August 20, 2025 • 43 mins
I had the chance to speak with Bradley Tusk, the legendary political strategist turned venture capitalist. He started in politics—running Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral campaign and serving as Deputy Governor of Illinois—before becoming the fixer behind startups like Uber, FanDuel, Lemonade, and Coinbase. Now, he runs Tusk Holdings, where he invests in—and fights for—startups navigating regulation.
We talked about his unique investing playbook, how to outmaneuver entrenched interests, what founders misunderstand about politics, and why he’s betting $20 million of his own money on mobile voting.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So after running the successful mayoralcampaign for Michael Bloomberg in New York
(00:04):
City, you gained prominence in a startupecosystem by successfully lobbying for Uber.
Tell me about how you went about getting citiesto adopt Uber.
When you think
of Uber today, you just think of this giantcorporation, right?
A couple $100,000,000,000 market cap, bigthing.
But back then we were tiny companies, series A,I met Travis in early twenty eleven.
(00:31):
And here was this brilliant guy who wasincredibly aggressive and relentless with a
really good idea.
And when you saw the product, a really goodproduct, but still very small.
And the taxi industry was very big, verypolitically powerful, lots of lobbyists, lots
of campaign donations, lots of relationshipswith politicians.
(00:53):
And so it was a pretty heavy lift.
And we started going into cities, we kind offamously didn't ask for permission because our
view is if we did, they would just say no, andthen that would be that.
So we were better off just going in any way.
And then invariably, they would tell us toleave, we would get a cease and desist letter,
we'd get another one.
And the only way that we could counter taxispower because we didn't have at the time, the
(01:16):
kind of money and resources to match thempolitically was to do it with our customers,
right?
And the first time it happened was in 2012 inWashington DC, there was legislation that
effectively would have put Uber out ofbusiness.
And we sent a note to all 50,000 of our, to allour customers in DC and within a week, 50,000
(01:39):
of them reached out to their city councilmembers to say, hey, I like this Uber thing,
don't take it away from us.
And it worked so well that not only did the badbill die, we put in our own bill, which passed
nine to nothing, including the sponsor of thebill that were trying to put us out of
business.
And what that said to us was, oh, at the end ofthe day, politicians are just gonna, which is I
(02:01):
already know from my time in politics, butthey're gonna do whatever they think helps them
win the next election.
And all things being equal, if they can takecampaign contributions from Taxi and do their
bidding, they'll do that.
Right?
But if 5,000 people from their district all ofa sudden say, hey, don't mess with this thing.
I want this.
They're gonna listen because they're not gonnawanna piss off all those people and take that
(02:23):
much risk.
And so that became the basis for the strategy.
And then we ended up effectively using aversion of it in pretty much every single city
in The US.
And it worked amazingly everywhere.
Some were bigger fights than others.
New York kinda came back around a second timeand we had to fight it again.
But the strategy fundamentally worked reallywell.
(02:45):
Tell me the secret to how you go about aligningwith politicians.
This sounds a little cynical, I know, but keepin mind, just to give context to the listeners,
I've worked in city government, stategovernment, federal government, the executive
branch, legislative branch.
So I've really seen this movie from everyconceivable angle.
And the main thing that I took away from it isevery policy output is the result of a
(03:10):
political input.
Every politician makes every decision solelybased on winning the next election and nothing
else.
And there are exceptions.
Mike Bloomberg in my career was certainly anexception.
Everyone listening to this sort has a couplenames popping into their head right now, sure.
But by and large, that's the rule, which reallymeans you have to be able to show a politician
(03:31):
that by doing what you want, they will wintheir next election.
And if they don't do what you want, it couldcost them an next election.
If you can convince them of one of those twothings, then they'll work with you.
And if they don't think that you can help themor hurt them, you just become irrelevant.
In which case, not gonna really waste any timeon you.
(03:51):
So you have to show that your underlying policygoal is aligned with their political.
Same, I guess with a bank, if they make money,they're gonna do it.
If they lose money, they're not gonna do it.
Politicians at the end of the day are humanright?
And human beings want to advance, they want tosucceed, they want job security, they don't
wanna get fired.
(04:11):
The only real difference is in the world oftech and finance and venture like we live in,
it's around questions of revenue or burn orfundraising or EBITDA or growth.
And there it's questions of poll numbers andpolitical fundraising and media hits and social
(04:32):
media likes and things like that.
And so fundamentally, the people are stillpeople.
They just speak different languages and havedifferent sets of incentives, and you just have
to realign what you need to make sense to them.
Michael Bloomberg, I think that's a great caseof somebody that's not not purely driven by by
elections.
How how do you go about ascertaining whether apolitician is purely driven by elections or
(04:55):
maybe they they might have some firstprinciples drive their making?
Good question because obviously there's no signon the door.
And by the way, they all like to think thatthey're the latter.
They all wanna think they're Mike Bloombergwhen in reality, very, very few of them
actually are.
And so there's a few ways to tell.
One is sometimes there's an issue that isdeeply personal to a particular legislator or
(05:19):
politician for some reason.
And if you can link your thing, and sometimesyou can't, sometimes you can't.
But if you can link your thing back to thatissue so you can show them, hey, here's this
problem that you're worried about.
Maybe something affected their family member.
Like not that long ago, I was speaking to areally prominent state legislator And I didn't
even realize, but his daughter had a bunch ofonline issues with cyber bullying and
(05:43):
everything else.
And when I kind of made the analogy to what Iwas talking about to social media regulation,
that clicked for him.
And then all of a sudden he's like, oh, okay, Ilive this, this is terrible, let's do
something.
And so sometimes there might be an issue theyreally care about.
Sometimes you could just get a sense that inthe past, they've said or done things that have
(06:07):
broken with their party or been unpopular.
So like Mike Bloomberg, in some ways, the mostvisible example of that to me was, Mike is a
New Yorker, he's Jewish, you know, basicallyone, you know, was running from air during
nineeleven.
And then there was an effort to build a mosqueright by Ground 0 in New York.
And it was wildly controversial because theidea was how could you possibly build a mosque
(06:31):
at the site where 3,000 people died from thehands of Islamic fundamentalists.
And Mike's view was, you know what, they havean absolute First Amendment right to be there.
And it doesn't matter what the symbolism oranything else, that's their right.
And Mike stood up for them allowed it to happenand that was really unpopular to be honest, but
(06:52):
I really deeply admired that because it was theright thing to do.
Or even the smoking ban.
Now, I think everyone thinks it's fantastic andliterally hundreds and hundreds of cities all
over the world have followed New York's lead onthat.
But I remember because I was at city hall whenwe passed this, it was really unpopular, right?
Like you go marching parades and people aregiving him the finger And the legislature
(07:17):
didn't want to do it in city council and Mikejust got to use all of his weight and pushed it
through.
But collectively, if you look at the result ofthat and then all the other work he's done
around tobacco cessation, it saved millions oflives.
And so there are occasionally the MikeBloombergs of the world and sometimes you can
tell because either they've shown independencebefore, they're not total party hacks, they've
(07:39):
expressed a personal story about an issue theytruly care about, things like that.
Said another way, if it hurts them in thepolling and they're not idiots, essentially
they're working from something above and beyondgetting votes.
Exactly.
But generally speaking, I think the challengeis there are so many different demands on their
(08:01):
time, on their political capital and everythingelse that they're looking at everything in some
ways with like the same kind of ROI thatinvestors do.
But it's just again, rather than saying, what'sthe rate of return that I can generate here?
It's kind of what's the political rate ofreturn?
Let me give you an example.
(08:22):
So one of the things we've got at my foundationis we fund and run campaigns to pass universal
school meals in different states.
So basically it means that every kid in thestate gets free breakfast and lunch.
There's over about 13,000,000 kids in thiscountry who still don't get enough food at home
and really do need it to get it at school.
And we've been lucky, we've had some success,we've passed about 29 bills around hunger in
(08:45):
total, but sometimes we fail.
And when we fail, it's because ultimately wefail the ROI calculation politically.
So when you pull school meals, pretty mucheveryone says, yeah, we should feed kids,
shouldn't let them go hungry.
You need to be a monster to say that, to notsay that.
But then when you get into those final days ofthe budget, and I used be the deputy governor
(09:06):
of Illinois, and so I was the person that ranthe budget and remember this really well.
There's a lot more requests for funding thanthere is funding and you have to start making
choices.
And even though the notion of school meals isquite popular, there's no actual political ROI
for doing it because the kids can't vote, theirkids, and the parents don't vote because either
(09:28):
they're not citizens or they work hourly jobsand they can't get away to vote or whatever it
is.
But ultimately, you're not gonna really pick upa lot of actual votes at the end of the day by
doing school meals.
And we've had states, even democratic governorslike Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania or JB
Pritzker in Illinois, who at the end of the daychose not to fund school meals because I think
(09:50):
they realized that, yeah, you know, it's nicefor kids to eat, but if I could use that
$300,000,000 to pay off some union or someother special interests who could then actually
help me in the next election, I'm better offdoing that.
And in many ways, when I made the transitionfrom politics to venture, it actually wasn't
(10:10):
that hard to do because early stage startupsare a lot like political campaigns.
And what investors are looking for isfundamentally kind of the same as politicians.
Just again, different metrics, different kindof buzzwords.
But once you can kind of translate thelanguages, it actually is fairly similar.
