First Post: The Reach App
Posted 9/10/19
The political world that I see every day is colorful and engaging. It’s full of untapped opportunities for impact, and has a rich variety of people and organizations working to make change.
In contrast, the political world that I see through the media is monochromatic and inaccessible. It focuses on the federal government and on the actions of a small handful of household-name actors. The emphasis is mostly passive (commenting on events), rather than showing how real people are doing real things to make change.
To help bridge this gap, I’m going to start jotting down things that illustrate the color and excitement that I see.
These will be occasional, extremely brief emails (~1-2 phone screens).
A first sample is below, with an illustration of how much room for innovation exists in the political world.
The Reach App
Before 2016, I thought that because politics involved so much money and so many people, what needed doing got done. It turns out that’s not true.
One latest example is the adoption by Elizabeth Warren’s campaign of an app called Reach. This app was created by volunteers in the final weeks of AOC’s primary campaign (June 2018). Its development continued with an all-volunteer team for six months through Jan 2019, and since then with funding in the mid-six figures.
Adoption by a top-tier presidential campaign is obviously a major validation for any political tool. It shows how much opportunity for innovation exists, for something so useful to have been created by a volunteer grassroots team new to professional politics, barely one year ago.
More on Reach:
https://twitter.com/TeamWarren/status/1162821260025483267