Miami startup Column develops software to fill newspaper columns with public notices
Jake Seaton comes from a five-generation media family, with deep roots in the American Midwest. He studied computer science and journalism at Harvard University and wanted to find a way to use technology to help shape the future of the family business and industry.
Seaton founded
Column, a software startup focused on the future of public notice.
“We’ve rolled out a software platform that helps governments and law firms and citizens place the notices that are required by law with the publications of record in their communities,” Seaton said. “We also operate statewide databases of public notices for about 16 U.S. states, including Florida.”
Column was selected the second runner-up in the community track of the 2022 Miami Herald
Startup Pitch Competition. The track was managed by Endeavor Miami, the startup support and networking group with expertise scaling young companies.
Clients include media companies including McClatchy, which owns the Miami Herald, Wick Communications, Ogden Newspapers, Lee Enterprises and The Washington Post.
Column (column.us), a public benefit corporation, incubated at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard
Kennedy School of Government. In 2019, Seaton moved back to his hometown, Manhattan, Kansas, with his founding team. All summer, they worked out of his father’s flagship newspaper, sitting near the employee who processed the public notices and working with a law firm across the street to build the early version of its public notice platform, while also conducting user interviews with newspaper staff, city clerks and lawyers across
Kansas, Seaton said.
“We tried to make that workflow, which involved faxes and snail mail and clipping notices out of newspapers and stapling them to an affidavit of publication that gets signed and notarized and mailed to the county courthouse, just as smooth as we could with technology,“he said.
As states including Florida were trying to introduce legislation that would roll back public notice business for news outlets, a revenue source for a struggling industry, Column rolled out cutting-edge, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant statewide databases with advanced tech tools making it easy to search and work with the public information.
Column now has 50 employees spread across five continents. Miami is the company’s base with some of Column’s leadership, including Seaton, living here. To finance growth, Column raised seed funding and received grants. The startup makes money by charging a small processing fee for each notice.
Seaton wouldn’t disclose revenue, but said Column has grown an average of 20% month-over-month, since its launch in September 2020. In the first quarter this year, gross transaction volume tripled.
“We’re not sexy like a crypto or an NFT venture,” he said. “We’re very focused on the very hard work of improving process- es within local media organizations and the local governments and legal service professionals that they work with.”
Editor’s note: An inde- pendent panel of judges from the Miami venture capital community reviewed the contestants pitches and selected winners and runners-up. Neither McClatchy nor the Miami Herald had any employees involved in judging pitch competitors or picking winners.
A