(10:35):
One of I think misconceptions about lobbying isthat you literally take a suitcase and you put
it into politicians at Politicians Corner.
Obviously, that's Now it's highly all incrypto.
Highly illegal.
Now it's in crypto.
But in many ways, the most effective lobbyingis when a politician doesn't feel like they're
being lobbied when they when they own thatSure.
Feeling.
(10:56):
Yeah.
You make them a hero of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And talk to me about the effective lobbying andhow do you get your dollar to go further than
just, you know, ROI and and getting theemotional appeal in politician
Well, two things.
So one is when I started my first company, it'sa consulting firm called Tusk Strategies and
(11:17):
they run, I still own it, I don't work thereanymore, but they run really complicated
legislative regulatory campaigns all over thecountry.
And the thesis that I had for the business, andI didn't know if it was right or wrong, but it
was enough for me to take a shot.
I did this right after Bloomberg got elected,was that the days that you were kind of joking
about where a guy knows a guy, he makes a calland everything kind of gets fixed, Those days
(11:42):
are gone.
And by the way, if you're ever on a call withsomeone like that, assume that the FBI is
listening too.
And the way the campaigns are won today is muchmore multifaceted.
So yes, lobbying is still a big component ofanything, but so is earned media, paid media,
social media, digital media, oppositionresearch, grassroots, grass tops, polling.
(12:04):
There's all kinds of other factors.
And my bet was because I had experience in allthese different things, I could bring all of
these to bear and do it at the same time inmultiple jurisdictions for a client or for a
company.
And that's what would allow us to win and allowthe business to grow.
And that is what happened.
So the first thing is, you kinda have to reallylook at it and say, okay, there's, let's say, I
(12:28):
think I just listed about 10 different tactics.
It's a menu, and you don't need all 10 in everysingle campaign in every case.
So the question is, what are the things thatare gonna be most effective with the particular
regulator, the particular politician thatyou're trying to convince?
For some people, maybe it is hiring the rightlobbyists because it was also their college
roommate, and they just explain it to them andthat's good enough.
(12:51):
For a lot of people, it might have to be having5,000 constituents like we did with Uber, call
their office or text them or something likethat for some people.
So we have to run TV ads attacking them.
For some people, like this past year in NewYork, Governor Hochul did put universal school
meals in her budget, and we went the other waywith it, which is we just started running ads
(13:12):
immediately thanking everybody.
Like we basically said, we're gonna make theassumption that they've already all agreed to
it, it's happened, and we're just gonna startgiving them credit on day one, because it would
look so bad to get all of this credit forschool meals and then not do it.
That that was the, you know, get them reallyfeeling good about it.
(13:34):
Get them emotionally invested, and create atemplate where kind of no matter what happened
with the budget, this thing just had to happen.
It couldn't lose, and that's how it went.
A lot of it is really figuring out, you know,in every situation, what's most likely to move
the needle with the particular people you need.
Oftentimes in some ways, I kind of think ourjob is psychology as much as anything else,
(13:58):
because it's figuring out what will motivatethis individual person, what will incentivize
them, what will scare them, and then how do wethen deploy different tactics to sort of make
that happen.
And you've helped Coinbase, FanDuel, Lemonade,Row, you literally wrote book on startup
lobbying called The Fixer.
(14:20):
Yep.
Walk me through your framework.
How does a startup go about influencingpoliticians?
The first thing is really understanding whatyour situation is.
So because I talk to founders every single day,whether it's the ones in my portfolio or people
pitching us, one of the first things I try toestablish is either what do they know, or by
(14:42):
the way, equally important for me, do they knowwhat they don't know, right?
So like take Travis Kalanick, who's a very,very brilliant, very, very hard nosed guy.
Travis to his credit understood that he wasn'ta political guy.
And one of the reasons that we were able towork really well together and we still do and
succeed is he knew what he didn't know, right?
(15:03):
And he had his opinions and we might argueabout stuff, but at the end of the day, he let
me do my job And that ultimately works.
So one is, if you are a founder, just becauseyou went to Stanford, just because you were in
Y Combinator, just because Andrew recentinvested in your round, whatever it is, does
not mean you know everything about everything.
You might be great at the engineering, youmight be great at marketing or product or
(15:27):
whatever it is.
Odds are, you're not automatically great atpolitics.
And some regulator or elected official is notgonna just meet with you and look at your
resume and say, Oh, this person is soimpressive, I should do what they want.
Right?
So first is any founder actually that reallytruly believes that going in, I'm an immediate
no.
I will not invest.
I will not work with you.
But the first thing is you have to understandwhat you're facing, right?
(15:51):
So what are the current laws on the booksaround whatever it is you're trying to do?
And odds are, if you're a founder of aninteresting startup, you're approaching it in a
way the law hasn't totally considered it yet,because by definition, regulation lags
innovation, because until the founder comes upwith the new disruptive idea, there's no law to
pass around it, right?
(16:11):
So law is probably gonna be gray, but how gray?
Is it like, this is definitely not allowed andyou have to actually go in there and overturn
everything?
Or is it just kinda like, well, we don't reallyknow, you can make a case.
That's one.
Two, what happens to you if you don't listen tothem, right?
So like with Uber, they impounded the cars,annoying not the end of the world.
(16:34):
With Bird, they take the scooters, great, takethe scooter, who cares, right?
But if it's an SEC thing, you'd be looking atten years in jail, that's a different ballgame,
right?
So lemonade or circle or coin based differentapproach for us than say a bird or an Uber or a
mobility company.
So what does the current law say?
(16:55):
What risks do you take by your actions?
Who is against you, and how politicallypowerful are they?
Is it a union that's not gonna like it?
Is it an entrenched business group that's notgonna like it?
Is it the hotel industry, the casino industry,the taxi industry, whatever it might be?
And then how politically powerful are they?
How much money do they give to the politiciansthat matter here?
(17:17):
What kind of relationships do they have?
What kind of goodwill do they have?
Next one would be, who can you get to yourside?
So it might be your customers, like we'vetalked about.
So in some campaigns like Uber, like FanDuel,like Bird, like Ease, that really worked.
But it may be that you have the kind of productthat's maybe a really good business, but it's
just not gonna inspire your customers to do alot of outreach on your behalf.
(17:41):
So it's like, okay, who else do I have?
Maybe there is an advocacy group or policygroup, or maybe we're able to deliver things a
lot faster, and so businesses in thatjurisdiction are happy about it, and they'll
fight for you, whoever it is.
But you gotta find your allies.
You also have to then be able to figure outlike, what's your narrative and what's your
(18:05):
message?
Because at the end of the day, if you just goin there and say, you should legalize this
thing because it's good for me, nobody caresabout that.
If anything, they'll sort of not like you forthat.
You have to be to make the case credibly thatpublic policy, that society itself is advanced
because of the work that you are trying to do.
And so if you let me do X, then we can givemore people better transportation options, or
(18:33):
better food options, or give people better waysto get cheaper homeowner insurance, or whatever
it might be.
And how do you make that case?
And then who can you make the case through?
So what's the media market you're in?
What are the mainstream media options?
What are the things like podcasts and substackers and influencers and creators and who
(18:53):
can you work with there?
And then finally, and like you said, I wrote abook about this, so if you really like this
stuff, you can read the book itself.
But budget, right?
Which is sometimes I can look at a case andsay, all right, you know what, if we spent $50,
we'd probably have enough to go ahead and getthis law changed or get this sort of thing
(19:15):
approved.
And sometimes like, this is gonna be a coupleof million dollars, right?
Depending on where you are and what you'refacing.
What we almost always do is kind of make astack ranking of what jurisdictions do we think
it would be the easiest or hardest to implementthis in based on all the criteria I just laid
out.
And you usually first start with the ones thatwe know we can win, so we can get some points
(19:38):
on the board, so we can establish precedent, sowe can show that other people do it and it
works.
And then work our way up, so that as thecompany both has more success and then more
resources, they've raised more money orwhatever else, you know, we can tackle the
really hard markets.
So there's an old quote from Pericles, you maynot take an interest in politics, but politics
takes an interest in you.
(19:58):
I think a lot of startups are a little bitnaive to this.
Walk me through when startups should start tolobbying.
When is too early and what's the timeline for acompany that has a disruptive product?
Really depends on what it is you need, right?
So if you were, take Lemonade, which is aninsurance company that we invested in, we had
(20:21):
to do all of the regulatory work at the very,very beginning, because you can't sell
insurance without a license.
No one at Lemonade was gonna go to jail forthis, right?
So at the end of the day, they couldn'tactually launch operations of the company until
we did the political work first.
FanDuel, we didn't get involved actually on thepolitical side till the Series E because they
(20:46):
launched, it wasn't clearly illegal.
It wasn't clearly legal.
No one really knew.
And for a long time, they operated prettysuccessfully, DraftKings two.
And then all of a sudden, there was a politicalbacklash and then state attorney general third
edition cease and desist orders.
And then we had to go in and change the laws,clarify the laws, kind of work through all of
(21:07):
this.
So I think the first thing is you need to knowat least what it is you need from government
and when in your product life cycle is thatimportant.
It might be something you need on day one.
It might be just something that's gonna come uplater on.
And then two, if it's day one, then obviouslythat has to be one of the initial things that
(21:28):
you invest resources into.
If it's later on, you gotta be aware of it.
You have to sort of at least in your mind havesome budget reserve to deal with it.
