By
Bergen Kenny
Las Vegas – SpeakEasy Political, a breakthrough political tech startup that makes it faster and easier for campaigns to move political direct mail, took home top honors at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Conference in Las Vegas last Wednesday. SpeakEasy won Best Campaign Tool & Tactic at the New Tools Shout Out. 40 startups and political tech companies applied for the Shout Out, and 16 make it into the final competition. Voting was live by contest attendees.
“We’re thrilled that folks are excited about our model – the quality of our democracy depends on everyone being able to participate in the process,” said Eric Jaye, SpeakEasy’s co-founder. “SpeakEasy lowers the barrier to entry by combining do-it-yourself mail templates with high-quality voter targeting. Now, a candidate or cause can get a mailer out the door in a matter of hours, not weeks – and pay about 20-40% less for it.”
SpeakEasy was founded in 2015 by Eric Jaye, Bergen Kenny and Danielle Winterhalter. The company is rare both because it upends the current consultant-based model of political mail, and because a majority of its founders are women.
“It used to be that someone running in a down-ballot race, like school board or city council, couldn’t afford high-quality, voter-targeted, political direct mail communications,” said Danielle Winterhalter, SpeakEasy’s Director of Strategic Partnerships. “Paying a consultant was out of the question – so they were priced out of the process. SpeakEasy solves that problem by combining professionally designed templates with the same voter targeting tools that presidential campaigns use. It’s one-stop shopping for campaigns looking to get their message out.”
Although it’s been around for just a year, SpeakEasy is battle tested. Dozens of candidates and groups have used SpeakEasy for their political direct mail – from the LA County Labor Federation to the Oregon House Democrats, and individual candidates from California to North Carolina.
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