Shaun Abrahamson is CEO and co-founder of Urban Us Public Benefit Corp., which is hosting Smart City Startups 2014 in Miami April 24-25. The conference will explore how to help startups working on our biggest urban challenges. Knight Foundation supports the conference to stimulate entrepreneurship and help build successful cities. Photo by Flickr user: Koji Nakaya.

Fifteen years ago I joined govWorks. We were going to bring governments onto the Internet. But like so many startups at the time, govWorks failed. In fact it became the poster child for the Web 1.0 era, with our boom and bust arc documented in Startup.com. If we built govWorks 2.0 today, we’d do things differently. We’d make use of frameworks such as Lean Startup and Business Model Canvas or organizations such as Y-Combinator and Angel.co. We’d be much more likely to succeed.

Or would we?

A year ago I found myself researching local governments again as I tried to get smarter about smart cities. The list of city challenges reads like a list of the grand challenges facing humanity in the coming decades. In many cases we need cities to be much better. Better in energy use, reduction in emissions, improved budgeting, better transport, improvements in safety, resilience, more economic opportunity and quality of life. In some cases we need to be two times better, but sometimes 10 times.

Ten times is scary.

How are we going to get 10 times better? I believe startups are an important part of the answer. Startups are going to let us test many approaches, and though all the data shows that most will fail, the few that succeed might get us the 10 times that we need in critical areas. So, “Where are the smart city startups?” This was the email subject line that would lead to my research project with Gigaom Research last summer. It became clear that there was a lot to be excited about. I talked to founders working to quickly audit building energy usage or helping citizens report service issues to their local governments or more effectively connect people who wished to share rides.

But these founders weren’t just trying to solve city problems; they were taking more risks than their peers founding startups in other industries. Some had to navigate local regulations and policies. Others had to adapt to slower, more complex sales processes involving pilots and procurement. Still others had to build more complex solutions, involving not just software, but hardware. These additional risks often made funding and scaling, more difficult.

As Knight Foundation’s recent civic tech investment research revealed, with more government interactions, such as procurement, comes less funding from traditional angel and venture investors. And beyond civic innovation, firms working in areas such as clean technology or mobility are often building hardware. Hardware also increases startup risks because it increases the need for more and different funding. These types of businesses are less attractive to investors who have come to expect the rapid growth of pure software companies.

The good news is that a new generation of frameworks and organizations are emerging to support smart city startups, organizations such as Code for America, NYC ACRE, New Urban Mechanics, Citymart and BigApps. They are in turn supported by organizations such as Knight Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Omidyar Network and a number of local governments and universities in cities from San Francisco to New York to Barcelona and Copenhagen.

We want to make sure that some of the most promising founders of smart city companies can connect with the very best people who can support them. So this is why we’ve organized Smart City Startups. Beyond helping founders, we want investors and governments to understand how the smart city startup ecosystem is evolving. We want them to understand all of the resources to help companies that want to solve tough city problems. Like all gatherings, our main objective is to introduce people who have similar interests and goals so that they can help one another.

But we need to do more.

Over two days we’ve invited 100 smart city startup founders, investors, advisers and urban leaders from around the world to work on three challenges. Together we’ll document the very best stories and hacks about how cities and startups can work together in areas such as funding, procurement and partnerships. After the event, we’ll publish the panels, stories and hacks and invite anyone interested in smart city startups to continue the conversation.

Then on the evening of April 24, we hope you will join us to celebrate some of the most promising startups working to make cities better. We’ll have more than 20 demos from companies that promise to change our cities for the better—from apps that help us drive better and directly donate to homeless neighbors, to devices that help dramatically reduce energy and water use. Please RSVP to join us at 7:30 p.m., April 24, at The Lightbox at Goldman Warehouse in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District.

Startups participating in Smart City Startups Demos include: Architizer (New York), BikeSpike (Chicago), Birdi (San Francisco), BRCK (Nairobi, Kenya), Citymart (Barcelona), Dash (New York), HandUp (San Francisco), Greater Places (Arlington, Va.),  Kairos (Miami),  Kiwi.ki (Berlin), Learner Nation (Miami), Loveland Technologies (Detroit), Neighbor.ly (Kansas City, Mo.),  Placemeter (New York),  Public Stuff (New York),  PWRStation (Miami), Rach.io (Denver), Republic Bikes (Dania Beach, Fla.), SeeClickFix (New Haven, Conn.), SeamlessDocs (New York), SmartProcure (Deerfield Beach, Fla.), Social Bicycles (New York), Sprav (Cleveland), The TransitApp (Montreal), WhatUpBridge (Miami).