A Chicago-based startup accelerator that aims to give Democrats a tech boost in the 2020 election just named its next company cohort as it closes in on another fund to back political tech startups.
Higher Ground Labs recently announced its 2019 cohort, which includes 11 early-stage startups that will receive $1.4 million in funding. Along with funding, each company will receive programming, mentorship, business introductions and other resources.
Areas of focus for this cohort include misinformation and fake news, data analytics, advertising and more.
Founded by a group of former Obama campaign aides, Higher Ground Labs officially launched in 2017. Over the last two years it raised $5 million and backed 27 startups with the goal of giving Democratic candidates digital tools they need to win their races. Its portfolio includes Chicago-based BallotReady, a startup that helps voters become more informed about all the candidates up and down the ballot.
Higher Ground Labs also announced that it will soon close on a $10 million second fund that it will use to back new startups and provide follow-on funding to existing portfolio companies. It plans to write follow-on checks between $500,000 and $2 million, the company said.
Below are the companies in its latest class (descriptions provided).
Countable is a web-action platform that helps users engage with the campaigns, causes, and media platforms they follow. The platform activates any audience by leveraging industry-leading products, generating custom content, and building programmatic re-engagement into a movement. Countable enables campaigns, advocacy movements, news outlets, and corporate brands to better understand the sentiments of their followers.
Main Street One, a fake news and misinformation fighting technology that tracks narratives as they emerge and provides campaigns and causes with a distributed creative army to respond with force, helps progressive candidates and causes win the information war online. Its intelligence system allows it to play offense by identifying and advancing opportunities to shift public opinion at scale and speed. Its detection and disclosing mechanisms allow it to play defense through understanding the impact of digital manipulation and misinformation.
OpenField is a canvassing application for more complex conversations that can push richer qualitative context back into a central repository of voter-insights. Its software, which supports the practice of deep canvassing, is systematizing how field organizers and canvassers make meaning from their data. Through empowering canvassers to knock doors without a list and have more natural conversations, OpenField promises to change the ways that progressives strategize for campaigns and advocacy movements.
Outfox AI is an intuitive, low-cost Facebook ad-buying platform for down-ballot progressive campaigns and causes. With tools ranging from fundraising optimization, to outreach analytics for automation of online advertising, to a design suite that enables the creation of unique content, Outfox AI promises political organizations that smarter use of their data will power substantive engagement in their causes.
Outvote is a P2P engagement platform that empowers voters to leverage their personal networks into supporter networks. The mobile app facilitates donations, texts, media sharing, and list building. Whether it’s amplifying the national discussion on important issues, mobilizing for policy fights, or getting qualified candidates elected, Outvote empowers progressives to create change both on and offline.
Predictwise is a powerful data, analytics, research, and survey platform that can generate customized, granularized insights on any voter in any district in the country. It is built on bleeding-edge research into market design, survey design, online and social media, administrative data, and other fundamental or behavioral data-sets related to measuring public opinion and political outcomes.
SpeakEasy Political is a self-serve Democratic ad platform (with a managed service component) built to template professionally designed campaign creative, and integrate voter targeting, in order to make top of the ticket political ads more affordable to Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations.
Survey 160 is a software product designed specifically to conduct surveys via text message (SMS) conversation. The technology bridges a gap emerging between telephone interview methods — which are increasingly expensive on a cost-per-interview because of declining response rates — and online panel interview methods, which often struggle to reach particular audiences of interest. Such audiences may include small geographies, customer lists, or defined segments of the electorate.
Torch is the leading real-time intelligence platform for politics and advocacy. It is a social-listening dashboard with customizable feeds and reporting tools to digest content from 1.6 million political organizations and over 50,000 US elected officials.
Warchest is the first software that helps campaigns artfully spend-down to zero by providing innovative forecasting and analytical tools campaigns need to optimize every single dollar and successfully cross the finish line on Election Day. In the 2018 cycle, Warchest helped over 500 staffers manage over half a billion dollars including the DCCC, which relied on Warchest for their red-to-blue races and frontline members.
Wethos curates and manages diverse teams of freelance specialists for leading mission-driven and nonprofit organizations nationwide. With up to 12 different flexible roles, their teams dynamically come together to tackle work ranging from awareness campaigns to website building to strategic branding, with an aim to support organizations fighting to solve some of the world’s toughest problems.
