We spoke with Stump co-founders, Brian Hedden and Henry Lai, on building an app that provides unbiased information on politicians, ballot measures, and more. Brian and Henry have backgrounds in video and design and created Stump using Bubble to help people identify misinformation and political propaganda.
What problem does your project solve?
Stump provides unbiased information on politicians, ballot measures, and other pressing issues so that people can separate political propaganda and misinformation from the facts. Our goal is to help transform the way that voters interact with the government. We recognize that many voters do not have a strong grasp of certain issues, so our mission is to encourage civic participation by creating a year-round political action platform that benefits voters, as well as larger organizations and politicians.
How does your app work?
We believe that good visual aesthetic designs are functional designs, which differentiates our platform from others. Using Stump, voters can compare candidates and politicians by issue, engage with other users to discuss ballot measures, and create personal voter guides that they can share with friends. In the future, organizations will be able to use Stump to recruit new members and encourage existing ones to vote, while politicians will have access to virtual town hall tools, which will expand their reach with constituents.
Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.
Our team met through a grassroots environmental campaign. After the campaign was defeated by the fossil fuel industry’s massive advertising spending, we were inspired to create a better way for average citizens to access unbiased information on elections and politics. Coming from design and video backgrounds, we started by making product designs. We were looking for a way to implement them when we discovered Bubble.
Why did you build your app on Bubble?
We needed to get our prototype up and running quickly, and Bubble provided excellent tools for bootstrapping something ourselves. Bubble allowed us to create a prototype with actual election data, which helped us acquire users with much richer insights. We are planning to incorporate their feedback into our future plans.
What have been your successes and traction so far?
We built our first ballot prototype for a local city council election back in fall 2019. It became clear from our initial feedback what we needed for the app to succeed: year-round engagement. In 2020, we designed and built our bill-voting prototype, which we are promoting now by reaching out to organizations and individuals to collect their votes on current Colorado legislation. So far, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive.
What are your future plans for your app?
Currently, we are working with a great team of civic-minded front-end and back-end engineers to launch our product MVP for fall 2020. We have created a strategic plan for marketing, business development, and fundraising. Shameless plug: If you are interested in donating, you can visit our website.
Learn more about Stump: Facebook | Twitter
About Bubble
Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 400,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.
Join the no-code movement today.
Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.
