If you think outside the lines, the political industry is as big as it gets.

You could look at this 100 different ways (e.g. how much did Elon Musk pay for Twitter?).

There is massive amounts of money at stake here and I'd argue it's a mistake to look at successful political tech companies as the barometer for political tech as a whole.

Annual government spending
- $250M+...City of Charlottesville
- $80B+...Virginia
- $6.7T+...United States

Total cost of elections
- $15.9B (Federal elections, 2024, OpenSecrets)
- $15.2M+ (Top 10 donors in state and local elections, 2024-2025, VPAP)

Industries like this are easily disrupted. It's already happened on the right. The left looks completely lost and it's only a matter of time.

desperate for change -- but the status quo in politics, is, 1) hold on to power, 2) toe the party line, 3) don't try new things.

critical issues: Virginia’s economy, abortion, and apparently UVA’s president. Not to mention the pipeline of future political leaders we could be building.

As it stands, the divisive attention economy is a black hole for outrage. We need technology that facilitates civic attention and engagement.