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ChatGPT Meets SimCity
"I could feel the trust literally draining out of the room"
It's almost 9 p.m. in Nederland, Colorado (population 1,500). The city council is debating wildfire evacuation routes as smoke fills the valley. A southern route is brought up. They abandoned it years ago, but no one remembers why.
Sitting in that room is Nichole Sterling, mayor pro tem, tech veteran, and founder of My Town AI.
“I could feel the trust literally draining out of the room just because we didn't have the answer.”
So Nichole built the AI product she wished she had as an elected official. Will investors see the $2.2 trillion opportunity she sees? Or will this pitch get stuck in committee.
🎧 #172: My Town AI: ChatGPT Meets SimCity
95% of U.S. towns have fewer than 50,000 residents.
And they’re operating on fumes.
In Nichole’s town alone:
The part-time grants manager was let go to save $30K.
A family’s tiny home build stalls while a contractor searches for one line in the code to tell him whether the foundation should be slab or piers
A connected bike trail system sat in committee for years because no one could visualize the best routes.
Now multiply that by 75,000 towns, townships, and special districts across the country.
ChatGPT meets SimCity, but for real-life governance.
Nichole broke the product down in three parts:
1. Data Collection: My Town AI pulls together public data that’s usually scattered across PDFs, spreadsheets, and decades of meeting minutes.
2. Agentic Workflows: Automation for routine work, such as a Grants Manager tool that manages funding programs from application to reporting.
3. The Digital Twin: This feature brings SimCity-style simulation to real towns, helping leaders test ideas virtually without relying on consultants or GIS experts
And It’s Cheap! Maybe Too Cheap 🤔
Nichole’s go-to-market advantage? The discretionary budget.
Many towns can purchase software for under $10K without needing RFPs or public bidding. This allows Nichole to quickly bring on new cities and avoid deals getting stuck in committee.
Her pricing strategy:
$55–$250 per seat per month for staff tools
$500 per month for grant automation (remember that $30k grant manager position that got axed?)
$1–$3 per resident per year for a ChatGPT for citizens
But is that enough to build a profitable venture-scale business? Elizabeth Yin didn’t think so:
“If it’s $100 a month, how big can it get?”
But Dawn and Jesse were sold.
“I think there’s a lot more pricing power… and I don’t even think you’ve scratched the surface on use cases.” - Dawn Dobras
“I’d vote for you.” - Jesse Middleton
The Bigger Picture
This is a civic infrastructure upgrade for small-town America.
Local governments still run on PDFs, email chains, and human memory. When staff retire or volunteers cycle out, knowledge disappears. My Town AI turns that chaos into searchable, structured data.
That means faster permitting, fewer dropped grants, and better decisions made on actual evidence, not hunches.
It’s not flashy AI; it’s functional AI that makes government work.
🎧 #172: My Town AI: ChatGPT Meets SimCity
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