But also keep in mind, it depends a little biton your own success, which is the faster you
grow and the more that you make your VCs happy,that means you're taking market share away from
(21:49):
somebody else.
And that somebody else is probably anentrenched interest that is more political than
you, that has more relationships than you.
And then they're gonna move as fast and as hardas they can to use politics to try to knock you
down.
And so in some ways, if you have success, youhave to assume that that's going to bring
political challenges with it and you have to beready for it.
(22:12):
Tell me about the crypto lobby and theirsuccess in the twenty twenty four election.
What changed?
Why were they so successful in this lastseason?
They were great.
So they did a great job, first of all.
And I think for two reasons, one is money,right?
And it's an industry that ultimately A, alreadyhas a lot of money, B, you have people in it
(22:33):
who are holding tokens in different ways wortha lot of money, so they have the ability to
contribute.
And C, there's no CapEx in crypto, right?
So other than mining, I guess.
So like ultimately, regulations are really,really, really big determinant in your success
or failure.
And so it's worth a very meaningful investment.
(22:56):
And they raised and deployed hundreds andhundreds of millions of dollars.
And not only did they raise and deploy a lot ofmoney, they were really smart strategic about
it, which was rather than saying like, okay,here's $3 to every single person running for
office in America.
They said, let's pick a few people and makehuge examples of them.
So like in Ohio, I think they put $40,000,000into the Senate race and were successful.
(23:22):
And what happens is when you do that, everyother politician sees what just happened and
they get really nervous.
And so your $40,000,000 investment might have4,000,000,000 in value because ultimately you
were able to change perception and behavior bylots of the other 99 senators because they saw
(23:43):
what just happened and they don't want that tohappen to them.
And so they were smart, they were strategic.
And the other thing that works for crypto is,and I mentioned this earlier, there are some
industries where the customers are reallywilling to kind of step up and fight for the
product.
Uber was one, FanDuel was one, Bird was one,Ease, which is marijuana delivery, was one that
(24:04):
we did.
And crypto is very much one of those, right?
And so you have customers that are passionate,they really believe in care.
And keep in mind, most people who trade cryptoare doing it because, know, they're interested
in it, I think it's a way to make money.
But the true believers in crypto fundamentallyare saying, look, I don't really believe in
(24:26):
sovereign banks and financial institutions.
I don't think that they're looking out for myinterest.
I think they're looking out for themselves.
And I would rather actually throw on my lotwith like minded people who I'll never even
know their names, but believe like I do, thatan autonomous currency is actually a better way
of doing things.
And so one of the things about crypto is atleast for some of the community, there's a real
(24:47):
belief system in there.
And when people believe in things and doesn'thave to be techy, you see this with, let's say,
abortion or gay rights or whatever it is, theywill fight for it.
Right?
And I think crypto has that.
There's this combination of real politic andvery strategic financing with this kind of
grassroots crowdfunding Exactly.
Aspect to it, which which accelerated.
(25:08):
So let's say that you believe that Elon Muskshould go into politics.
I personally do not believe that.
I'm a huge Elon fan.
I think he should stick to business.
But if he was to go and launch this Americaparty Yeah.
Where would be the point of highest leveragefor him to come in Yeah.
And have an effect?
Yeah.
So I've not only thought about this a littlebit, but I, you know, I've worked on third
(25:29):
party issues before.
My friend Andrew Yang created the forwardparty.
I gave them some advice.
Before my Bloomberg did end up unsuccessfullyrunning for president as Democrat in 2020, I
didn't get to play much of a role on that one,but I had put together a campaign in 2016 for
him to run as independent.
And so I really spent a lot of time looking atall of that.
(25:50):
The first question is, what do people mean whenthey say that?
Right?
Which I'm not even sure that Elon knows what henecessarily means, which is, it's one thing to
say, I am going to back and finance anindependent candidate for president, governor,
senator, mayor, whatever it might be.
And if it's a one off and you have theresources, you can do it.
(26:12):
So like the first step is getting on theballot, and it's hard to get on the ballot if
you're an independent because the only peoplewho can sign your petitions are other
independents, and that becomes harder to findand whatever else.
But it's a knowable proposition.
If Elon really meant an actual party, what thatmeans is an entity that is competing at every
(26:36):
level of government, right?
They're running candidates for city council,for mayor, for county board, for state rep,
state senator, governor, Congress, Senate,president, and they have a permanent ballot
line, which the rules differ state by state,but usually it's based on sort of capturing a
certain percentage of votes in each election.
(26:57):
That is a many, many, many billions of dollarsinvestment.
That is a many years investment.
It is potentially doable, but it would requireone massive financial resources, which he has,
right?
But he has to choose to put him into this.
Two, you need to stand for something, right?
And what you need to be able to do is somethingthat will recruit a lot of people, right?
(27:21):
So what Trump figured out with MAGA was you hadthis group of people who felt really angry at
the status quo and that he was able to mobilizethem and bring them together under this banner.
Bernie Sanders, AOCs, Zora and Magdani now, Isort of figured out the same thing on the far
left, right, with the socialists.
I actually think ironically, the bestopportunity for this is the middle, right?
(27:45):
You have all these people now who are notradicals on either side and actually feel
totally powerless and disaffected and wouldlove to have a political party that they
thought was really believed in the things theybelieve in, which really most times is just
common sense solutions to problems, right?
Like if you take almost every major issue,there's a 70% solution where the vast majority
(28:09):
of us can agree on it.
So take guns.
Most of us would say you shouldn't go intoeveryone's home and confiscate the guns that
they have, but it also shouldn't be easy towalk into a store and just walk out with an
assault rifle, right?
Or immigration, most of us would say we shouldhave secure borders.
You shouldn't be able to just walk across andget in for no reason.
But we also shouldn't be like rounding anddeporting millions of people who have lived
(28:32):
here and work here and are part of the economyeither.
And you can pretty much on every issue to mefind that.
But the problem is that 70% on any given issuetend to not vote in primaries.
And the way our system works because ofgerrymandering is the only election that really
ever matters is the party primary.
And party primary turnout is typically about 10to 15%.
(28:54):
And those are usually the most ideologicallyextreme voters, whether it's the left or the
right.
And then they end up dictating everything thathappens after that.
And so I think there's a huge opening in themiddle, and Elon could center a platform around
that.
But the problem is, I don't know that hepersonally has the discipline to stick to it,
right?
(29:14):
So if you're gonna do that in your ham, youcan't say things that are endlessly alienating
like all women, right?
Or all people of color or immigrants orwhatever it is, because now that you're
potential party members and you need theirsupport.
And so if are, if he were gonna go for it inthat way, he would really have to be able to
(29:37):
rein himself in, either stop tweeting or reallyAnd it seems like he gets a lot out of whether
it's good for him or not.
He clearly relies on the attention that he getsfrom being online and really active.
Now look, he could instead go the other way andgo super crazy far right and probably form
(29:57):
something, but it's gonna be a niche party thatsort of is filled with lots of really hateful
people that don't wanna get anything done.
Talk to me about your work in mobile voting.
First of all, tell me about that and why areyou so passionate about it?
Every politician makes every decision solelybased on winning the next election.
And as we discussed, because gerrymanderingmeans that only the primaries typically matter
(30:18):
and primary turnout is really low, politiciansare effectively held hostage by the small
groups of people who do participate in theirprimaries, which are typically either
ideological extreme voters or specialinterests.
And the only way to really change that is tochange the fundamental composition of the
electorate itself.
So instead of getting elected with 12% of thevote in the primary, you're getting elected
(30:40):
with 36% of the vote, because by definition,36% of people is more mainstream than 12% of
people, right?
And so if you assume that politicians arealways just gonna make the politically salient
choice at every turn, rather than trying tomake them different people, because we're not
gonna do that, right?
And so I kind of realized all this in the Ubercampaigns because what we saw were all these
(31:02):
people who typically did not vote in stateSenate primaries.
They didn't know who their city council memberwas.
But for us, they were, you know, through theapp telling their elected officials like, hey,
leave Uber alone.
And I kind sort of wondering like, well, whatif they can vote this way?
And so I started this thing called the mobilevoting project in 2017.
And the first thing we did was test thehypothesis, which is if you put voting on
(31:25):
people's phones, will they do it?
And the answer was, yeah, you make somethingeasier and more people do it, right?
Turnout, for example, in an election in Seattletripled.
So okay, we established yes, the hypothesis isright.
But the tech that existed at the time to dothis was pretty rudimentary and it worked fine
for 2,000 votes here, 5,000 votes there, but todo it at scale, we didn't have confidence in
(31:48):
it.
And the problem is nobody was gonna otherwisebuild the tech that we needed because a private
company doesn't wanna spend 8 figures and thenmake the code open source and give it away to
their competitors.
And the US government wasn't working on it anddidn't want to.
And so we decided we would do it.
And so we've spent the last four years buildingour own mobile voting technology.
(32:09):
We're putting the code up on GitHub now as wekeep completing each part of it.
It'll be fully posted by the end of the year.
And it will be completely free for anyone, anygovernment to just go to GitHub, get the code
and use it.
And then now we're in phase three, which is thereally hard part, which is legalizing it so
that people could start to vote on their phonesin actual regular elections.
(32:31):
And we're starting at the municipal levelbecause our view is, let's start local.
One, less hacking risk.
Two, local elections to have the lowestparticipation and turnout, so they kind of need
the help the most.
