Event Recap: Making Civic Tech: Behind the Scenes with LawMaker & CommonAlly
Event Recap by Meghan Wenzel, UX Researcher and Strategist
LA Tech4Good and Social Enterprise Alliance Los Angeles hosted a really great event October 9th exploring civic tech and making a difference in today’s political atmosphere. Karen Borchgrevink, Director of LA Tech4Good, moderated the lively discussion with Amit Thakkar, Founder & CEO of LawMaker, and Aaron Lyles, Founder & CEO of CommonAlly.
To begin, Amit and Aaron defined civic tech as any technology that encourages people in civic space - be it voting, getting more involved in their community, or becoming more participatory in politics on a daily basis.
Why did you, personally, start building LawMaker and CommonAlly?
Amit was a political journalist, political consultant, and lobbyist. He began lobbying during the political consulting off season, and “it was really eye opening for someone who thought they knew a lot about politics. I didn’t know much, but I was getting paid a lot of money to advocate for people who had a lot of money. I was paid to learn about topics, then teach politicians about them, but always in the interests of my clients”.
Over time, it became clear that lobbying was only getting stronger, and no one else was filling the gap and getting involved in civic tech. Amit decided to step up and created a company to engage people and educate them on civics.
Aaron watched his family get torn apart over politics after the 2016 election. His family had always been interested in politics and didn’t agree on many things, but they could always get along, until the 2016 election. Additionally, he was concerned over disengagement in young people, the biggest voting block. He quit his job as a Content Producer in FinTech, where he created content to encourage people to invest and save, and decided to use his skills to promote social good. He sold his house, put together a product team, and went around his community talking with people about their perspectives and experiences.
What is one key need or issue that your platform is directly addressing?
Aaron is focused on engagement and activation - how to turn passion into action.
“We do this through content. We build content that relates to people on a genuine and digestible level. Politics is confusing and toxic, so we extract opinion from our content and focus on explaining the thing, topic, or issue. For example, we’ll create content around do you understand impeachment and its 5 steps not should Trump get impeached?”. CommonAlly’s content also includes calls to action, prompting users to think about how they can get involved and help solve massive problems such as gun control.
Amit is focused on votes - getting people to vote for a candidate or getting a politician to vote for a measure.
“People who aren’t educated on complex topics are easy to persuade. Lobbyists simplify issues. But the simplest message is usually a lie, and unfortunately this is the messaging elected officials are usually hearing. Thus people are voting based on lies they’re being fed”.
Amit began creating Politi-Score, an app that collates information on elected officials, upcoming political races, and breaking news on policy issues. He built a minimum viable product (MVP) and tested it with 1,600 people. “We heard shocking news. People loved it, saying it was designed well and provided good info they could use. However 88% said they wouldn’t use it, claiming ‘I don't think I can make any difference in the political world’ or ‘My vote doesn't matter’. Overall, people wanted to engage and feel like they could make a difference”.
Based on this feedback, Amit decided to pivot to LawMaker and create a micro-lobbying platform at the local, state, and federal level. Users can propose policy ideas and share them on Facebook, Twitter, or another crowdsourcing tool. Others can suggest amendments or up-vote the policies. Then once a policy idea has gained some traction, the user can engage their elected official - “I have 10,000 votes, can I start a conversation with you?”.
What is one challenge that you have had to overcome or are addressing now in order to build this technology?
Amit lamented that money is a perennial obstacle. He and his business partner both have day jobs that they use to pay for LawMaker. Trust and engagement are also challenges. Users will ask why they should trust LawMaker - “I want this idea to get off the ground, but I can’t get people to trust LawMaker, a platform they’ve never heard of”. Users also wonder if their ideas can actually make a difference - “Will anything come out of it?”. Users also wonder if the app will use their data for bad.
To address this lack of trust and feeling of helplessness, LawMaker introduced Challenges. They partnered with elected officials and challenged constituents to come up with a new policy idea. The elected officials committed to take the number one policy idea and take political action on it. “Journalists didn’t believe officials would actually do it”.
Jamie Tijerina, a local scientific researcher proposed holding more public meetings outside of regular business hours so more community members would attend and participate. Her idea received the most votes, and on January 16, 2018, Councilman David Ryu and Council President Herb Wesson introduced her idea as a motion before the Los Angeles City Council.
Aaron also noted that funding, engagement, trust, and legitimacy are challenges he faces. Users are often worried about their data and privacy, so CommonAlly promises users that they own and control all of their own data. He also noted they meet with people on both sides of the aisle to gain trust and legitimacy, and they build partnerships with community leaders who then evangelize them to their followers and increase awareness.
What about money? How are you acquiring funding?
Aaron discussed how he met with a variety of people to pitch his idea and find out what it will take for them to invest. He received productive feedback which shaped his MVP. He then went to friends and family to raise some initial money. Later he did more formal fundraising and received some smaller institutional capital.
“I’m lucky to have a good network. I went into networking blindly, but I learned just because I could didn't mean I should. You want to talk to people who really understand your mission and team and see the upside of your business.” He quit his job and sold his house to prove that he had skin in the game. He also noted that he does one shoot a month with his production company to pay his rent.
Amit explained how early attempts at fundraising ate up too much time that could have been going into product development and user testing. When LawMaker was in the wire-frame and development stage, he met with VCs and angel investors, but he didn’t have any luck. VCs wanted to invest in startups that were already in the revenue stage, but as a pre-launch startup, LawMaker had no revenue and no user base. Amit and his CTO, Jon, had success with a few crowdfunding campaigns, and he and his partner decided to both keep their day jobs while they launched LawMaker and scaled up its user base.
What can people do? Action items? How can people help?
Aaron urges everyone to find the humanity in others. “Start a dialogue with people you disagree with”.
Amit asks us to encourage people to put good information out there and disincentivize people from putting out bad information. “Pay for good journalism. Be careful with your clicks! Don’t incentivize bad stories such as scandals and fluff by clicking on them. If you click on bad stories, you’re telling news outlets that you like or care about these. We need to consciously elevate ourselves and realize that our micro-interactions matter”.
Additionally, he encouraged everyone to acknowledge “gateway activism”, the idea that taking small steps incentivizes you to take bigger steps later on. He helped organize the March for Women in LA, and many people told him they didn’t think the march does much. He pushed back on them, arguing that participating wires the brain to pay attention to the issue more and take further action later on. “Don’t think small civic actions are too little”.
And finally, he urged everyone to “vote, vote, vote! Vote local, state, and federal, and tell people younger than you to vote!”.