Represent.me - Digital Democracy Platform

The Venture

Founded Represent.me in 2014 as CEO and ran it until 2018 (now dormant pending market appetite). We built a digital democracy platform to fundamentally reimagine how citizens engage with politics—moving beyond binary voting to rich deliberation, issue-based engagement, and transparent accountability.

The Problem

Traditional democracy suffers from critical engagement failures:

Low-resolution feedback: Voting every 4-5 years provides minimal signal about what citizens actually want. Politicians must guess at mandate interpretation.

Party system constraints: Voters must choose entire policy packages (vote Labour = accept all Labour positions), even though most people have nuanced views that don’t align with party platforms.

Accountability gaps: Politicians make promises during campaigns, but tracking delivery is fragmented across media, Hansard records, and scattered fact-checks.

Polarization: Political discourse pushed to extremes by vocal minorities and media coverage of conflict rather than consensus.

What I Built

Represent.me created infrastructure for continuous, issue-based democracy:

Issue-Based Voting

• Users voted on specific policies, not politicians
• Positions aggregated into public opinion heatmaps visible to decision-makers
• Over 1.2 million votes cast across hundreds of policy questions

Politician Matching

• Politicians declared their positions on the same issues
• Constituents could see alignment scores: “Your MP agrees with you on 7/10 issues you care about”
• Reduced tribalism by showing cross-party agreement on specific issues

Deliberation Tools

• Comment threads with argument mapping (pros/cons structured separately)
• Evidence-based discussions linking to source materials
• Moderation systems preventing toxic discourse while preserving substantive disagreement

Accountability Tracking

• Politicians’ campaign promises linked to their voting records
• Automated alerts when representatives voted contrary to constituent preferences
• Public scorecards showing promise-keeping rates

Growth & Impact

• 20,000 members attracted across the UK
• ~100 politicians participated, including MPs, councillors, and London Mayoral candidates
• 60% of top candidates in the 2016 London Mayoral elections used the platform
• 1.2 million votes cast on policy issues
• Featured in The Times: “Plotting a revolution in the way voters engage with politics”

Fundraising & Team Building

• Secured £100K seed funding from impact investors
• Built a gender-balanced team of eight across product, engineering, community management, and partnerships
• Maintained mission-driven culture while navigating tension between growth and democratic integrity

Tech Stack

• Platform: Ruby on Rails backend + React frontend
• Database: PostgreSQL with full-text search for policy discussions
• Matching Algorithm: Custom affinity scoring based on weighted issue preferences
• Data Integration: Parliament API for voting records, ONS for constituency data
• Moderation: Combination of automated flagging and community moderators

Lessons Learned

Democracy Is a Product, Not Just an Ideal Early versions prioritized civic virtue (“engage because it’s your duty”). This attracted politically engaged users but not mainstream adoption. Reframing as “get the policies you want by making your voice heard” improved retention. Lesson: idealism doesn’t scale; self-interest does.

Politicians Need Cover to Participate MPs feared that disagreeing with constituents would create attack lines for opponents. We added privacy controls (MPs could respond privately to constituent preferences) and framed participation as “listening to voters.” This reduced political risk. Lesson: when users face reputational risk, reduce it before asking for engagement.

Deliberation Requires Active Design Simply adding comment sections produced toxic arguing. Structuring discussions into “supporting arguments,” “opposing arguments,” and “clarifying questions” improved quality significantly. Forced-choice architecture (select a side before commenting) reduced low-effort snark. Lesson: good discourse is engineered, not emergent.

Scaling Trust Is Harder Than Scaling Technology Platform virality was easy (users invited politically engaged friends). But maintaining democratic legitimacy as we grew required constant work: transparent moderation, diverse voices, preventing single-issue capture. We never solved this fully. Lesson: trust is the bottleneck for civic platforms, not tech.

Market Timing Matters Launched pre-Brexit referendum when political engagement was low. Post-referendum, engagement spiked, but the platform faced competition from single-issue campaigns that were easier to understand (“Stop Brexit” vs “Use Represent.me to influence all policy”). We struggled to communicate value in a polarized environment. Lesson: complex products need calm markets; crises favor simple calls to action.

Why It Went Dormant

Represent.me was ahead of its time. In 2014-2018, the civic tech market was small, and monetization models were unclear (advertising felt wrong, subscription alienated low-income users, institutional contracts weren’t ready). We also faced the “cold start problem”—platforms need critical mass of both politicians and citizens, but each waits for the other.

The product vision remains valid: democracy needs better infrastructure for continuous, deliberative engagement. But market conditions (institutional readiness, revenue models, political climate) weren’t aligned. The platform remains dormant, pending shifts in either institutional appetite or grassroots demand.

Lasting Impact

While Represent.me didn’t achieve mainstream adoption, it:

• Validated that citizens want more granular engagement when offered low-friction tools
• Demonstrated that cross-party consensus exists on many issues, but party politics obscures it
• Contributed to broader civic tech movement exploring digital democracy alternatives
• Informed my later work on trust infrastructure and stakeholder coordination platforms

The Times quote still resonates: we were indeed plotting a revolution—just one that required more patience than venture timelines allowed.