That conversation got hijacked and turned into diversity. As a result of that as many challenges as other immigrant communities of color face indians are doing okay in blacks fall further behind because its promised that diversity would help everyone including the adjudicated victims of slavery hasnt come true. Diversity is more helpless you know these diversity priorities. They skimmed the top of the asian and indian and other communities and low income blacks fall further and further behind and we say look at all this diversity. Blacks who suffer from jim crow fall further and further behind. So while yes you do need to have this multipolar conversation there is a blackwhite conversation that needs to be had. We need to have both of them. [applause] all the conversations about the conversation about race. We have to wrap this guys because you are getting tired. I can tell because im getting tired and im people like you are. We are going to move to where the book signing is happening. We are not going to move at all but you will be able to move soon. I inelegantly am wrapping this is the pseudohalf moderator of this i want to thank you two copper being here. [applause] thank you all for showing up. [applause] i learned a lot and you learn a lot. Its an incomplete thing. To be continued. We will see you later. We will do this again hopefully we will be coming to a podcast near your ear buds in the near future. Thanks for that note. [applause] [inaudible conversations] host tim hwang what does fiscalnote . Guest fiscalnote as a platform that allows people to search track and analyze legislation regulations in case law in realtime. Host when did you come up with the idea . Guest i came up with the idea about the spring of last year so i had sort of done all these Different Things which we can talk about a little bit later that led up to this problem that i was having read essentially i didnt know what was going on in the government and i found it incredibly frustrating and weird at the same time because we live in a democracy and we should know whats going on in our government at any given time. The traditional way of getting Information News outlets, attorneys, lobbyists didnt make a lot of sense. So i thought there should probably be a computational solution to this. We live in an age of google and we live in an age of rapid search information. Its really easy to find this out so thats where the idea came from. Host is fiscalnote a Search Engine and a sense . Guest started off as a Search Engine allowing people to search legislation across all 50 states in realtime but from there it evolved into something more than that in analytics and forecasting and a lot more of the natural english process thats on the cuttingedge of Computer Science today. Host how do you use these analytics . How can people use them . Guest lets say i am a fortune 500 or large nonprofit hearing about the constituency that i represent right now i have a policy staff maybe 10 people, maybe 100 people that sit there literally on google and search whats going on with my company or my constituency. Imagine being able to get realtime alerts information delivered straight to your phone and email and on top of that being able to look at different analytics like whats the probability of a bill passing in being able to leverage Data Analytics to look at those types of things. Host how do you measure the probability of a bill passing . Guest sure. We take into account a lot of datasets including roll call Data Campaign finance data Demographic Data electoral data and crunch that on the backend. Once we do that we are able to look at things like what is the profile of this individual legislator and how has he or she voted in the last 20 years so there happens to be a bill coming up that relates to something they have looked at before so ken bee back to the data and extrapolate for the future how to develop those outcomes. Husband this is all done via an algorithm that you developed . Guest yes. Host how old are you . Guest im 22. Host how did you get interested in all this . Guest so my own career has taken a lot of twists and turns in the last couple of years but i really started off initially in the Obama Campaign in 2008 working initially in the field and moving to the data side initially looking at some of the demographic type issues and those types of things but moving more into the issue base things. After the Campaign Event i was thinking about, i was 17 at the time and i ended up really deciding to throw my hat into the race for the board of education of Montgomery County maryland. Much to my surprise i yuan and was thrown into the mix of politics for a very early on in 2009 after the financial crisis in a lot of these issues as they came up. Being a financial crisis is interesting because it allows us to think about creative ways of using resources and data and analytics to target those things. So what sort of one of the forefront leaders in being able to leverage those things in education policy not in jurisdiction but around the country as well. After my term ended i decided i will go back into the whole school thing. I went to college. Host princeton. Guess going to princeton and studied computer policy trying to look at things like how can we use advanced algorithms to check government fraudulent activity and rfps are looking at things like open data policy and how do governments currently publish information as well as communicate with the public in terms of what they are doing right now. Looking at those issues was helpful for me and really allowed me to have the background for starting this company. Host two more questions before we introduced the third member of the panel here. According to your biography you are on leave from Harvard Business school. Guest i am deferring indefinitely which basically means i guess i could go back at some point in the future but im pretty much on leave at this point. Host and who uses fiscalnote . Who are some of your clients . Guest our clients range from fortune 500 like allergan, atco and nonprofits like planned parenthood, Information Technology and history counsel. We also have a number of more Mediumsized Enterprises and law firms a platform as well. Host in the Democratic Governors Association and the republican Governors Association is while . Guest both of the policy Research Staff includes the client. Host welcome. Thanks for having me. He talked a little bit about having a hard time understanding whats happening in government and following government. Do you think that is changing if you are a nonprofit or a mediumsized corporation not just because of things like fiscalnote but the openness of the internet . Is it easier to follow whats happening . Guest unfortunately not. Theyre a couple of different factors that play into this. The first thing is the complexity of government has really exponentially increase in the last couple of years not just the federal level but the state level as well particularly the local level. Whats more interesting is that as our society continues to globalize companies are not just interested in whats going on domestically but also internationally as well so to expect a legal team or a policy team for Government Relations team to be able to monitor these things when the complexity is increasing and the scope is increasing and no resources or decreasing seems to be a harder and harder problem. But i think we have seen this problem in the Media Industry itself in terms of journalism and in terms of the amount of coverage. Some of the most undercovered areas in the United States in terms of coverage are state capitols and city halls and even