and now the results are about to come in: which campaigning-focused tech startup will win this year<u+2019>s contest? presidential campaigns over the years have served as breeding grounds for innovative platforms that later give rise to up-and-coming startups with wider appeal beyond political circles. they have covered niche purposes like helping campaign strategists optimize their messaging, reach their demographic targets, amass donor bases, and crunch gargantuan data sets about voter preferences. this year<u+2019>s election cycle is no exception. a new crop of political-tech entrepreneurs reflects america<u+2019>s ever-changing face of digital campaigning. platforms that aid campaign efforts to inform and organize volunteers, donors and other supporters have made a mark this campaign season, ranging from brigade to nationbuilder to ballotready.org. that has been especially important in a grueling political year that has put a premium on outflanking opponents in their ground game of improving voter turnout. <u+201c>a lot of this thinking is about supporting execution, as opposed to building big game-changing products,<u+201d> said dan wagner, a former analytics director on the obama 2012 campaign who went on to cofound civis analytics, a data-science specialist in chicago. eric schmidt is an angel investor in the company. hustle, a venture-backed startup that was founded in 2014, caught on early with bernie sanders<u+2019>s grass roots organizers. one of its co-founders, perry rosenstein, was nevada director of new media for the 2008 obama campaign. starting in mid-2015 sanders field personnel started using the app, which allows users to aim texts at a long list of recipients, sending each one individually in rapid-fire, then giving the user a platform to manage their text conversations with voters. this approach allows the campaigns to get around regulations that prevent robo-dialing mobile phone numbers. after the sanders campaign wound down, some of its workers switched sides and the clinton campaign began using it. <u+201c>even some businesses are taking the approach of organizing as a way to build relationships with customers,<u+201d> said co-founder and chief executive roddy lindsay. digital-campaigning specialist nationbuilder, which has raised $14.25 million from andreessen horowitz, omidyar network and others, says that it is the most widely used political software in the world, with more than 8,000 active customers and 40% of the state and federal campaigns using the service. los angeles-based nationbuilder, which provides tools for coordination of campaign content and websites, has been used by donald trump, gary johnson and jill stein, while hillary clinton hasn<u+2019>t used the service, ceo jim gilliam said. a new generation of startups have built upon social-networking approaches to voter education, engagement and empowerment. brigade media inc., for example, helps people pledge to vote for candidates and ballot propositions and organize and recruit others to vote with them. <u+201c>we call them voting blocs,<u+201d> said matt mahan, chief executive. <u+201c>it gives power versus big money in politics.<u+201d> most of the talk about technology in the election has focused on donations or campaigning via twitter , text messaging or bots, mr. mahan said. <u+201c>for top-down channels to leverage text messaging or bots to answer questions<u+2014>that<u+2019>s really interesting,<u+201d> mr. mahan said. <u+201c>but most behavior change is driven by peer pressure from friends, family and neighbors.<u+201d> <u+2014>tomio geron and patience haggin contributed reporting. write to alexander davis at alec.davis@wsj.com <u+feff>
elections usher in new crop of political-tech startups - wsj
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