Golden Moment: Laura Davis on Betting on Herself

On September 22, 2026, USLege co-founder and Chief Business Officer Laura Davis joined Rebecca Montgomery for an episode of Golden Moment, a twice-monthly podcast for women "done waiting and ready to go for it." Every other guest on the show is North Texas business or civic leadership; Laura is the ninth guest, and the first from legislative tech. Watch the full conversation on YouTube, or listen on iHeart and Spotify.

What made this conversation different from USLege's usual founder interviews?

Where the other conversations in USLege's interview library focus on legislative AI and the Texas Capitol, this one is built around identity and career risk. Host Rebecca Montgomery's format is designed to find, in her words, where "the steel came from," not to walk through the product. The conversation traces Laura from her childhood in England, to moving to Texas at 17 to chase a career in government, to a freshman year at a military prep school in Marion, Alabama, to the University of Alabama, and eventually into Texas Capitol work, first at a lobby firm, then in the Texas Senate.

What made her leave a secure job in the Texas Senate?

From there the conversation moves into more familiar territory: the frustration of manually hunting down a 20-second clip from a hearing two sessions earlier every time a similar bill got refiled, and the realization that the work she was best at kept losing time to the work she found most tedious. She and her husband and co-founder, Eric Davis, talked through what it would take to build software that solved it, and within nine months of leaving her Senate job, USLege had taken over the Texas market.

In her own words

On the lesson her mother taught her, after she was made fun of at school for a Hello Kitty backpack:

"I came home and said to my mom, 'Mom, they were so mean to me about my backpack.' She said, 'Do you like it?' And I'm like, 'I think it's the coolest thing ever.' And she said, 'Then it is cool.' And you know what? As soon as my attitude changed around that, then no one said anything to me because I just believed in myself and I didn't care."

On leaving a secure, well-paid job in the Senate:

"I was in a really good situation with my work and really enjoying the work. Really liked my colleagues, liked my boss, was being paid very well for what I was doing... And you have to be okay not knowing what's next. And that's really hard."

On being underestimated:

"I think the most important thing is, 'Did you do it or not?' I've had so many people say to me over the years, 'Oh, I had an idea to start a company like that.'... There's nothing that you will ever be sorry about if you try. You only regret what you don't do, not what you do."

On what people don't see behind "successful entrepreneur":

"I'm pretty goofy... very silly humor... I've never been the most myself at any job I've ever been than this. I'm just able to just be my honest self. And that's helpful. I think you get things done faster. I don't really beat around the bush."

On "ride the tiger," the company's internal motto:

"Ride the tiger is our company motto internally... if you want to stay the same, it might be very comfortable, but if you want to change and you want to grow, it's going to be uncomfortable. I would say just be comforted in the discomfort... there's a hump you will get over if you just keep riding the tiger. So just do it."

Her closing advice, also the episode's own pull-quote:

"Start it and do it, but don't give up. Usually it's right at that time that you're ready to give up that everything shifts and everything is rewarded and you get over that hump."

Why does this conversation matter?

This isn't a government-affairs-buyer audience, it's women in North Texas business and civic leadership, which makes it a brand and recruiting asset more than a demand one. It's also the first place the England-to-Texas, military-school "steel came from" material has appeared publicly, which makes it a genuinely different entry point into who built USLege than the two Texas Public Policy Foundation conversations or Lawfare's Scaling Laws.

Listen to the full conversation on iHeart or Spotify for more, including the story of the hazing she and other female cadets uncovered and reported at military school, and the name of her horse. For more from the founders, see Eric and Laura Davis on The Family Front and Laura Davis on TPPF's Rebel Tech Podcast.