We're about to start running legislation indifferent cities around The US that would
authorize mobile voting for municipal electionspecifically.
So mayor, city council, school board, stufflike that.
(32:55):
And we've gone from this being a project insideof my foundation, Tusk Philanthropies, to
becoming what hopefully will be a very bigmovement, right?
Because we're gonna need to mobilize millionsand millions of people to demand that they have
the right to vote online because otherwise thestatus quo is not gonna like it because
typically people in power don't like making iteasier for other people to gain power.
(33:18):
And so I was lucky to get a TED talk on it thisyear.
It just came out last week.
So that helps us make the case.
Wrote a book about this called Vote With YourPhone.
We moved the mobile voting project to its ownseparate entity with its own team and
leadership and board.
We're raising money, so I've put $20,000,000 ofmy own money into mobile voting so far.
Again, totally philanthropic.
(33:40):
But passing these laws all over the country isprobably gonna take a couple $100,000,000, and
so we're starting to raise money.
And we're trying to build a movement.
And if you think about every major right inthis country that's ever been won, whether it's
woman's rights to vote or the Civil Rights Actor the Voting Rights Act or same sex marriage,
the Americans Disabilities Act or anythingelse, because enough people stood up loud
(34:00):
enough and long enough and demanded theirrights, and eventually the status quo had to
give in, and that's what we have to do heretoo.
Sure, lot of people are wondering, does thishelp Republicans or Democrats more?
Does it help moderates or extreme candidatesmore?
What are the,
It's a good question.
So it helps moderates only in the sense thatultimately more people voting means that the
(34:25):
mainstream opinion matters more to politicians.
But what's interesting is, so the one countryin the world has been doing this for twenty
years now, Estonia.
And I went over there a few weeks ago and gotto meet with everybody who works on this, and I
was talking to some political scientists, andwhat they told me was really interesting, which
was it turns out that there really is nospecific party in Estonia that benefits from
(34:51):
mobile voting more than another.
Democracy benefits because turnout issignificantly higher, especially in local
elections.
And whoever candidate loses an election blamesthe internet voting for it.
But ultimately, you would think these wouldbenefit or that would benefit.
And in the very early days, that might be thecase because some people are more apt to do
(35:14):
something on their phone than others, but atleast the data and Estonia shows that over the
long haul, it evens.
Tell me more about Tusk Ventures, the venturearm that you invest out of today.
My first exposure to tech was Uber and thenagain, Clear.
And in both cases, I took equity in part fordoing my work.
Those paid off pretty well.
And I had this thought that there really wasn'ta venture fund out there, focused specifically
(35:39):
on startups and highly regulated industries,where you go out there and solve their
regulatory problems.
You have venture funds that can help you withengineering or growth in marketing or hiring or
wherever it might be.
But really no one from politics had everstarted a VC fund before.
And so I launched my first fund, TUS Venturesin 2016 and seed series A, and we invest in
(36:01):
early stage startups in highly regulatedindustries where we believe that we can solve
their regulatory problem for them.
So things like I've mentioned on this podcast,FanDuel, we help legalize daily fantasy sports
betting.
Lemonade, we got them their insurance licenses.
Row, we legalized prescription via text and soon.
So companies like that, Circle, Coinbase, Bird,Latch, Alma, ended up doing three funds, about
(36:25):
300,000,000 AUM total.
And then about six months ago, I kind ofrealized something, which was the reason why
those founders took our money was not becausewe needed our money, those were all highly
competitive rounds, but they wanted theregulatory help, that's how they got it.
And it kind of occurred to me that like, whycouldn't I just do what I did with Uber and
Clear, and not deal with all of the effortinvolved in raising capital, managing a fund,
(36:51):
and then ultimately returning 80% of theprofits back to the investors, which they have
every right to.
I was like, I don't need any of this.
And so I announced I'm not taking outsidecapital anymore, and we changed our model a
bit.
So we are now doing, it's kind of a hybrid.
So it's what we did with Uber and with Clear,where we're taking equity again in return for
our work, but we're also taking pro rata.
(37:14):
And I both have my own capital, and then I havepartners who are my LPs at the fund to do SPVs
in any particular round so that we can deploycapital as well.
And you're the only VC I think I've ever metthat sees regulation as an exciting thing.
Why do you love regulation so much?
I love politics, man.
(37:35):
I think it's so interesting, and I think,hopefully over the last forty five minutes for
you and for the listeners, I've painted apicture that politics is about psychology, it's
about human behavior, it's about emotion, it'sabout belief, it's about economics.
It's really intellectually complex, and itplays out in real time.
(37:57):
It's important, right?
The things that we do can impact millions, ifnot tens or hundreds of millions of people.
And so it feels like your work really matters.
And so that's why I've always been drawn topolitics overall.
And then to me, like I said, there are a lot ofsimilarities between the campaign world and the
early stage startup world.
(38:17):
So I felt like I already kind of understood it.
Felt like I was in a new position to A, helpreally legalize disruptive things.
So help prevent the kind of corruption that yousee in Trentitrus use, where they use their
political power to block innovation, block newideas.
And we could be a force against that, which Ithink we are.
(38:41):
And then also just from an economicopportunity, I got really lucky that I just
made enough money both through my originalconsulting firm and through the Uber and Clear
and whatever else.
And I have a very, very high risk tolerancethat I was able to go pursue something that
sort of hadn't been done before.
In part because people don't really get richworking in politics.
(39:03):
You can do what I did, you start a firm and youcan make some money.
But it was just luck that Travis couldn'tafford my fee.
And it was luck that I said yes.
And it was luck in some part that Uber becameUber.
A lot of work too, but luck.
And that made me a whole bunch of money.
And the truth is I didn't grow up with a lot ofmoney.
I worked in government for a long time anddidn't make a lot of money.
(39:24):
I don't need that much money for myself.
And so I'm really happy to just deploy it,whether it's into things like mobile voting and
hunger, or whether it's into building newbusinesses and taking risks on things like
venture capital, where I think that I have theability to do it.
So there's probably other people in politicslike me who would like to do what I'm doing.
I just happen to A, amass the capital to do it,and then B, have the risk tolerance to do it.
(39:51):
You've went against some of these taxi lobbies,against the tobacco lobby in New York City.
Yep.
And I always wonder, and I wanna reallyunderstand the the opposite side and
essentially, how do they sleep at night, butwhat is their frame of reference?
How could you be for something that hurtspeople?
How do they get themselves aligned with thesekind of missions?
(40:11):
It's a good question, and I ask myself that alot too.
And I think the answer that I have come torealize is it's one of two things.
Either, because again, we all have differentperspectives.
Part of links human beings interesting isthere's 8,500,000,000 of us and we all have
sort of different DNA and different thoughtprocesses.
So there are things like, for example, we'veturned down a bunch of different things over
(40:35):
the years because I didn't want to work on itfor that reason.
So whether it was the NRA or Philip Morris orJewel or the Sackler family, you know, Sam
Backman Fried, things that I just didn't wannabe involved in.
Do a lot of gambling stuff, right?
I work in that sector quite a bit.
And there are certainly people who will say,how could you do that?
(40:58):
It is a dangerous addictive product that canruin people's lives.
And my view is people have the right to chooseto gamble if they want to.
They've been gambling since day one.
And if the choice is to have it legal and taxedand regulated or illegal, you're better off
with the former.
But I understand that not everyone shares thatview, and that's my individual moral compass.
(41:19):
So one is everyone's got their own moralcompass, and it might be that someone who
supports something that we think is wrong,genuinely feels otherwise.
Or the other one is they just don't care,right?
I mean, there's very much a zero sum mentalitythat some people have.
I would say the president first among them.
(41:39):
That is, life is a competition.
It's everyone against everyone else.
And the point of the competition is to amass asmuch wealth and as much status as possible and
as much luxury as possible.
And you do what it takes to get there.
And those are the rules of the game.
And so if you truly have a zero sum mentalityand approach to life, you don't care.
(41:59):
And if you don't care, then I guess you dowhatever you want.
What do you wish you knew before starting atthe intersection of startups and politics?
For me, it's more on the investing side, whichis I like big ideas.
I like political challenges.
I'm an optimist.
And as a result, there are things that I jumpedinto that ended up being really unsuccessful,
(42:24):
because I didn't know better, right?
Because I let myself think, oh, this is such acool idea, of course it will succeed.
And so for example, I funded the incubationpersonally, not even the fund, of a teler
religion app where the idea was to sort ofbring religion online so that you could connect
(42:44):
people in different ways and different ways ofmonetizing or whatever else.
And in my mind that made total sense.
And I put I think $4,000,000 of my own moneyinto building it.
And it was a disaster.
I mean it failed almost immediately.
And other people around me said to me, I don'tthink this is a great idea.
But I was like, no, no, no.
I'm so smart.
I did Uber this and this and that.
Of course I know.
(43:05):
And like, I was arrogant.
I was foolish.
And I paid a price for it, Now luckily, I couldafford it, but nonetheless, we started off this
podcast by talking about knowing what you don'tknow.
There are times where I haven't known what Idon't know, and I've really, you know, had to
pay the price
for that.
Bradley, this has been a master class onpolitics and startups.
(43:26):
I I've been wondering about these questions forprobably decades if I if I Cool.
Well,
I'm glad I'm glad I got a chance to help
you Thank you.
