Matchmaker Empowering Communities: Syncurrent
"FREEDOM THROUGH INNOVATION" is the tagline of Syncurrent, a Marquette-based government technology company that offers an online tool for municipal and tribal governments to quickly find and apply for both federal and state funding opportunities.
"Freedom Through Innovation" is the tagline of Syncurrent, a Marquette-based government technology company that offers an online tool for municipal and tribal governments to quickly find and apply for both federal and state funding opportunities. Their pricing structure ranges from “free forever” to low-cost yearly rates depending on the size of the team. More than 200 government organizations across the country use the platform, including 100 Federally Recognized Tribes. Successes so far include the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Chippewa Indians, Department of the Interior, United States Department of Agriculture, the Massachusetts Municipal Association, League of Oregon Cities and the cities of Marquette and Beulah, North Dakota.
Northern Magazine sat down with co-founder and CEO Dhruv C. Patel ‘22 BS, who created his own degree at NMU focusing on organizational science, and Product Associate Cass McGregor ’24 BS, a recent social media and design management grad. They are part of a highly motivated seven-person team that includes alumnus adviser Joe Thiel ’04 BS, who also heads up Innovate Marquette SmartZone and Invent@NMU. Bazile Panek ’22 BS (see article on page 20) is considered the “fourth cofounder” who helped them “build a product for tribes first and then for the rest of governments,” as Patel said, and continues to be a close ally and adviser of the Syncurrent team today.
Why and when did you form the concept for this business?
Dhruv: The big issue with governments finding funding today is time and capacity. Honestly, it takes a long time to go through the hundreds of databases of funding. It’s a very manual process, but we cut that down from a few months into a few minutes. With Syncurrent, governments can actually focus on capturing and using those dollars to create change in their community, rather than just spending all day scrolling databases.
Cass: We have a platform for local governments that any government can join for free and collaborate with their team all in one place. We take publicly available information—the name of your government, zip code, census data, past funding you have received, and run that through AI on our platform, and then match governments with federal and state funding opportunities that are relevant to their interests and which they’re also eligible for.
Dhruv: It all started a couple years ago when I was still a student at Northern, failing most of my classes, and wanting to go and build a business. Joe Thiel came in as a guest speaker and ended up helping me start my first business, HIVE, a subcontracting firm for economic development organizations, which I built in my dorm room. Through that, I found myself writing a lot of grants and trying to find funding and partners, grants and matching dollars, for my clients – that they needed to function but did not have the time to do themselves. I thought, all my customers are telling me the same thing over and over again. Maybe I should just drop what I’m doing and focus on what the customer is asking for. That’s when my co-founder Matthew Jaquez and I decided to build this tool. We thought, how hard could it be? It turns out, extremely difficult, which we learned the hard way. Joe and Innovate Marquette SmartZone helped us get connected to our now CTO, Craig Mattson, who has really advanced our operation. I was actually an AI skeptic when I started this company. It took a lot for me to learn what it is beyond the buzzword of AI and realize that we could really build something special here. I want to give a shout out to Dave Nyberg at NMU, too, who has been a great person to manifest our connection to Northern, to the community and resources, and remind us how much we care about the university.
Cass: I started as a marketing intern at Syncurrent during my last semester at Northern. I had been combining pre-law, marketing and art, and I honestly didn’t know anything about government technology, but now in a sort of beautiful roundabout way I ended up in a sort of intersection of government, politics and public relations. Northern set me up with a perfect skill set. I work closely with the engineers and the actual product that we’re putting out. It’s fun to work with users and see what their experiences and outcomes are on the platform. We are always here to help people. We do a lot of partnerships and webinars with our users to educate them about the platform and even help them through the actual funding application process.
Dhruv: We’re currently building capabilities that allow us to help fill out portions of applications for clients. That said, we ultimately leave it up to each organization to decide which parts of the process they’re comfortable having AI assist with.
Cass: I think the cool part about our platform is kind of similar to my own job. You get to choose your own adventure. If you want to talk to us and you want to chat with the team and learn about the platform, we’re always there. Typically, governments create their account for free and online, without talking to our team. Then, as they start grant applications, inviting team members and collaborating, they can upgrade to our paid plan, which gives them a lot of bang for their buck. At the end of the day, this is about getting governments the money that they deserve.
