State Affairs' Evan Burns: 'Policy markets' beat financial markets

Key points

Key takeaways from Be the Builders interview with State Affairs CEO Evan Burns (September 2026):

Policy markets thesis. Burns argues State Affairs is creating the category of "policy markets", which he says are more important to organisations than financial markets — real-time visibility into legislation, regulation and politics across Western democracies.

From rural Indiana to media founder. Burns grew up in rural Indiana and studied at Indiana University before founding Odyssey, a decentralised media platform that grew to around 30 million monthly active users by publishing writers from across the US rather than only New York or Los Angeles.

The Long Drink policy lesson. He later co-founded The Finnish Long Drink in late 2018, scaling the canned cocktail to $500 million in sales — but learning the hard way that New York's rules banning spirits from bodegas and grocery stores blew up his original route to market: policy dictates where a business can go to market.

Voters are consumers. Citing Plato, Burns argues that founders building world-changing products must proactively understand policy and move the Overton window on the rules governing access to their service — as Uber did against taxi regulations.

$70M backing. State Affairs came out of stealth with a $70 million round backed by Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, with Keith Rabois among the first believers — Burns recalls most venture capitalists in his circle laughing at the idea before launch.

Knowledge graph of Western democracy. The company combines original reporting from state capitols with structured government data, offering AI and data use cases for public servants and corporations — what Burns calls a monopoly business with deep ontologies and flywheels that compound over time.

Alpha lives outside the coasts. The media thesis behind Odyssey — that the most interesting ideas often come from where few are looking — also guides his view that talent is abundant but access to opportunity isn't, and startups must win America before going international.

Objective journalism is a moat. Burns argues objective, nonpartisan journalism becomes mathematically more valuable as the broader news media fragments, underpinning State Affairs' newsroom reporting across all 50 states.

Read more: YouTube