Common Sense

Common Sense is a venture-backed company helping local government modernize at 100x the pace. We build rapidly responsive, composable systems, and we’re taking an AI and AI-agent first approach to fixing the workflows, tools, and invisible infrastructure that counties & cities depend on every day.

Founder

First Principles Catalyst

First Principles is a product agency that sources, vets, and grooms expert product talent. Specifically for the emerging tech market. 

We have 2 core solutions. 

(1) Product Coaching Engagements where an industry-leading product expert coaches your CEO, product or engineering Executive, or product managers. 

(2) Fractional Product Engagements where we source a CPO or product manager who will be placed in your company for 6 to 12 months to fill a gap, open a new market, train a team, or solve a critical challenge.

We also publish Emergent, a newsletter and podcast exploring the future of product, talent, and innovation at the edge of tech.

Founder & CEO

Techstars

I serve as a Lead and All-Star Mentor at Techstars LA, working closely with founders across space, health, and core cohorts. All-Star status is awarded to the top 1% of mentors globally — selected from a pool of thousands.

All Star Lead Mentor

mePrism

Reclaiming consumer data from big tech companies.

President/COO

Slingshot Aerospace

A Fast Company Top 50 Most Innovative Company

Slingshot Aerospace delivers a situational intelligence platform that applies advanced analytics, computer vision, and collaboration tools to earth and space data, empowering customers with clarity in complex environments.

VP of Product

Deloitte

Building and growing a big data and machine learning product startup.

VP of Product and General Manager

Georgetown University

Co-founded "Disruptive Analytics" to propel graduate student thinking on complex analytic challenges in a technology and big data-empowered world.

Adjunct Professor

Speaker Technologies

Data-driven, private political contributions to popular causes and non-profit advocacy support.

Palantir Technologies

Product strategy, execution, and leadership growth for Palantir's flagship ecosystem of products.

Head of Product, Palantir Gotham

Business strategy, execution, leadership growth, and new country team and business development across dozens of countries.

Practice Lead, International Government Business

Customer success lead for fast-growing practice within Palantir's Commercial portfolio.

Implementation Lead & Deployment Strategist, Commercial Risk Practice

Mission Specialist / Deployment Strategist - Government Practice

US Government

Analyst

Product Insights for Emerging Technology

20 years in emerging tech — ex-Head of Product at Palantir, now founder of two ventures.

At Common Sense, we’re building modern agentic AI systems for local government — 100x increases in productivity across critical workflows that simplify civil service and delight citizens.

At First Principles, we help emerging tech companies generate massive value, ship faster, align teams, and unlock product-market fit or hypergrowth — through fractional product leadership and expert product coaching.

Whether it serves 10,000 users or 10 million residents, the system has to work — and keep working.

Sound like I can help you? Get in touch:

adam@firstprinciples.la or adam@commonsensetech.ai

Lovable.dev hit $60M ARR with a 15-person team, not because they hired faster, but because they abstracted away the hard stuff.

They took something that used to require a team of engineers and made it usable by anyone.

Lovable's story is one we’ve been talking about a lot and reflecting on using AI to make hard things fluid, and letting good teams move without waiting for permission.

That same opportunity exists inside government.

Because right now, most public workflows still rely on:

- Manual email follow-ups
- Lookups in old, legacy systems
- Lost paperwork
- Meetings about the meetings

At Common Sense, we’re building AI agents that remove the human glue — the sticky, manual mess between departments — so city and county teams can focus on delivery.

Because when you remove friction and put the power in the hands of users, small teams can move markets.

That’s the future we want to bring to public systems.

Adam Judelson

Building Common Sense (govtech) | Founder, First Principles | Product Insights for Emerging Tech | Ex-Palantir | 4x Venture-Backed Exec

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NEW EPISODE 🎙: How Vannevar Labs Built the Defense Tech Company the Pentagon Now Depends On

Brett Granberg, co-founder and CEO of Vannevar Labs, joins me to talk about bridging the gap between Silicon Valley engineering and national security needs — and what it takes to ship software that actually gets used in government.

