All startups have an origin story, that eureka moment that clarified a problem. Here’s ours. 

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 political science in undergrad (Brown University) and for my master’s and PhD (Oxford University). I then got a job as a political risk analyst and worked on a ballot campaign in Massachusetts supporting Ranked Choice Voting.

I was happy to be engaged in the civic space, but the day-to-day was full of massive headaches. The more I talked to others working in the political ecosystem with me, the more I saw that we all had problems.

• As a political analyst, keeping up with what was happening required constantly checking news sites, legislative sources, and social media.

• On the campaign, we had endless spreadsheets and scattered notes.

• Elected officials and staffers spoke about the huge amount of time keeping up with constituent services.

• Advocates and journalists had to juggle massive amounts of news on a shoestring budget.

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 and, on the chance that we convinced members of the committee, we could announce new momentum and get energy up leading into the election year. 

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. But I couldn’t. 

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. 

The whole process was a waste of time for everyone involved. The committee staff needed to send 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 that we couldn’t easily sort.

The result was that a number of people who wanted to be working to help their communities spent hours emailing around documents.

Our goal

We believe the approach that politics is not just about ideas and policies, but about getting work done efficiently.

With our core product, we focus on managing the information that crosses - or should be crossing - your desk, by:

• using Legislata to follow the path of bills at the state level and Congress.

• sharing press releases or other statements in existing groups or create your own.

• setting up alerts on specific bills, topics, or people.

• sharing notes within your office or coalition.

With our premium tiers, you can further enhance your organization’s productivity by:

• managing tasks within your office.

• setting up a CRM for constituent services.

• speeding through your inbox with our email management plans.

Our hope is that this help us work more efficiently and focus on what we want to do - making our cities, communities, states, and countries better places to live - and not what we have to get through to do that.