Thank you for answering them, and I lookforward to sitting down soon.
Yeah.
We'd love to.
Thanks,
David.
Thanks for listening to my conversation.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share witha friend.
This helps us grow.
Also provides the very best feedback when wereview the episode's analytics.
Thank you for your support.
So after running the successful mayoralcampaign for Michael Bloomberg in New York
(00:04):
City, you gained prominence in a startupecosystem by successfully lobbying for Uber.
Tell me about how you went about getting citiesto adopt Uber.
When you think
of Uber today, you just think of this giantcorporation, right?
A couple $100,000,000,000 market cap, bigthing.
But back then we were tiny companies, series A,I met Travis in early twenty eleven.
(00:31):
And here was this brilliant guy who wasincredibly aggressive and relentless with a
really good idea.
And when you saw the product, a really goodproduct, but still very small.
And the taxi industry was very big, verypolitically powerful, lots of lobbyists, lots
of campaign donations, lots of relationshipswith politicians.
(00:53):
And so it was a pretty heavy lift.
And we started going into cities, we kind offamously didn't ask for permission because our
view is if we did, they would just say no, andthen that would be that.
So we were better off just going in any way.
And then invariably, they would tell us toleave, we would get a cease and desist letter,
we'd get another one.
And the only way that we could counter taxispower because we didn't have at the time, the
(01:16):
kind of money and resources to match thempolitically was to do it with our customers,
right?
And the first time it happened was in 2012 inWashington DC, there was legislation that
effectively would have put Uber out ofbusiness.
And we sent a note to all 50,000 of our, to allour customers in DC and within a week, 50,000
(01:39):
of them reached out to their city councilmembers to say, hey, I like this Uber thing,
don't take it away from us.
And it worked so well that not only did the badbill die, we put in our own bill, which passed
nine to nothing, including the sponsor of thebill that were trying to put us out of
business.
And what that said to us was, oh, at the end ofthe day, politicians are just gonna, which is I
(02:01):
already know from my time in politics, butthey're gonna do whatever they think helps them
win the next election.
And all things being equal, if they can takecampaign contributions from Taxi and do their
bidding, they'll do that.
Right?
But if 5,000 people from their district all ofa sudden say, hey, don't mess with this thing.
I want this.
They're gonna listen because they're not gonnawanna piss off all those people and take that
(02:23):
much risk.
And so that became the basis for the strategy.
And then we ended up effectively using aversion of it in pretty much every single city
in The US.
And it worked amazingly everywhere.
Some were bigger fights than others.
New York kinda came back around a second timeand we had to fight it again.
But the strategy fundamentally worked reallywell.
(02:45):
Tell me the secret to how you go about aligningwith politicians.
This sounds a little cynical, I know, but keepin mind, just to give context to the listeners,
I've worked in city government, stategovernment, federal government, the executive
branch, legislative branch.
So I've really seen this movie from everyconceivable angle.
And the main thing that I took away from it isevery policy output is the result of a
(03:10):
political input.
Every politician makes every decision solelybased on winning the next election and nothing
else.
And there are exceptions.
Mike Bloomberg in my career was certainly anexception.
Everyone listening to this sort has a couplenames popping into their head right now, sure.
But by and large, that's the rule, which reallymeans you have to be able to show a politician
(03:31):
that by doing what you want, they will wintheir next election.
And if they don't do what you want, it couldcost them an next election.
If you can convince them of one of those twothings, then they'll work with you.
And if they don't think that you can help themor hurt them, you just become irrelevant.
In which case, not gonna really waste any timeon you.
(03:51):
So you have to show that your underlying policygoal is aligned with their political.
Same, I guess with a bank, if they make money,they're gonna do it.
If they lose money, they're not gonna do it.
Politicians at the end of the day are humanright?
And human beings want to advance, they want tosucceed, they want job security, they don't
wanna get fired.
(04:11):
The only real difference is in the world oftech and finance and venture like we live in,
it's around questions of revenue or burn orfundraising or EBITDA or growth.
And there it's questions of poll numbers andpolitical fundraising and media hits and social
(04:32):
media likes and things like that.
And so fundamentally, the people are stillpeople.
They just speak different languages and havedifferent sets of incentives, and you just have
to realign what you need to make sense to them.
Michael Bloomberg, I think that's a great caseof somebody that's not not purely driven by by
elections.
How how do you go about ascertaining whether apolitician is purely driven by elections or
(04:55):
maybe they they might have some firstprinciples drive their making?
Good question because obviously there's no signon the door.
And by the way, they all like to think thatthey're the latter.
They all wanna think they're Mike Bloombergwhen in reality, very, very few of them
actually are.
And so there's a few ways to tell.
One is sometimes there's an issue that isdeeply personal to a particular legislator or
(05:19):
politician for some reason.
And if you can link your thing, and sometimesyou can't, sometimes you can't.
But if you can link your thing back to thatissue so you can show them, hey, here's this
problem that you're worried about.
Maybe something affected their family member.
Like not that long ago, I was speaking to areally prominent state legislator And I didn't
even realize, but his daughter had a bunch ofonline issues with cyber bullying and
(05:43):
everything else.
And when I kind of made the analogy to what Iwas talking about to social media regulation,
that clicked for him.
And then all of a sudden he's like, oh, okay, Ilive this, this is terrible, let's do
something.
And so sometimes there might be an issue theyreally care about.
Sometimes you could just get a sense that inthe past, they've said or done things that have
(06:07):
broken with their party or been unpopular.
So like Mike Bloomberg, in some ways, the mostvisible example of that to me was, Mike is a
New Yorker, he's Jewish, you know, basicallyone, you know, was running from air during
nineeleven.
And then there was an effort to build a mosqueright by Ground 0 in New York.
And it was wildly controversial because theidea was how could you possibly build a mosque
(06:31):
at the site where 3,000 people died from thehands of Islamic fundamentalists.
And Mike's view was, you know what, they havean absolute First Amendment right to be there.
And it doesn't matter what the symbolism oranything else, that's their right.
And Mike stood up for them allowed it to happenand that was really unpopular to be honest, but
(06:52):
I really deeply admired that because it was theright thing to do.
Or even the smoking ban.
Now, I think everyone thinks it's fantastic andliterally hundreds and hundreds of cities all
over the world have followed New York's lead onthat.
But I remember because I was at city hall whenwe passed this, it was really unpopular, right?
Like you go marching parades and people aregiving him the finger And the legislature
(07:17):
didn't want to do it in city council and Mikejust got to use all of his weight and pushed it
through.
But collectively, if you look at the result ofthat and then all the other work he's done
around tobacco cessation, it saved millions oflives.
And so there are occasionally the MikeBloombergs of the world and sometimes you can
tell because either they've shown independencebefore, they're not total party hacks, they've
(07:39):
expressed a personal story about an issue theytruly care about, things like that.
Said another way, if it hurts them in thepolling and they're not idiots, essentially
they're working from something above and beyondgetting votes.
Exactly.
But generally speaking, I think the challengeis there are so many different demands on their
(08:01):
time, on their political capital and everythingelse that they're looking at everything in some
ways with like the same kind of ROI thatinvestors do.
But it's just again, rather than saying, what'sthe rate of return that I can generate here?
It's kind of what's the political rate ofreturn?
Let me give you an example.
(08:22):
So one of the things we've got at my foundationis we fund and run campaigns to pass universal
school meals in different states.
So basically it means that every kid in thestate gets free breakfast and lunch.
There's over about 13,000,000 kids in thiscountry who still don't get enough food at home
and really do need it to get it at school.
And we've been lucky, we've had some success,we've passed about 29 bills around hunger in
(08:45):
total, but sometimes we fail.
And when we fail, it's because ultimately wefail the ROI calculation politically.
So when you pull school meals, pretty mucheveryone says, yeah, we should feed kids,
shouldn't let them go hungry.
You need to be a monster to say that, to notsay that.
But then when you get into those final days ofthe budget, and I used be the deputy governor
(09:06):
of Illinois, and so I was the person that ranthe budget and remember this really well.
There's a lot more requests for funding thanthere is funding and you have to start making
choices.
And even though the notion of school meals isquite popular, there's no actual political ROI
for doing it because the kids can't vote, theirkids, and the parents don't vote because either
(09:28):
they're not citizens or they work hourly jobsand they can't get away to vote or whatever it
is.
But ultimately, you're not gonna really pick upa lot of actual votes at the end of the day by
doing school meals.
And we've had states, even democratic governorslike Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania or JB
Pritzker in Illinois, who at the end of the daychose not to fund school meals because I think
(09:50):
they realized that, yeah, you know, it's nicefor kids to eat, but if I could use that
$300,000,000 to pay off some union or someother special interests who could then actually
help me in the next election, I'm better offdoing that.
And in many ways, when I made the transitionfrom politics to venture, it actually wasn't
(10:10):
that hard to do because early stage startupsare a lot like political campaigns.
And what investors are looking for isfundamentally kind of the same as politicians.
Just again, different metrics, different kindof buzzwords.
But once you can kind of translate thelanguages, it actually is fairly similar.
(10:35):
One of I think misconceptions about lobbying isthat you literally take a suitcase and you put
it into politicians at Politicians Corner.
Obviously, that's Now it's highly all incrypto.
Highly illegal.
Now it's in crypto.
But in many ways, the most effective lobbyingis when a politician doesn't feel like they're
being lobbied when they when they own thatSure.
