Raising money from investors in tech is easy right now. Raising money from investors in poli-tech is much harder.
Most investors don’t understand politics and prefer sticking with industries they know. Still, the right investors are out there — angel investors who love the space and VCs who are willing to learn — but finding them takes hustle. Here are some of the hurdles poli-tech startups must overcome.
There is pressure to choose sides.
We started our company with a firm mission: to democratize campaign tech among efforts of every size, budget and persuasion. By improving voter engagement and turnout across all elections, we believe we will improve our democracy as a whole. Despite this stated goal, we still get approached about forming exclusive partnerships and advocating for particular people or parties.
This hasn’t been as much of a stumbling block as anticipated — good campaigns are always looking for a competitive edge — but some organizations will walk away when they realize your tech won't exclusively serve them.
Timelines are tight.
Every startup has to race its competition, but political startups face an even more unforgiving race against the election timeline. If a campaign chooses to use your technology, they want all your features and they want them yesterday. Build fast, manage expectations, and know when to say no to feature requests outside your product's focus.
Campaigns are cheap.
Campaign budgets are notoriously tight, so it's not enough for your product to add value — you have to explicitly demonstrate your product's impact to your clients. Our strategy for working with campaigns is maintaining a reasonable price point and using data visualizations to show campaigns the daily value of our product. We make sure they know we’re great, otherwise campaigns cut costs wherever they can.
So with all the challenges, why poli-tech? It’s simple: This sector has a unique opportunity to change the world. Technology is accelerating and complicating much of our world, but the sticking points above have made poli-tech lag behind.
Poli-tech is about creating the tools our institutions need to adapt and keep pace with these new challenges.
Because of poli-tech campaigns are starting to improve their communication with voters, governments are being held more accountable, and non-profits are expanding their digital footprints. Poli-tech is young, but it has the potential to bring people together like nothing before.
Kendall Tucker is the co-founder and CEO of Polis, a poli-tech startup.