I finally published my first “monthly” newsletter. Here’s a copy, edited a bit.

PeopleCount is the possibility of having our elected officials be accountable to us. It’s the first thorough proposal to truly transform our political system. It has a solid set of reasoning behind it, answering all major questions, including how it’ll be rewarding, gain popularity, grow, cause transformation, handle challenges and has a complete business plan.

Development continues, slowly.

The Current Plan

My big challenge is lack of time- there are few hours left after my full-time job. And coding is difficult without being able to spend at least 4 hours on it at a time. Usually I spend one weekend day coding, so there’s about 1/5th of a person on the code. There is about a person-year of coding left to do. Plus web-coding requires some skills I don’t have, so I’m slow at parts of it.

My current plan is to complete enough code for a demo, and then try again to raise money to hire a team. Occasionally I entertain offers from off-shore teams, but the request for firm plans usually stops them. If they ever get past that, my lack of funds will probably stop them, though I might have them do some limited work.

With funding, I could hire a team and launch in 4-5 months. One party would be a great early customer. Someone at another party said they were very interested after we talked for an hour, but they haven’t returned calls since then. Investors seem unlikely. I seem to have a fair amount of success when I talk with people, but rarely over email. So far, no investors have agreed to a phone conversation. Very few even return an email. They want to see results first.

I have completed about half of the demo. I made a short video of it. If you’d like to see it, send me an email. It’s not secret, but it’s not meant to be shared widely.

How You Can Help

If you’d like to support PeopleCount, you’re welcome to like and share the Facebook page, as well as the blog. You’re welcome to write an article for the blog or write elsewhere and link back to our blog or a particular article. Sharing one of our blog articles on your Facebook page also helps. Or on other sites, such as Reddit.

If you’d like to chat with others about PeopleCount, you’re welcome to comment on the the Facebook page.

Financing

Every year I get a 2-5 donations. This year, it’s up to $260. The money helps a bit, but the gesture helps a lot. I’m very grateful. I haven’t put effort into asking individuals for small donations. Partly, I haven’t gotten feedback that the site or my blogs are compelling enough to be convincing.

I’d love to start a crowdfunding campaign, but it takes some creative skills which I lack as well as about two months of full-time work monitoring and sharing. Indiegogo highly recommends it be a team effort. Part of the work in 2016 included a short video, but I doubt it’s sufficient for a campaign. Currently, I have just over 100 people on my news list– that’s way low to start a campaign.

This crowdfunding.io calculator says I might be able to raise $10k. I need a minimum of $400k, and preferably $1 million. Having a celebrity or two rooting for us would certainly help- please invite some! I guarantee that I won’t get more than my current salary (nor any bonus) from the proceeds. And I’m working a much lower-paying, lower-stress job so I have more time for PeopleCount. (We’re not quite breaking even on it.)

Thanks

Besides funding and a team, PeopleCount lacks demand. Most people think it’s impossible to fix the main problems in politics short of a huge politics-as-usual effort- millions of people donating to and supporting a party and their candidates. But politics-as-usual gives us the results we have, not meaningful change.

We need a more fundamental change. And in all my research, only PeopleCount has a promising proposal. On the one hand, it’d take less effort than goes into a single Congressional campaign. On the other, it’s difficult for most people to imagine, and it’ll require a full-time team. (And shorter newsletters…)

Thanks for standing for this new possibility with me.

-Rand

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