Feeling.
(10:56):
Yeah.
You make them a hero of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And talk to me about the effective lobbying andhow do you get your dollar to go further than
just, you know, ROI and and getting theemotional appeal in politician
Well, two things.
So one is when I started my first company, it'sa consulting firm called Tusk Strategies and
(11:17):
they run, I still own it, I don't work thereanymore, but they run really complicated
legislative regulatory campaigns all over thecountry.
And the thesis that I had for the business, andI didn't know if it was right or wrong, but it
was enough for me to take a shot.
I did this right after Bloomberg got elected,was that the days that you were kind of joking
about where a guy knows a guy, he makes a calland everything kind of gets fixed, Those days
(11:42):
are gone.
And by the way, if you're ever on a call withsomeone like that, assume that the FBI is
listening too.
And the way the campaigns are won today is muchmore multifaceted.
So yes, lobbying is still a big component ofanything, but so is earned media, paid media,
social media, digital media, oppositionresearch, grassroots, grass tops, polling.
(12:04):
There's all kinds of other factors.
And my bet was because I had experience in allthese different things, I could bring all of
these to bear and do it at the same time inmultiple jurisdictions for a client or for a
company.
And that's what would allow us to win and allowthe business to grow.
And that is what happened.
So the first thing is, you kinda have to reallylook at it and say, okay, there's, let's say, I
(12:28):
think I just listed about 10 different tactics.
It's a menu, and you don't need all 10 in everysingle campaign in every case.
So the question is, what are the things thatare gonna be most effective with the particular
regulator, the particular politician thatyou're trying to convince?
For some people, maybe it is hiring the rightlobbyists because it was also their college
roommate, and they just explain it to them andthat's good enough.
(12:51):
For a lot of people, it might have to be having5,000 constituents like we did with Uber, call
their office or text them or something likethat for some people.
So we have to run TV ads attacking them.
For some people, like this past year in NewYork, Governor Hochul did put universal school
meals in her budget, and we went the other waywith it, which is we just started running ads
(13:12):
immediately thanking everybody.
Like we basically said, we're gonna make theassumption that they've already all agreed to
it, it's happened, and we're just gonna startgiving them credit on day one, because it would
look so bad to get all of this credit forschool meals and then not do it.
That that was the, you know, get them reallyfeeling good about it.
(13:34):
Get them emotionally invested, and create atemplate where kind of no matter what happened
with the budget, this thing just had to happen.
It couldn't lose, and that's how it went.
A lot of it is really figuring out, you know,in every situation, what's most likely to move
the needle with the particular people you need.
Oftentimes in some ways, I kind of think ourjob is psychology as much as anything else,
(13:58):
because it's figuring out what will motivatethis individual person, what will incentivize
them, what will scare them, and then how do wethen deploy different tactics to sort of make
that happen.
And you've helped Coinbase, FanDuel, Lemonade,Row, you literally wrote book on startup
lobbying called The Fixer.
(14:20):
Yep.
Walk me through your framework.
How does a startup go about influencingpoliticians?
The first thing is really understanding whatyour situation is.
So because I talk to founders every single day,whether it's the ones in my portfolio or people
pitching us, one of the first things I try toestablish is either what do they know, or by
(14:42):
the way, equally important for me, do they knowwhat they don't know, right?
So like take Travis Kalanick, who's a very,very brilliant, very, very hard nosed guy.
Travis to his credit understood that he wasn'ta political guy.
And one of the reasons that we were able towork really well together and we still do and
succeed is he knew what he didn't know, right?
(15:03):
And he had his opinions and we might argueabout stuff, but at the end of the day, he let
me do my job And that ultimately works.
So one is, if you are a founder, just becauseyou went to Stanford, just because you were in
Y Combinator, just because Andrew recentinvested in your round, whatever it is, does
not mean you know everything about everything.
You might be great at the engineering, youmight be great at marketing or product or
(15:27):
whatever it is.
Odds are, you're not automatically great atpolitics.
And some regulator or elected official is notgonna just meet with you and look at your
resume and say, Oh, this person is soimpressive, I should do what they want.
Right?
So first is any founder actually that reallytruly believes that going in, I'm an immediate
no.
I will not invest.
I will not work with you.
But the first thing is you have to understandwhat you're facing, right?
(15:51):
So what are the current laws on the booksaround whatever it is you're trying to do?
And odds are, if you're a founder of aninteresting startup, you're approaching it in a
way the law hasn't totally considered it yet,because by definition, regulation lags
innovation, because until the founder comes upwith the new disruptive idea, there's no law to
pass around it, right?
(16:11):
So law is probably gonna be gray, but how gray?
Is it like, this is definitely not allowed andyou have to actually go in there and overturn
everything?
Or is it just kinda like, well, we don't reallyknow, you can make a case.
That's one.
Two, what happens to you if you don't listen tothem, right?
So like with Uber, they impounded the cars,annoying not the end of the world.
(16:34):
With Bird, they take the scooters, great, takethe scooter, who cares, right?
But if it's an SEC thing, you'd be looking atten years in jail, that's a different ballgame,
right?
So lemonade or circle or coin based differentapproach for us than say a bird or an Uber or a
mobility company.
So what does the current law say?
(16:55):
What risks do you take by your actions?
Who is against you, and how politicallypowerful are they?
Is it a union that's not gonna like it?
Is it an entrenched business group that's notgonna like it?
Is it the hotel industry, the casino industry,the taxi industry, whatever it might be?
And then how politically powerful are they?
How much money do they give to the politiciansthat matter here?
(17:17):
What kind of relationships do they have?
What kind of goodwill do they have?
Next one would be, who can you get to yourside?
So it might be your customers, like we'vetalked about.
So in some campaigns like Uber, like FanDuel,like Bird, like Ease, that really worked.
But it may be that you have the kind of productthat's maybe a really good business, but it's
just not gonna inspire your customers to do alot of outreach on your behalf.
(17:41):
So it's like, okay, who else do I have?
Maybe there is an advocacy group or policygroup, or maybe we're able to deliver things a
lot faster, and so businesses in thatjurisdiction are happy about it, and they'll
fight for you, whoever it is.
But you gotta find your allies.
You also have to then be able to figure outlike, what's your narrative and what's your
(18:05):
message?
Because at the end of the day, if you just goin there and say, you should legalize this
thing because it's good for me, nobody caresabout that.
If anything, they'll sort of not like you forthat.
You have to be to make the case credibly thatpublic policy, that society itself is advanced
because of the work that you are trying to do.
And so if you let me do X, then we can givemore people better transportation options, or
(18:33):
better food options, or give people better waysto get cheaper homeowner insurance, or whatever
it might be.
And how do you make that case?
And then who can you make the case through?
So what's the media market you're in?
What are the mainstream media options?
What are the things like podcasts and substackers and influencers and creators and who
(18:53):
can you work with there?
And then finally, and like you said, I wrote abook about this, so if you really like this
stuff, you can read the book itself.
But budget, right?
Which is sometimes I can look at a case andsay, all right, you know what, if we spent $50,
we'd probably have enough to go ahead and getthis law changed or get this sort of thing
(19:15):
approved.
And sometimes like, this is gonna be a coupleof million dollars, right?
Depending on where you are and what you'refacing.
What we almost always do is kind of make astack ranking of what jurisdictions do we think
it would be the easiest or hardest to implementthis in based on all the criteria I just laid
out.
And you usually first start with the ones thatwe know we can win, so we can get some points
(19:38):
on the board, so we can establish precedent, sowe can show that other people do it and it
works.
And then work our way up, so that as thecompany both has more success and then more
resources, they've raised more money orwhatever else, you know, we can tackle the
really hard markets.
So there's an old quote from Pericles, you maynot take an interest in politics, but politics
takes an interest in you.
(19:58):
I think a lot of startups are a little bitnaive to this.
Walk me through when startups should start tolobbying.
When is too early and what's the timeline for acompany that has a disruptive product?
Really depends on what it is you need, right?
So if you were, take Lemonade, which is aninsurance company that we invested in, we had
(20:21):
to do all of the regulatory work at the very,very beginning, because you can't sell
insurance without a license.
No one at Lemonade was gonna go to jail forthis, right?
So at the end of the day, they couldn'tactually launch operations of the company until
we did the political work first.
FanDuel, we didn't get involved actually on thepolitical side till the Series E because they
(20:46):
launched, it wasn't clearly illegal.
It wasn't clearly legal.
No one really knew.
And for a long time, they operated prettysuccessfully, DraftKings two.
And then all of a sudden, there was a politicalbacklash and then state attorney general third
edition cease and desist orders.
And then we had to go in and change the laws,clarify the laws, kind of work through all of
(21:07):
this.
So I think the first thing is you need to knowat least what it is you need from government
and when in your product life cycle is thatimportant.
It might be something you need on day one.
It might be just something that's gonna come uplater on.
And then two, if it's day one, then obviouslythat has to be one of the initial things that
(21:28):
you invest resources into.
If it's later on, you gotta be aware of it.
You have to sort of at least in your mind havesome budget reserve to deal with it.
But also keep in mind, it depends a little biton your own success, which is the faster you
grow and the more that you make your VCs happy,that means you're taking market share away from
(21:49):
somebody else.
And that somebody else is probably anentrenched interest that is more political than
you, that has more relationships than you.
And then they're gonna move as fast and as hardas they can to use politics to try to knock you
down.
