made the, you know, if we have like a minority report situation, right? Like, I think that's, hopefully you don't go there. But, like, that's the specter, right? It's like, that is an example of an overly efficient process that gets hacked. and then there's a problem, right?

If I'm remembering the plot correctly, that's exactly what happens. And so when I think what people are saying, when they say that, that there needs to be checks and balances, is they're concerned about overly efficient processes like that. And I think often what we're building or like what we're aspiring to in GovTech

is not that. Like we're not aspiring to the minority report. we're just aspiring into sort of like a modern way to get your driver's license updated, right? Yeah. That's what we're not like, we're saying, hey, let's use email. Like, let's not require what ink signatures on grants. Like that, you know, that's what that's all we're asking for. So the low hanging fruit is so very low hanging that I don't think we're even close to the point where we're like invalidating checks and balances with technology.

Yeah. Now, you know, there's a whole different thing to be said about like, oh, the court system get sort of outmaneuvered or what, like, there's a bunch of politics things you can talk about. And you can talk about, like, who are in those positions to get those checks and balances and be balanced. That's a different discussion. But from a technology standpoint, I don't think we're there to that point where we'd be like in running the checks and balances. Right. That makes perfect sense. Okay.

We're at the end of our journey. We went through a lot of different places. And I imagine there might be a part two to this depending on response because certainly we've covered a lot of ground. But in the interest of getting people to know you more that are just hearing you for the first time and talking about GovTech and talking about this way of thinking about the public and private sectors coming together, where can they find out more about you? I know you do amazing blogging.

I know that your tentacles are so over the place. So tell people where they can find great content and also information about the things that you work on. Yeah, the easiest place to hunt me down is probably on LinkedIn. My name is very unique. It is a combination of two very different cultures. So if you type in Sidel Trabowski, we're not going to find a lot of those.

So I'm easy to find there. Also, if you want to read up, on some of the things I'm thinking about like UBI and yeah we can get to talk about that yeah we even get to talk about some of that stuff but it is kind of related to the fractional equity stuff so if you go to opus dot foo um you can read some of the like kind of thoughts that I'm having um it's also a place to just catch up on you know I try to put out different like meditations and other stuff there so um those are the two probably best places to find me um also you can just Google me. Again, the combination

of my name is very unique. If you Google Turbowski, you find a bunch of people. If you Google Sidel, you'll find a bunch of people. If you Google Sidel Terboski together, you're going to find me. So, yeah, I'm always happy to connect. LinkedIn. I'm on all the socials, but

yeah, happy to chat. This was an amazing conversation. I personally just, so everybody understands context, every time we even get an opportunity to speak, which isn't often because we're very busy. It is always just very exciting talks. And it's always, we just try to go somewhere, I think, even in the limited time we have.

And I think Kevin in the building also, we often have very interesting conversations that go to some deep places. So it is really great to be able to talk to you in this podcast forum. And what a joy. So thank you again. And for our audience, again, thank you for listening through this whole podcast. Apologies for any background noise or any echoing. But we really want to have this conversation here. And this is, that's why I'm calling it a special episode because it's not typically in the,

in the traditional format that we have it. But I felt that this was a great topical point to have this conversation. And a ding just tells me it's time for us to go. So that being said, remember you can listen to the other episodes of fractal focus on our website. And please, please, please comment, all the good stuff. And with that being said, have a successful journey. in this business venture we call life. Take care. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Fractal Focus.

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