How Ordinal came to be

A few years ago, Nick and his wife decided to help Fayetteville’s housing shortage by developing four houses on infill lots they purchased. A year later, they had received only a single permit to begin development. Frustrated by the delays, Nick saw firsthand how overwhelmed the city was with requests, while the housing crisis worsened.

Determined to find a solution, Nick used his engineering background and interest in AI to train a model on city codes to get the answers he needed. The results sparked an idea: what if this tool could help more than just him?

He teamed up with two former colleagues, Jacob and Jacob (yes, two Jacobs) to turn it into a viable business.

Through hundreds of conversations with city staff, the team discovered a widespread problem—municipalities everywhere were bogged down by overwhelming requests and bottlenecks, often years behind.Ordinal was born to solve this: empowering cities with modern AI tools to streamline operations and better serve their communities.