Dhruv: Matt Jaquez, Joe and I were at the old Invent@NMU office at about 12:30 in the morning, and we were throwing company name ideas around, and Joe said it has to have, like, concurrent and synchronous. I was writing down different variations of it and hit on Syncurrent, and he said, 'Buy that domain.' It was available for one penny.
How did it feel to be named to the inaugural AI 50 List for public sector innovators?
Dhruv: It felt great. I was thinking that I really hope our customers endorse us for that. And it turns out they did, with 50 submissions for Syncurrent, which was incredible. We were the only early stage tech company on that list. The other names are like the City of Sacramento, Google, IBM… behemoths. At the end of the day, what we’re doing is helping communities get new books for their schools, build actual bridges, finish roads, make real changes…. When huge funding opportunities go out, it’s usually the big cities that get awarded first, so really focusing on governments with limited resources, and helping them, is really fulfilling.
How do you keep afloat with offering free memberships?
Dhruv: As a technology company in this space, building trust with our users is incredibly important. We have all these partner agencies and we thought, what if we went through those organizations and found creative ways to make deals to serve the end user? An example of this is what we did in 2024 with the USDA Rural Development Office in Michigan. Joe Thiel brought Under Secretary Dr. Basil Gooden to Marquette to celebrate a half-million dollar award for Innovate Marquette SmartZone to build a technology lab. Joe knocked on my door and said, “The Under Secretary is going to be here in 30 minutes, prepare a demo. I want him to be surprised. I want him to love the technology.” So we spun up a demo and we gave him the pitch of our lives in 15 minutes. We stayed in contact and figured out how to do a cooperative agreement for $100,000 to do a pilot program, which kept us afloat for the time being. Syncurrent was the first AI company in USDA history to work with the agency to do a pilot program, and it’s here in Michigan. It also helped me personally, as Joe talks about building the undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are, in terms of fighting the imposter syndrome. It’s an incredibly powerful concept. This USDA deal, and the AI 50 List are those stacks of proof. Our goal is to get the stack to the ceiling.
On your Talent Intake Form (job application), there is a note from you, Dhruv, that states: “… We only accept greatness. Either those who already are or those who aspire to be. If you’re just looking for work and nothing more, we’ll know right away. This is not the place for mediocrity— if you want to learn 100x more than everyone at your level and you’re willing to work and sacrifice for it— we’ll welcome you with open arms.” Why do you have this philosophy?
Dhruv: Our pitch to Cass when she graduated from Northern was if you’re just looking for a job where you create graphics all day and post them on the Instagram account, then this is the wrong job for you. We have no handbook and no training manuals. If you’re starting tomorrow, by the end of the week, I want to see results from the work that you’re doing. Cass aspired to be great, she had the drive and motivation to hang on tight and get through the early onboarding at a startup, which is mostly just trial by fire. At a startup it’s an entirely different working atmosphere. The philosophy comes from the nature of startups. You are resource- and time-constrained fighting competitors with much more experience in the space. As a result, you need people who are scrappy and able to do a lot with very little.
Cass: I remember during my interview, they pretty much said we can’t offer you structure or a ton of information about the job, because we’re still creating it. But if you want to create it with us, come on board. And that’s the kind of environment that I stepped into, really taking things into your own hands and deciding what you want to do, what you want to learn, and going forth and doing that to the best of your ability.
Dhruv: A lot of organizations have these complex layers of hierarchy, but oftentimes Cass is the one who’s on calls, who’s the tiebreaker on an impasse between me and my chief engineer. We want our team members to steer the ship a lot of times, because often if I had something valuable to contribute, I would have contributed it by now!
I have spent a lot of time in high school, even at times at Northern and just in general feeling almost like an outsider. So the really fulfilling thing about Syncurrent is that we get to build the community and the culture in a space where you’re excited to do good work for the public. You want to do big things, you want to tackle hard problems. The team embodies that every day, and it’s just incredible.
My parents are from India and my dad has a bakery in Chicago. We lived in poverty. He lost his bakery and rebuilt it. He worked very long days, but whenever I see a photo of him, like with his arms covered in dough, he’s smiling. My mom always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and she is my unofficial problem solver. I always use my middle initial, which is “C.” for her name, Chetna, so she is always part of my entrepreneurial journey. They are the reason why I work so damn hard
and why I love to be part of this
shared mission.