The Love Vote aims to increase voter turnout with love. Those who can’t vote – like teens, immigrants, and the disenfranchised – use the platform to create video campaigns to motivate their loved ones to vote.
Year Founded
2017
Product Stage
v1 Launched
Funding Stage
Foundations
Team Size
2
Industry
Civic Tech
Leadership Team
Esther de Rothschild, Founder - Esther is an educator and filmmaker who has taught humanities and filmmaking in NYC public high schools for 10 years, and has produced and directed narrative and documentary films. She was also one of the National Organizers for the Women’ March on Washington in 2017.
Why Foundertherapy
Major Business Milestones
- Idea validation
- Build MVP
- Launch and run pilot
- Scale platform and launch full v1
Esther was looking for a mission-aligned team that cared about the problem she was trying to solve (civic engagement) and would very quickly be able to build out a simple platform that would serve as an idea validation tool but also be functional enough for running a small pilot project. She was excited that FT was mission-aligned with our “tech for good” practice, and that we could move fast and produce high-quality results. She also really valued the role that we were able to play as a trusted thought-partner, as she had deep domain experience as a filmmaker, but was new to the world of technology and startups and needed a team she could trust to lead that aspect of her venture.
Our Role & Impact
Roles We Play
- CTO
- CPO
- Engineering Execution
- Product Execution
FT built out the initial platform for The Love Vote, which enabled Esther and her team to publish video campaigns to drive voter turnout in the New Jersey special election in 2017. That pilot showed favorable results and helped Esther validate and refine her ideas. In 2018, ahead of the midterm elections in November, we developed a plan to scale up the platform we built for the pilot, and we launched a full v1 which included user-generated video campaigns, comprehensive email and SMS automated communication functionality, and a voter engagement chatbot. The campaigns on The Love Vote platform resulted in over 3,000 people promising to vote in the 2018 midterms in Florida, New York and New Jersey, as well as 38 other states.