You’ll learn:

— Why most defense tools fail before they launch — and how Vannevar avoided that trap
— The real difference between building features and delivering outcomes in national security
— Why speed, focus, and user obsession gave them an edge over defense primes
— Their strategy for selling into the DOD without burning 18 months on procurement cycles
— How they think about AI, multi-product strategy, and owning the stack
— What it takes to build in a space where mistakes carry real consequences

If you’ve ever wondered how defense software actually gets used in the field and what it takes to ship fast in a system designed for slowness, this one’s worth your time.

- - -

Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g5wBMX65
Substack: https://lnkd.in/g4UR-9tK
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gUttzDHe
Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/g3c66puF

2005: Determined to run for office to change how things work.
2025: Building Common Sense and driving the kind of impact I once thought required a Governor’s seat.

Back in high school, everyone thought it was a foregone conclusion that I’d run for elected office… first local, then maybe national…fix what’s broken and make things work better.

Even ten years later, friends I hadn’t seen since graduation would ask: “So… did you run yet?”

I used to laugh it off, but the truth is, I thought about it for years.

I believed politics was the highest-leverage way to serve the public.

So I joined the federal government to understand it and to see how the machine actually worked.

And that’s when the cracks showed.

The smartest people I knew wouldn’t touch the public sector because the system made it too hard to be effective.

And the ones who were inside spent more time fundraising than fixing.

At some point, I stopped seeing a campaign for political offices the answer.

So I joined Palantir. I worked across federal and commercial but the same pattern showed up again and again: The ROI on effort is often higher from the outside.

That idea stuck with me, and that’s what led to Common Sense.

A product that helps the government work better, without being trapped inside it.

I’m not ruling out elected office someday.

But for now, this is where I can move fastest, think biggest, and serve the public best.

The term “Shire,” popularized through Lord of the Rings, derives from Old English and is the antecedent for all modern cities. 

A small, self-governed place with simple needs, water, safety, roads, maybe a tavern or two.

But over time, as populations grew, those needs got layered. One ordinance on top of another, one agency after the next. What started as a community turned into complexity. And then complexity turned into decay.

We’ve been doing a lot of research on the history of cities lately. What stood out?

Most cities didn’t get “designed” from scratch. They’ve been patched over time. Add a system here, plug a leak there, build a department to handle a new need that arises.

Fast-forward to today: 
- Hardly any connection between the elected leaders and the electorate
- Records stored in a hodgepodge of systems
- Departments that can’t talk to each other
- Rules that exist and overlap, but no one remembers why

It really is like trying to save the Shire after Mordor’s influence has crept in. (Except instead of orcs, it’s paper records, fax machines & Windows XP)

When I was at Palantir, the motto was “Save the Shire” and Shire was used as a proxy for the mission of protecting Middle Earth from the outside forces of evil.

But ironically, at Palantir, cities weren’t a primary focus most of the time as there were larger institutions to serve.

That’s in part why we’re building Common Sense, to help cities stand back up, with first class software designed for their unique needs. Clean interfaces. Connected systems. Clearer data, and fewer hoops to jump through.

Because even if the Shire is gone, the mission to protect it isn’t.

People often ask me why we named the new company Common Sense.

I could’ve said it was about clarity, or efficiency, or “cutting through red tape.” But the real answer goes further back, to a high school classroom, and a history text that is really a political philosophy one.

We were reading the original Common Sense by Thomas Paine. And while most people remember it as an anti-monarchy pamphlet, what struck me was the foundation it was built on, a quiet truth embedded in nearly every political theory course since: 

When enough people live together in great enough numbers, someone will eventually break the rules.

That’s why the government exists.

That’s why ordinances exist.

That’s why permitting exists.

Not because bureaucracy is fun. But because someone once built an oil derrick next to a neighborhood. And someone else threw an all-night concert while kids tried to sleep before school.

All these rules, quiet hours, zoning, occupancy codes, they exist because someone, somewhere, did something selfish enough to make them necessary. 

I’ve spent the last two decades building systems, many of them inside governments. And I kept running into the same things. Rules stacked on top of rules. Manual processes on top of outdated tech. A system that exists, but doesn’t work the way it was supposed to. 