And so in some ways, if you have success, youhave to assume that that's going to bring
political challenges with it and you have to beready for it.
(22:12):
Tell me about the crypto lobby and theirsuccess in the twenty twenty four election.
What changed?
Why were they so successful in this lastseason?
They were great.
So they did a great job, first of all.
And I think for two reasons, one is money,right?
And it's an industry that ultimately A, alreadyhas a lot of money, B, you have people in it
(22:33):
who are holding tokens in different ways wortha lot of money, so they have the ability to
contribute.
And C, there's no CapEx in crypto, right?
So other than mining, I guess.
So like ultimately, regulations are really,really, really big determinant in your success
or failure.
And so it's worth a very meaningful investment.
(22:56):
And they raised and deployed hundreds andhundreds of millions of dollars.
And not only did they raise and deploy a lot ofmoney, they were really smart strategic about
it, which was rather than saying like, okay,here's $3 to every single person running for
office in America.
They said, let's pick a few people and makehuge examples of them.
So like in Ohio, I think they put $40,000,000into the Senate race and were successful.
(23:22):
And what happens is when you do that, everyother politician sees what just happened and
they get really nervous.
And so your $40,000,000 investment might have4,000,000,000 in value because ultimately you
were able to change perception and behavior bylots of the other 99 senators because they saw
(23:43):
what just happened and they don't want that tohappen to them.
And so they were smart, they were strategic.
And the other thing that works for crypto is,and I mentioned this earlier, there are some
industries where the customers are reallywilling to kind of step up and fight for the
product.
Uber was one, FanDuel was one, Bird was one,Ease, which is marijuana delivery, was one that
(24:04):
we did.
And crypto is very much one of those, right?
And so you have customers that are passionate,they really believe in care.
And keep in mind, most people who trade cryptoare doing it because, know, they're interested
in it, I think it's a way to make money.
But the true believers in crypto fundamentallyare saying, look, I don't really believe in
(24:26):
sovereign banks and financial institutions.
I don't think that they're looking out for myinterest.
I think they're looking out for themselves.
And I would rather actually throw on my lotwith like minded people who I'll never even
know their names, but believe like I do, thatan autonomous currency is actually a better way
of doing things.
And so one of the things about crypto is atleast for some of the community, there's a real
(24:47):
belief system in there.
And when people believe in things and doesn'thave to be techy, you see this with, let's say,
abortion or gay rights or whatever it is, theywill fight for it.
Right?
And I think crypto has that.
There's this combination of real politic andvery strategic financing with this kind of
grassroots crowdfunding Exactly.
Aspect to it, which which accelerated.
(25:08):
So let's say that you believe that Elon Muskshould go into politics.
I personally do not believe that.
I'm a huge Elon fan.
I think he should stick to business.
But if he was to go and launch this Americaparty Yeah.
Where would be the point of highest leveragefor him to come in Yeah.
And have an effect?
Yeah.
So I've not only thought about this a littlebit, but I, you know, I've worked on third
(25:29):
party issues before.
My friend Andrew Yang created the forwardparty.
I gave them some advice.
Before my Bloomberg did end up unsuccessfullyrunning for president as Democrat in 2020, I
didn't get to play much of a role on that one,but I had put together a campaign in 2016 for
him to run as independent.
And so I really spent a lot of time looking atall of that.
(25:50):
The first question is, what do people mean whenthey say that?
Right?
Which I'm not even sure that Elon knows what henecessarily means, which is, it's one thing to
say, I am going to back and finance anindependent candidate for president, governor,
senator, mayor, whatever it might be.
And if it's a one off and you have theresources, you can do it.
(26:12):
So like the first step is getting on theballot, and it's hard to get on the ballot if
you're an independent because the only peoplewho can sign your petitions are other
independents, and that becomes harder to findand whatever else.
But it's a knowable proposition.
If Elon really meant an actual party, what thatmeans is an entity that is competing at every
(26:36):
level of government, right?
They're running candidates for city council,for mayor, for county board, for state rep,
state senator, governor, Congress, Senate,president, and they have a permanent ballot
line, which the rules differ state by state,but usually it's based on sort of capturing a
certain percentage of votes in each election.
(26:57):
That is a many, many, many billions of dollarsinvestment.
That is a many years investment.
It is potentially doable, but it would requireone massive financial resources, which he has,
right?
But he has to choose to put him into this.
Two, you need to stand for something, right?
And what you need to be able to do is somethingthat will recruit a lot of people, right?
(27:21):
So what Trump figured out with MAGA was you hadthis group of people who felt really angry at
the status quo and that he was able to mobilizethem and bring them together under this banner.
Bernie Sanders, AOCs, Zora and Magdani now, Isort of figured out the same thing on the far
left, right, with the socialists.
I actually think ironically, the bestopportunity for this is the middle, right?
(27:45):
You have all these people now who are notradicals on either side and actually feel
totally powerless and disaffected and wouldlove to have a political party that they
thought was really believed in the things theybelieve in, which really most times is just
common sense solutions to problems, right?
Like if you take almost every major issue,there's a 70% solution where the vast majority
(28:09):
of us can agree on it.
So take guns.
Most of us would say you shouldn't go intoeveryone's home and confiscate the guns that
they have, but it also shouldn't be easy towalk into a store and just walk out with an
assault rifle, right?
Or immigration, most of us would say we shouldhave secure borders.
You shouldn't be able to just walk across andget in for no reason.
But we also shouldn't be like rounding anddeporting millions of people who have lived
(28:32):
here and work here and are part of the economyeither.
And you can pretty much on every issue to mefind that.
But the problem is that 70% on any given issuetend to not vote in primaries.
And the way our system works because ofgerrymandering is the only election that really
ever matters is the party primary.
And party primary turnout is typically about 10to 15%.
(28:54):
And those are usually the most ideologicallyextreme voters, whether it's the left or the
right.
And then they end up dictating everything thathappens after that.
And so I think there's a huge opening in themiddle, and Elon could center a platform around
that.
But the problem is, I don't know that hepersonally has the discipline to stick to it,
right?
(29:14):
So if you're gonna do that in your ham, youcan't say things that are endlessly alienating
like all women, right?
Or all people of color or immigrants orwhatever it is, because now that you're
potential party members and you need theirsupport.
And so if are, if he were gonna go for it inthat way, he would really have to be able to
(29:37):
rein himself in, either stop tweeting or reallyAnd it seems like he gets a lot out of whether
it's good for him or not.
He clearly relies on the attention that he getsfrom being online and really active.
Now look, he could instead go the other way andgo super crazy far right and probably form
(29:57):
something, but it's gonna be a niche party thatsort of is filled with lots of really hateful
people that don't wanna get anything done.
Talk to me about your work in mobile voting.
First of all, tell me about that and why areyou so passionate about it?
Every politician makes every decision solelybased on winning the next election.
And as we discussed, because gerrymanderingmeans that only the primaries typically matter
(30:18):
and primary turnout is really low, politiciansare effectively held hostage by the small
groups of people who do participate in theirprimaries, which are typically either
ideological extreme voters or specialinterests.
And the only way to really change that is tochange the fundamental composition of the
electorate itself.
So instead of getting elected with 12% of thevote in the primary, you're getting elected
(30:40):
with 36% of the vote, because by definition,36% of people is more mainstream than 12% of
people, right?
And so if you assume that politicians arealways just gonna make the politically salient
choice at every turn, rather than trying tomake them different people, because we're not
gonna do that, right?
And so I kind of realized all this in the Ubercampaigns because what we saw were all these
(31:02):
people who typically did not vote in stateSenate primaries.
They didn't know who their city council memberwas.
But for us, they were, you know, through theapp telling their elected officials like, hey,
leave Uber alone.
And I kind sort of wondering like, well, whatif they can vote this way?
And so I started this thing called the mobilevoting project in 2017.
And the first thing we did was test thehypothesis, which is if you put voting on
(31:25):
people's phones, will they do it?
And the answer was, yeah, you make somethingeasier and more people do it, right?
Turnout, for example, in an election in Seattletripled.
So okay, we established yes, the hypothesis isright.
But the tech that existed at the time to dothis was pretty rudimentary and it worked fine
for 2,000 votes here, 5,000 votes there, but todo it at scale, we didn't have confidence in
(31:48):
it.
And the problem is nobody was gonna otherwisebuild the tech that we needed because a private
company doesn't wanna spend 8 figures and thenmake the code open source and give it away to
their competitors.
And the US government wasn't working on it anddidn't want to.
And so we decided we would do it.
And so we've spent the last four years buildingour own mobile voting technology.
(32:09):
We're putting the code up on GitHub now as wekeep completing each part of it.
It'll be fully posted by the end of the year.
And it will be completely free for anyone, anygovernment to just go to GitHub, get the code
and use it.
And then now we're in phase three, which is thereally hard part, which is legalizing it so
that people could start to vote on their phonesin actual regular elections.
(32:31):
And we're starting at the municipal levelbecause our view is, let's start local.
One, less hacking risk.
Two, local elections to have the lowestparticipation and turnout, so they kind of need
the help the most.
We're about to start running legislation indifferent cities around The US that would
authorize mobile voting for municipal electionspecifically.
So mayor, city council, school board, stufflike that.
(32:55):
And we've gone from this being a project insideof my foundation, Tusk Philanthropies, to
becoming what hopefully will be a very bigmovement, right?
