The Legislata Origin Story

All startups have an origin story, that eureka moment that clarified a problem and spurred the founders to build the solution. Here’s ours. 

From analysis to campaigning 

Hi, I’m Chris Oates, CEO and Founder of Legislata. I had a background that was typical of a lot of people interested in politics. I interned at the State House in high school, volunteered on campaigns, and studied politics in undergrad (Brown University) and for my master’s and PhD (Oxford University). I then got into the political risk field, which analyzes and forecasts politics, working at one of the leading companies in the industry before starting my own company and teaching the subject at Boston University. 

But something was missing.  

As interesting as reading and writing about politics was, I wanted to get more involved. So in 2017 I volunteered with a group in Massachusetts supporting Ranked Choice Voting. I enjoyed it and they asked me to join the staff to help lead outreach efforts to groups around the state. I decided that would be my main political focus for the 2020 cycle and, just after Thanksgiving 2018, showed up to a tiny office overlooking Beacon Hill to my first staff position in politics. 

Hitting the ground running 

Joining the campaign was my entry into the world of how state and local politics actually work on a day-to-day level. Luckily, I had colleagues who had spent their careers on Beacon Hill and could show me the ropes. 

The problem was that the ropes seemed, to put it mildly, pretty bad. 

Before we go on, I want to stress that I’m not criticizing anyone for this. Politics is often cast as a clash of ego-driven personalities or the abstract battle of ideologies. I was mostly interacting with hard-working people who believed in public service and improving their community. Lots of them were inspiring and I have huge admiration for them. 

The problem was that the environment they were working in contained so many obstacles to efficient work that I wondered how they got anything done. 

On the campaign, we had to make and maintain spreadsheets for everyone we were reaching out to and what groups they were from. There were other reporting forms for what happened after meetings. And another spreadsheet for what legislator was in favor of our bills. A good chunk of the day was wandering around Google Drive. 

In the State House, I couldn’t believe how few staff there were for each legislator. When I worked at a small business, I had more coworkers than the entire Ways and Means Committee. Each staffer seemed to be working flat out just to keep up with emails. Yet they were also responsible for making laws and budgeting billions of dollars in what little time they had leftover. 

Whenever I brought this up, I’d usually be met with a response along the lines of “that’s the way it is.” I’m sure it was. But it shouldn’t have been.  

The a-ha moment 

In November 2019, the Election Laws Committee held a hearing on ranked choice voting.  

It was a big deal for us. On a ballot campaign there are few events that you can organize around. We had a Lobby Day in July 2019 and a small event when we dropped off signatures. This would be the only other big moment that we could count on to mobilize supporters and get press coverage. Plus, on the chance that we convinced members of the committee, we could announce new momentum and get energy up leading into the election year. 

I was asked to deliver testimony on behalf of the campaign. It was exciting. I had never testified to a committee before and it all went well.  

Then next day, I wanted to find the testimony of everyone who had spoken before the committee so I could update our talking points with new quotes. I did what I assumed to be the obvious place for it: the legislative website. The testimony wasn’t there. 

I was confused. This was a public hearing and everyone who submitted testimony had wanted their voices to be heard. This wasn’t a classified briefing in a SCIF. It was an open hearing and a policy discussion that every citizen could join. 

I asked our comms director, a veteran of the State House, why it hadn’t been posted yet. She said that it likely wouldn’t be, but that we could ask our lobbyist to ask the committee staff to send them the testimony. They did this, and in a few days our lobbyist emailed us a link to a Google Drive folder with PDFs of the testimony. 

This was a turning point for me. 

The whole testimony-collection process was a waste of time. The committee staff needed to answer an email with lots of attachments. The lobbyist had to upload those files and send an email. We needed to send emails and wait a few days. The end result was PDFs. And this was all for public information that people wanted to be heard and around which there was no need for secrecy - just obstacles and headaches around distribution.  

Building the idea 

That moment got me thinking that there had to be a better way to manage the information that people in politics deal with. I started talking with people about what specifically they needed and developing the product from that. I got advice from a number of smart thinkers and some of them joined our stellar Advisory Board (which has collectively served everywhere from City Hall to the White House and from the private sector to the highest levels of international negotiations).

That’s what led to Legislata. We take the approach that politics is not just about ideas and policies, but about getting work done efficiently so you can spend the time needed to craft the right policy or communicate your ideas. 

We therefore give you tools to manage both sides of your work.  

The internal side – everything that happens in your office – is helped by our email client that can cut down on how long it takes to get through your inbox, our task management system that keeps your office visible, and our CRM that lets you know who is who. 

The external side – what's happening in your political world that matters to you – is helped by our social aspects. Join an office (our term for workspaces, groups, or communities) in which people share relevant information like press releases, meeting minutes, or transcripts of hearings. Or create your own office to bring together your partners into one space to keep up to date with one another. 

Our hope is that this solves the problems I saw working on the campaign – not enough time in the day and difficulty getting access to public information – and gets people back to the work they were hired to do. 

It’s still evolving based on feedback, so if you have a similar story – a moment when you looked around your work and thought “there needs to be a better way” - get in touch. Help us build the solution to your problems.