You feel it when your permit takes six months, when a fire report gets lost in a department handoff, when a rule exists, but no one can explain it. 

We started the company to answer what these systems were missing clearly in one line…. ‘Common Sense’  

And if we don’t rebuild the systems that hold communities together, we’re going to keep asking why nothing works, when the real question is why we let it erode this far in the first place.

6,000+ organizations use Productboard to make better product decisions.

So as you can imagine, we were excited to sit down with Jordan Nolff, VP of Growth at Productboard, to talk through the 7 questions every team should ask about AI powered product signal tools.

It’s a practical framework you can use to check if your feedback system is helping you build the right things and making sure the AI is additive and not lossy, so it drives impact and doesn’t end up as another system procured that is sitting around collecting dust.

Watch the full walkthrough here: https://lnkd.in/gbzDXhSx

It’s been 7+ months since the Palisades Fire and many homeowners still don’t know if they’re allowed to rebuild…

All because the system meant to guide recovery is tying it up instead.

We’ve spoken to residents still living in trailers — waiting weeks just to get clarity on a 30-year-old state rule that might or might not apply.

Departments can’t agree. Records are buried. Jurisdictions overlap.

And the guidance changes depending on who picks up the phone.

The fire was the start of the crisis.

But the bigger failure is what came after:

– No clear path to rebuild
– Conflicting answers
– Manual processes that fall apart under real pressure

This isn’t just about speed.

It’s about giving people a system that works when their lives are in pieces.

That’s what we’re building Common Sense for.

We talk to city leaders every week. And you start to hear the same stories, over and over again.

There’s a woman in finance who’s been managing the books for 27 years. A man in public works who’s the only one who knows how to run the legacy database. A planner who’s helped shape the city for three decades.

They’re all about to retire.

And they’ll take a whole era of institutional knowledge with them. 

It’s funny thinking about this, when everyone’s talking about AI taking jobs. 

In local government, the real crisis is the opposite. Job applications are down 9.5%, and in the worst quartile, cities get just 1.5 qualified applicants per posting. 

In some cities, roles have been open for 6+ months. And they’re not niche roles, they’re the ones that keep the engine running. 

- Permitting. 
- Records processing. 
- Municipal finance. 
- Planning and zoning.
- Enforcement
- Inspections

Even when someone applies, the wait is long. The average fill time for a local government role is 119 days, nearly four months before anyone new walks in the door. 

Most people assume cities are bloated and overstaffed. Perhaps in some departments or some job functions that may be true. But in reality, many are stuck trying to keep things functional with a skeleton crew, running on outdated systems, limited resources, and a shrinking bench of talent. 

That’s why the next era of city-building won’t be about replacing people with AI.

It’ll be about making sure the lights stay on when no one else is coming.

Los Angeles is about to spend $4 billion — not to build new infrastructure or improve public services, but to raise bonds to cover legal settlements for past wrongdoing.

Not many people know it’s happening. And no one voted for it directly.

When residents ask, “Where are my tax dollars going?” — the answer, increasingly, is: to clean up past failures.

This is the hidden cost of systemic drift.

When bad systems persist for too long, the price isn’t just inefficiency.

It’s trauma to 7,000 victims. It’s lawsuits. Delays. Compounding interest. Quiet financial erosion.

In a county as large and complex as LA, this kind of debt accrues slowly, invisibly — until suddenly, it's billions.

And once that money’s gone, it’s gone.

Not to your street. Not to your school. Not to the future.

Just to cover the cost of not fixing an abusive foster care system sooner.

Writing an AI policy for your City from scratch? Start here.

We’ve seen too many cities spend 6-24 months drafting AI policies not because they’re slow, but because they’re handed a blank page and a high-stakes mandate:

To encourage innovation, to protect equity and to stay compliant across every department and legacy system.

It’s a lot.

So here’s a practical starting point based on real policies that are already in play.

These are the elements you’ll need to cover, drawn from what’s actually working on the ground:

– Risk-tiering by use case (low / med / high)
– Clear guardrails for pilot programs
– Vendor and procurement criteria
– Roles and review cadence for governance
– Transparency + public feedback loops
– Human-in-the-loop checks and training
– KPIs for iteration and improvement

Use this as a reference. Adjust it to your needs. And get moving faster.