Because we're gonna need to mobilize millionsand millions of people to demand that they have
the right to vote online because otherwise thestatus quo is not gonna like it because
typically people in power don't like making iteasier for other people to gain power.
(33:18):
And so I was lucky to get a TED talk on it thisyear.
It just came out last week.
So that helps us make the case.
Wrote a book about this called Vote With YourPhone.
We moved the mobile voting project to its ownseparate entity with its own team and
leadership and board.
We're raising money, so I've put $20,000,000 ofmy own money into mobile voting so far.
Again, totally philanthropic.
(33:40):
But passing these laws all over the country isprobably gonna take a couple $100,000,000, and
so we're starting to raise money.
And we're trying to build a movement.
And if you think about every major right inthis country that's ever been won, whether it's
woman's rights to vote or the Civil Rights Actor the Voting Rights Act or same sex marriage,
the Americans Disabilities Act or anythingelse, because enough people stood up loud
(34:00):
enough and long enough and demanded theirrights, and eventually the status quo had to
give in, and that's what we have to do heretoo.
Sure, lot of people are wondering, does thishelp Republicans or Democrats more?
Does it help moderates or extreme candidatesmore?
What are the,
It's a good question.
So it helps moderates only in the sense thatultimately more people voting means that the
(34:25):
mainstream opinion matters more to politicians.
But what's interesting is, so the one countryin the world has been doing this for twenty
years now, Estonia.
And I went over there a few weeks ago and gotto meet with everybody who works on this, and I
was talking to some political scientists, andwhat they told me was really interesting, which
was it turns out that there really is nospecific party in Estonia that benefits from
(34:51):
mobile voting more than another.
Democracy benefits because turnout issignificantly higher, especially in local
elections.
And whoever candidate loses an election blamesthe internet voting for it.
But ultimately, you would think these wouldbenefit or that would benefit.
And in the very early days, that might be thecase because some people are more apt to do
(35:14):
something on their phone than others, but atleast the data and Estonia shows that over the
long haul, it evens.
Tell me more about Tusk Ventures, the venturearm that you invest out of today.
My first exposure to tech was Uber and thenagain, Clear.
And in both cases, I took equity in part fordoing my work.
Those paid off pretty well.
And I had this thought that there really wasn'ta venture fund out there, focused specifically
(35:39):
on startups and highly regulated industries,where you go out there and solve their
regulatory problems.
You have venture funds that can help you withengineering or growth in marketing or hiring or
wherever it might be.
But really no one from politics had everstarted a VC fund before.
And so I launched my first fund, TUS Venturesin 2016 and seed series A, and we invest in
(36:01):
early stage startups in highly regulatedindustries where we believe that we can solve
their regulatory problem for them.
So things like I've mentioned on this podcast,FanDuel, we help legalize daily fantasy sports
betting.
Lemonade, we got them their insurance licenses.
Row, we legalized prescription via text and soon.
So companies like that, Circle, Coinbase, Bird,Latch, Alma, ended up doing three funds, about
(36:25):
300,000,000 AUM total.
And then about six months ago, I kind ofrealized something, which was the reason why
those founders took our money was not becausewe needed our money, those were all highly
competitive rounds, but they wanted theregulatory help, that's how they got it.
And it kind of occurred to me that like, whycouldn't I just do what I did with Uber and
Clear, and not deal with all of the effortinvolved in raising capital, managing a fund,
(36:51):
and then ultimately returning 80% of theprofits back to the investors, which they have
every right to.
I was like, I don't need any of this.
And so I announced I'm not taking outsidecapital anymore, and we changed our model a
bit.
So we are now doing, it's kind of a hybrid.
So it's what we did with Uber and with Clear,where we're taking equity again in return for
our work, but we're also taking pro rata.
(37:14):
And I both have my own capital, and then I havepartners who are my LPs at the fund to do SPVs
in any particular round so that we can deploycapital as well.
And you're the only VC I think I've ever metthat sees regulation as an exciting thing.
Why do you love regulation so much?
I love politics, man.
(37:35):
I think it's so interesting, and I think,hopefully over the last forty five minutes for
you and for the listeners, I've painted apicture that politics is about psychology, it's
about human behavior, it's about emotion, it'sabout belief, it's about economics.
It's really intellectually complex, and itplays out in real time.
(37:57):
It's important, right?
The things that we do can impact millions, ifnot tens or hundreds of millions of people.
And so it feels like your work really matters.
And so that's why I've always been drawn topolitics overall.
And then to me, like I said, there are a lot ofsimilarities between the campaign world and the
early stage startup world.
(38:17):
So I felt like I already kind of understood it.
Felt like I was in a new position to A, helpreally legalize disruptive things.
So help prevent the kind of corruption that yousee in Trentitrus use, where they use their
political power to block innovation, block newideas.
And we could be a force against that, which Ithink we are.
(38:41):
And then also just from an economicopportunity, I got really lucky that I just
made enough money both through my originalconsulting firm and through the Uber and Clear
and whatever else.
And I have a very, very high risk tolerancethat I was able to go pursue something that
sort of hadn't been done before.
In part because people don't really get richworking in politics.
(39:03):
You can do what I did, you start a firm and youcan make some money.
But it was just luck that Travis couldn'tafford my fee.
And it was luck that I said yes.
And it was luck in some part that Uber becameUber.
A lot of work too, but luck.
And that made me a whole bunch of money.
And the truth is I didn't grow up with a lot ofmoney.
I worked in government for a long time anddidn't make a lot of money.
(39:24):
I don't need that much money for myself.
And so I'm really happy to just deploy it,whether it's into things like mobile voting and
hunger, or whether it's into building newbusinesses and taking risks on things like
venture capital, where I think that I have theability to do it.
So there's probably other people in politicslike me who would like to do what I'm doing.
I just happen to A, amass the capital to do it,and then B, have the risk tolerance to do it.
(39:51):
You've went against some of these taxi lobbies,against the tobacco lobby in New York City.
Yep.
And I always wonder, and I wanna reallyunderstand the the opposite side and
essentially, how do they sleep at night, butwhat is their frame of reference?
How could you be for something that hurtspeople?
How do they get themselves aligned with thesekind of missions?
(40:11):
It's a good question, and I ask myself that alot too.
And I think the answer that I have come torealize is it's one of two things.
Either, because again, we all have differentperspectives.
Part of links human beings interesting isthere's 8,500,000,000 of us and we all have
sort of different DNA and different thoughtprocesses.
So there are things like, for example, we'veturned down a bunch of different things over
(40:35):
the years because I didn't want to work on itfor that reason.
So whether it was the NRA or Philip Morris orJewel or the Sackler family, you know, Sam
Backman Fried, things that I just didn't wannabe involved in.
Do a lot of gambling stuff, right?
I work in that sector quite a bit.
And there are certainly people who will say,how could you do that?
(40:58):
It is a dangerous addictive product that canruin people's lives.
And my view is people have the right to chooseto gamble if they want to.
They've been gambling since day one.
And if the choice is to have it legal and taxedand regulated or illegal, you're better off
with the former.
But I understand that not everyone shares thatview, and that's my individual moral compass.
(41:19):
So one is everyone's got their own moralcompass, and it might be that someone who
supports something that we think is wrong,genuinely feels otherwise.
Or the other one is they just don't care,right?
I mean, there's very much a zero sum mentalitythat some people have.
I would say the president first among them.
(41:39):
That is, life is a competition.
It's everyone against everyone else.
And the point of the competition is to amass asmuch wealth and as much status as possible and
as much luxury as possible.
And you do what it takes to get there.
And those are the rules of the game.
And so if you truly have a zero sum mentalityand approach to life, you don't care.
(41:59):
And if you don't care, then I guess you dowhatever you want.
What do you wish you knew before starting atthe intersection of startups and politics?
For me, it's more on the investing side, whichis I like big ideas.
I like political challenges.
I'm an optimist.
And as a result, there are things that I jumpedinto that ended up being really unsuccessful,
(42:24):
because I didn't know better, right?
Because I let myself think, oh, this is such acool idea, of course it will succeed.
And so for example, I funded the incubationpersonally, not even the fund, of a teler
religion app where the idea was to sort ofbring religion online so that you could connect
(42:44):
people in different ways and different ways ofmonetizing or whatever else.
And in my mind that made total sense.
And I put I think $4,000,000 of my own moneyinto building it.
And it was a disaster.
I mean it failed almost immediately.
And other people around me said to me, I don'tthink this is a great idea.
But I was like, no, no, no.
I'm so smart.
I did Uber this and this and that.
Of course I know.
(43:05):
And like, I was arrogant.
I was foolish.
And I paid a price for it, Now luckily, I couldafford it, but nonetheless, we started off this
podcast by talking about knowing what you don'tknow.
There are times where I haven't known what Idon't know, and I've really, you know, had to
pay the price
for that.
Bradley, this has been a master class onpolitics and startups.
(43:26):
I I've been wondering about these questions forprobably decades if I if I Cool.
Well,
I'm glad I'm glad I got a chance to help
you Thank you.
Thank you for answering them, and I lookforward to sitting down soon.
Yeah.
We'd love to.
Thanks,
David.
Thanks for listening to my conversation.
If you enjoyed this episode, please share witha friend.
This helps us grow.
Also provides the very best feedback when wereview the episode's analytics.
Thank you for your support.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.