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Highlights

From Prison Reform to Public Sector Innovation: How Apolitical Built a $15M GovTech Platform

When Robyn Scott walked through South African prisons teaching coding, she noticed something profound: “95% of people are there not because of personal failures, they’re there because of policy failures.” This realization sparked a journey that would transform how governments learn and innovate globally.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Robyn shared how Apolitical grew from a controversial idea to a platform serving 250,000 public servants across 160 countries. Their story offers valuable GTM lessons for founders targeting complex, traditionally resistant markets.

Finding Hidden Champions in Unlikely Places

In 2015, suggesting that government needed a platform for sharing innovation was met with skepticism. “People laughed at us when we said we wanted to foster the sharing of best practice,” Robyn recalls. “We were told there is no innovation and there is no best practice. There are no innovators.”

Rather than accepting this narrative, Apolitical took a counterintuitive approach: they started finding and amplifying the stories of innovative public servants. These “hidden heroes” were doing remarkable work but lacked platforms to share their successes.

This strategy proved transformative. As Robyn explains, “Because very few are listening to them, we got audiences with anyone we wanted to speak to.” These early innovators became powerful advocates, helping Apolitical secure initial government partners in the UK and UAE.

The Scale of the Opportunity

The potential impact was staggering. “McKinsey actually put a figure on this,” Robyn notes. “They calculated that if governments just did what was already working elsewhere, it would unlock $3.5 trillion a year.”

Building Trust in Risk-Averse Markets

Selling to government requires a different playbook than typical B2B sales. “Governments with smaller companies, they are risk averse,” Robyn explains. “You’ve got to show and you’ve got to be very proactive in showing that you are compliant. Your data is second to none.”

Apolitical developed several strategies to overcome this challenge:

• Partnering with prime contractors to access procurement frameworks
• Publishing unique market insights from their network data
• Building social learning experiences that drive adoption

The Power of Social Learning at Scale

Instead of traditional online courses, Apolitical created cohort-based experiences where public servants learn together. “When you are training, you are in cohorts of your peers,” Robyn describes. “The key metric we hold ourselves to is can you do something differently at the end of a political training? Not do you just know something new.”

This approach has led to remarkable results. Their Oxford University course on reaching net zero is now mandatory for the entire 65,000-person UAE government. A partnership with Google.org will help train a million public servants in AI.

The Future of GovTech

Recent data suggests growing appetite for innovation in government. Robyn shares that “97% of users of AI in government believe it can positively contribute to their work as public servants.” This openness to new technology is driving Apolitical’s vision to become an AI assistant that helps public servants tackle everything from policy modeling to citizen engagement.

Looking ahead, Robyn sees massive opportunity in the government market: “If you can survive long enough to work with government, there is just massive scope to do really exciting things, because so few have got there.”

The lesson for B2B founders? Sometimes the most promising markets are the ones others dismiss as too difficult to penetrate. With the right approach to building trust, demonstrating value, and enabling transformation, even the most traditional institutions can become engines of innovation.