If you are looking for a short summary of PeopleCount, try this one.
The Gap: Our larger political system, how we all communicate with each other and with our politicians, was never designed, except for elections. There’s lots of dissatisfaction and arguments that it is broken, that our elected officials aren’t accountable to us. So I analyzed “accountability” and designed a way to deliver it.
Market Summary: Challengers have said they’re willing to pay for it. Citizens are very skeptical at first, but then intrigued. Groups with millions of members have said they’d try it.
Communication Perspective: We have lots of 1-with-1, few-with-few, 1-to-many, few-to-many (where “with” is bidirectional) communication systems. But really only two many-with-many systems, and they’re very primitive and poor, voting and polling (Twitter is too unreliable to count, IMO). So I’ve designed an MVP that’ll give us simple but effective 1-with-many and many-with-many communication.
Benefit Summary: We will be able to have direct, efficient communication with our politicians to make them accountable, and with each other so we can design our future together. Parties, incumbents and challengers can benefit immensely with much better and cheaper 2-way communication with voters, plus much more voter satisfaction.
Competition: There have been other sites that tried to do something in this same area, but they seem to have been poorly thought out. Most have failed, all have failed to make a difference (though there’s one promising one on the horizon.) I’ve done a lot of homework and talked to a lot of the principals. Lots of startups seem to be based on superficial ideas, not plans. I have a simple MVP and lots more plans.
Needs: I can’t build it alone while working full time. I’ve looked a long time for partners. Now I’m also looking for funding. Other kinds of help are welcome as well.
The details: Note that the nuts and bolts of PeopleCount are challenging for most people. They are pretty easy to understand, by themselves. But most people have a very difficult time understanding them because we Americans have a lot of cultural myths that obscure our understanding of “representative democracy” and “political accountability.” (This blog has a whole category on myths.) It might be good to start with this 6-article series about how political accountability is in our blind spot.