Upciti
Upciti is building the operating system for cities. The company combines proprietary software and in-house developed hardware to help municipalities streamline operations and improve efficiency while respecting citizens' privacy and improving their quality of life.
This is critical as cities are facing a wave of retirements in their public workforce, growing difficulties in hiring, and shrinking national and federal grant programs, forcing municipalities to do more with less.
Cities generate over 80% of global GDP, so even a small productivity gain in how they operate can have unparalleled economic impact. Upciti's solution consistently demonstrates measurable ROI while fully safeguarding citizens' privacy.
Founder Bio:
Jean-Baptise Poljak
With an engineering background, Jean-Baptiste began his career in major corporations before founding his first company in 2014, specialising in renewable energy. After selling it in 2017, he was able to finance the R&D of Upciti and officially establish the company following its first commercial success. Jean-Baptiste is the father of two children, aged 5 and 7, and has been living in New York with his family since the end of 2024 to further expand Upciti's growth.
Founder Q&A
Q&A with founder Jean-Baptiste Poljak
UPCITI raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Notion Capital, with participation from existing investors Point Nine and Chalfen Ventures.
I was introduced to Kamil Mieczakowski at Notion Capital by Mike Chalfen early in February 2025. Having received offers from three French funds, one UK fund and one US fund we chose Notion because of the work you put into the process, the understanding you built of the industry, and your reactivity. I really like the relationship with Kam (Kamil Mieczakowski) and Tom (Thomas Diehl). I know how challenging it can be to have someone on your board you don't get along with, so it was equally important to make sure I was working with decent humans.
UPCITI is building the operating system for cities. The company combines proprietary software and in-house developed hardware to help municipalities streamline operations and improve efficiency while respecting citizens' privacy and improving their quality of life. This is critical as cities are facing a wave of retirements in their public workforce, growing difficulties in hiring, and shrinking national and federal grant programs, forcing municipalities to do more with less. Cities generate over 80% of global GDP, so even a small productivity gain in how they operate can have unparalleled economic impact. UPCITI's solution consistently demonstrates measurable ROI while fully safeguarding citizens' privacy.
UPCITI has a team of 40 people and serves 90+ customers, in 150 cities, across 17 countries. UPCITI is headquartered in Paris, France, with operations in the United States, and is in the process of establishing NYC headquarters to serve its fast-growing US customer base with more than 20 customers
Don’t get blinded by advice that would change the way you are. You are looking for partners that will be with you for next decade; better start this relationship by being genuine. If you have a clear vision of what you want to do and traction that proves you’re right to think you’ll succeed, then that’s enough to find your next partner.
The biggest lesson is that you have to stick to your vision if you really believe in it. You can be attracted by so many shiny short term opportunities that would change the path of your company and it’s difficult to stay on track. It doesn’t mean having blinders, but being confident in your initial vision. The next lesson is resilience, there’s gonna be so many problems to solve, so many situations where you would think it’s over. But to my surprise, it’s when you are close to giving up that good things actually happen.
UPCITI's next major milestones include accelerating global expansion and establishing our NYC headquarters. The company plans to focus down on product and growth, hiring engineers and product leaders to deploy the next generation of our CityOS. We are going to grow our sales team in US and Europe to expand our footprint and serve our customers the best we can.
UPCITI is building a full-stack platform providing a unified system of record for all city data, with the vision of becoming the operating system for cities. We want to be the best partners for cities to help them operate their services and offer new innovative services to their residents. If UPCITI is recognised as the core technology layer that enables efficient operations and increase quality of life, this will be a win. Internally we have a strong “makers” culture. We consider ourselves as builders, and we are not afraid to get our hands dirty to make things move fast. This mindset helps us ship fast and create an environment where teams actually help each other when needed without building silos. We believe in small, empowered and highly efficient teams and we always want to make sure that everybody clearly see the impact of their work in the field.
I would say that in the jungle of VC's, finding the ones that actually care about the businesses they invest in and that don't follow blindly the flock is extremely difficult and I think Kam falls in this rare category. I also think that having partners being former entrepreneurs that scaled business in Europe and US is very important. Nobody understands better the difficulty of trying to build a massive business than the people that actually did it once.