Because great governance shouldn’t mean slow governance.

Need help writing your AI policy?

DM us and set up a call. We’ll help you draft it — tailored to your city’s needs.

(Usually this kind of work costs $25K–$100K. We’re offering it because cities shouldn’t be stuck at square one)

Hot take: The talent wars between the labs racing to hire elite AI researchers make for great headlines, but they’re irrelevant to 99.9% of companies building with AI today.

Most teams, especially the ones doing applied work, haven’t even tried the tools we already have.

There’s never been a time in history with more powerful systems sitting idle.

Yet we keep obsessing over the frontier… while ignoring what’s already viable, already valuable, and just waiting to be deployed.

At Common Sense, we’re working on a different layer of the problem.

It means taking existing tools and making them work inside systems that resist change because of policy, legacy vendors, or just years of duct tape.

We’ve never run into a moment where a foundational model researcher would’ve changed our trajectory.

Progress has come from engineers who can take what’s already out there, learn fast, express creativity, and get something real into the hands of government staff who need it.

The actual bottleneck is this: who’s willing to build with the tools that already exist in places that aren’t designed for change?

That’s where the opportunity is.

And it’s wide open.

In the last 3 months, I’ve spoken with 20+ founders building AI-enabled service platforms.
From legal ops to market research to policy advisory.

And they’re all wondering about the same dichotomy: What happens to the middle of the market?

The answer is rooted in first principles.

Before AI, service vendors existed across a wide range of price points. You had budget options, mid-tier players, and premium firms, each with their niche.

That no longer makes sense.

Now, with AI automating huge swaths of repetitive work, two models are emerging:

- AI-enabled services that are radically cheaper
- First-class human services that are radically better

The middle is where things get murky.

If a vendor is charging mid-tier prices, the obvious question is:

- Are they actually using AI properly?
- And if not, do they really have the expertise to justify the price?

In a world where baseline execution is getting commoditized, value has to come from either unmatched efficiency or undeniable excellence.

Anything in between starts to look like a pricing error.

People don’t think about how cities work. They assume things just happen, that permits get processed, potholes get filled, and rules get enforced.

Until one day, the system doesn’t respond.

A request gets stuck.

The neighbor’s house catches fire and damages yours.

The business license never shows up.

A sidewalk sits broken for three years and someone gets hurt.

It’s not always dramatic. Most of the time, it's a quiet failure, processes that stall, responsibilities that blur, issues that drift from one department to the next with no one fully owning them.

This is what happens when infrastructure gets layered but never redesigned. You get rules that made sense once, stitched onto systems that can’t speak to each other, staffed by people doing their best inside a structure that’s slowly decaying.

And most of the public doesn’t see it. 

Because when the local government works, it disappears.

That’s the tension. The closer it gets to collapse, the more people ignore it out of frustration, and then the more  invisible it becomes, until it breaks in a way that people finally notice. 

We think about that a lot at Common Sense. Not just how to fix it, but also how to make sure it doesn’t quietly fail in the first place.

Over the past decade, LA has spent tens of millions settling sidewalk injury claims — because repairs were delayed or deprioritized for years.

There was no system to figure out which ones to fix. And today, there’s still no real plan.

It shows up in permitting systems that take months or years. In business licenses that stall. In burned-down homes that can’t be rebuilt because the paperwork’s stuck.

People don’t think much about local government, until it stops working. And when it does, there are first, second, and third-order effects that hit communities hard.

We started Common Sense because we believe local government is the critical silent infrastructure of a functioning society. It should be politically neutral. Quiet. Boring, even. But it should work. When it doesn’t, everything gets louder.

So yes, we’re building tech, AI, sensors, voice agents, systems that flag the right signals. But the core belief behind it is simple. 

You need local government, otherwise businesses don’t get started, people have nowhere to live, the pipes burst, the forms pile up, and the streetlights stay broken.

Not because no one cares… but because no one’s left to fix it

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