 This month’s four-minute FirstMile Founder interview is with Adam Zucker, the co-founder and CEO of Cloverleaf AI, a SaaS platform revolutionizing how government professionals - from policy groups to contractors - monitor government meetings for insights and opportunities. Adam began his career as an engineer at innovative startups like WeWork, where he specialized in building scalable solutions and improving operational efficiency. Adam is passionate about creating products that deliver tangible value and fostering a leadership style rooted in compassion and purpose. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A baseball player was my first dream job. My dad was a baseball nut e.g. the first video I ever watched was a baseball clip. Then, I wanted to be a rock star after I figured out there was no height requirement for rock stars. When I got over my need to have my job be related to my hobbies, I landed at WeWork as an engineer. As for wanting to be an entrepreneur, it was not something I explicitly knew I wanted to do from a young age. But it was something I was pre-conditioned to become in some ways. My dad was a podiatrist and always said he could never work for other people. He eventually had his own practice and it definitely suited him. His path really resonated with me. When I was simply an engineer at other companies, I felt like a “cog.” I had little ownership and the roles never filled my cup. Now that I am in Cloverleaf, I have never worked as much and made so little, BUT at the same time been so fulfilled. Despite the reality of the built-in uncertainty in growing a new company, I feel so grateful for this experience and this path that we are on at Cloverleaf. Was starting Cloverleaf AI an "aha moment" or a "gradual realization"? So my co-founder, Jeremey Becker had the initial idea for Cloverleaf. Jeremy’s dad was a Comptroller and a single father. So Jeremy grew up going to government meetings from a young age. He learned that they were long and boring, but lots of important decisions that often involve people's lives and money were decided in them. The actual hatching of Cloverleaf came to Jeremy later in life during his executive MBA program. He had the realization that the vast majority of all government meetings are “public,” but without transcription (and now video), the meetings are largely inaccessible to the public. As more and more government meetings got transcribed and recorded he knew there was a massive opportunity to tap into that data and make it accessible to all. So when Jeremy told me about his idea, it was more an “aha” for me - it just immediately made sense that all public government meetings should be available in a searchable, indexable manner. Companies and organizations would clearly want insights into the government’s decision making and power players…meetings are an outward expression of that. If you could go back in time and tell yourself some advice at the time you first started Cloverleaf AI, what would it be? So this advice comes from your partner, Bill Miller, and he said it more eloquently than I am paraphrasing - “no one cares about your stupid, f-ing, product. So stop obsessing how perfect the features are or what they do. You need to solve for what your customer needs.” He said the best sign you are building something valuable is when people pay you for a half-baked product because it delivers SO much value. This advice forces you to focus on the ICP and not your own concept of what you think they need. For many of our first sales, we were selling the same duct-taped product I built during TechStars long ago. But I am an engineer… I like building cool things. So when I first started building Cloverleaf I wanted to make it feature rich and pretty. The reality is your resources (i.e. funding) are so limited when you first start that you need to build the bare minimum of the product and then iterate, iterate. What is the best constructive feedback you have gotten? Well, that product advice from Bill did hurt - I was so excited to tell him about my product and he just didn’t care. Bill is an engineer turned salesman turned investor so he should have appreciated my product. The toughest constructive feedback I got was also from Bill. We had just closed our “over-subscribed” seed round and I was telling him how we now had “plenty of runway" when he stopped me and said “ No Adam, you just have ‘more runway.’” It brought me back down to earth and to running a tight business. Why is Colorado a great place to start a company? Jeremy and I are from Chicago but we have been here for years. There is a sneaky large startup and tech culture in Denver + Boulder - from TechStars, to Google, to CU, etc. There are now meetups for AI startups, meetups for founders, tech CEO dinners…there are plenty of events and a really welcoming community. Additionally, there are coastal funds that want to come to town to see mature startups and ski. From a talent perspective, there is plenty here. We have just made a few hires and got great talent from the Denver area and we are seeing top talent across all positions. I am seeing other founders deciding to build IRL cultures and all of them have said they are getting great talent. From a practical point, Denver/Boulder is in the middle of the US and you can get to any major coastal city in two to three hours which is great for customers and fundraising. Fast-pitch questions
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