Stand Up, an app for political action

In the wake of Donald Trump's election in 2016, many friends asked me "what can we do?"

Many people were spending time and energy on actions that generally would not have an impact, such as circulating petitions asking the Electoral College to prevent Trump from taking office.

I consulted a number of government experts, and they unanimously said that the most effective action to stop policies we didn't agree with is to call our representatives in Congress. However, most people don't know who their Congressperson and two Senators are, let alone what issues to call them about and what to say!

This seemed like an issue that technology could solve; I developed a product vision for an app, Stand Up, and recruited a team to help me execute on it. Here's how it worked (full video demo is below):

• Select a relevant issue to call about: We keep an eye on the legislative calendar, and display the top 3 issues that members of Congress will soon vote on. It only makes sense to call about issues that will be voted on soon
• Call with the right person: Based on your ZIP code and time zone, we set up calls with your representatives. We provide calendar invites on Gmail or Outlook
• Make it drop dead simple to call: Many people aren't comfortable making phone calls, so we provide a script for your call
• Social proof: Each person participating can see how many other people are calling on the exact same topic. People only want to call if they know many others are also calling with them

As a first-time product manager working with a 100% volunteer team, we made some mistakes that delayed the launch of our MVP - and by the time we launched, the appetite to make these calls had significantly dwindled. However, my biggest learning is that the majority of people don't want to take the time to make regularly call Congress, particularly when it is so uncertain if their phone call will lead to a legislative change (e.g., thousands of people can call a Senator about an issue, but there's no guarantee the Senator will listen). Most people would rather vote once a year, and trust that their representative will do the work for 365 days out of the year.

As a result, I ended up shifting my political efforts in 2018 to fund-raising for individual candidates. In 2018, I ran a few fund-raising events for Andy Kim, who ended up flipping a tight Congressional seat in New Jersey's 3rd District and was re-elected in 2020.

Building Stand Up was an incredible learning experience for me, and in the end were able to win the 2017 Debug Politics Hackathon in NYC, and get mentions in Fast Company and Mashable.