the federal government wont be able to cover major issues. Thats a function of the fact that one, theres no real Business Model out there in terms of how to disseminate information to back because of increased complexity of its resources arent getting married to be able to cover a lot of these issues. Guest what is making things more complex . Guest i think one of them is the world is a lot more complex so there are a lot of issues that we had never thought about before and anything ranging from biotechnology to Carbon Emissions to International Trade and terrorism. What will these issues have to do certain extent been debated for hundreds of years these new technologies and new ways of thinking are forcing, putting a lot of stress on our existing institutions. I just read the statistic somewhere that in the federal government there were a million pages of new regulations imposed last year which is for any enterprise a big undertaking to look at that information and there are two lines to a business. I think there is a big friction between our two largest institutions in our society between governments and business and the commerce we live in today. Guest we talk about open data, big data come all these new possibilities for resources. Is that still in its infancy or have these opportunities not become full . What are the opportunities they are . I can talk about what we do at fiscalnote. The challenge in our company at least in the initial stages was trying to get the data. Not that i will call out in the states but some states are better than others and often we have to deal with things like publishing laws on the scan or a handwritten basis. We have to go when a track that information, adjusted and run ocr and do very complex things. People dont understand whats going on. Thats the state of things today and we try her best to work with governments and teaching them best practices and teaching them how to publish information correctly but thats still a large challenge today in United States. The interesting thing is actually a lot of countries outside of the u. S. Are much much better in terms of open data policy than we are. I just came back from a very long list of countries just trying to survey what goes on in these Different Countries and its very fascinating to see some of these countries are able to come up with Information Machine readable formats or Information Published in a way that we are able to pick up and adjust and that makes it exciting for us as a business prospect but also very frustrating to work with domestically as we try to continue out algorithms and technology. Host mr. So they can you give an example of a country thats doing it better interview than our country . What are they doing . Guest the information that they publish is machinereadable which is a very big thing which basically allows our algorithms to index information and make it searchable there quickly. Its not enough to be able to scan information and stick it on line. Lets say we have a budget document, an 800 page budget document. There is zero way for an organization to go in and search that document. Very simplistic things like that allow technology to really open up the transparency and the possibilities. Host how is fiscalnote different than say thomas which the library of Congress Puts puts together a . Guest too things. Our scope is a lot larger so we are able to go off into localities and municipalities in aggregate everything into one place. The second thing is our analytics which differentiates us from information providers out there so things like we can look at trends on issues going across different states. If california passes something how likely will that impact people in massachusetts or virginia and then of course looking at things from a broader perspective in terms of Product Development in the regulatory and case law cases where we are able to connect the dots across the entire country. Guest have you been able to measure analytics and how successful and how accurate have they been . Guest so right now our algorithms are 94 accurate. Guest thats remarkable. Im interested because there is this trend of predictability and the nate silvers of a world putting members together. This is the way things are going and will the numbers, 94 of the time tell the truth in the future . Guest yes, i think its really interesting where the Political Legal scene is today. I actually compared a lot to the Financial Services industries in the 1950s and 1960s back when deals were made by a handshake or in person. People used to price things without math which is mindboggling to me in todays age but you have these new players come in. All these guys to come in and say wait, hold on a second. What if we use statistics and established a baseline for predictability in our markets and what if we could forecast things . Obviously when i came in all these guys thought it was crazy. Theres no way you can do that. Today we take that for granted in terms of being able to look at financial models and unpredictability in our markets to a certain extent. I think whats frustrating in the political and legal system today is a seems arbitrary. It seems arbitrary whats on the docket. It seems arbitrary that who your judge determines the outcome of the case and to be able to get the analytics around from a litigator why cant i just go to courtroom and see how a judge has ruled in the last 30 years or if im looking at a piece of legislation might cant i see how someone is voted in last 15 sessions where this legislature has look of this type of fish in the last 10 years. I think that establishes some level of predictability in some sort of a baseline in terms of how we look at government and have a look at the relationship between government and its very similar to the Service Industry and that the way in which we go about it in history and technology and software and statistics empowering a lot of these things. Host lets say we work for boeing or something and because of all the military issues going on around the world today, we want to see if theres going to be an increase in military spending. I know theres a macro, macrolook at this. How would somebody use your product to say yes, i see the congress increasing military spending on the president site. Guess kosher. Our analytics see whether or not something passes are now so we can break down on a legislator by legislative basis how they are likely to vote on a certain bill. For a tactical perspective theres a lot of ability for her attorneys and lobbyists whatever to be able to go in and say that may look at this bill based on the cosponsors. Here the 50 people that the most likely to vote for him likely to beauport endure the 50 that are the least likely to vote for that you can look at developing a strategy in terms of trying to get at the information you need. What i will say is that our analytics dont provide all the answers. There is not a crystal ball where you can ask any question but that being said there is a lot of power to be a look combine some of the attic analytics are provided with broad Industry Intelligence or human intelligence and being able to combine those two things should be able to get to the answers you would like to get to. One of the big challenges as we look at expansion is we are bumping up against obviously some political issues and in the last democratic countries that are less likely to vote for publish their issues. In those cases we will have to step back and obviously reassess where we are as a company but in terms of the lowhanging fruit a lot of countries in south america theres a lot of laws and existing there and how they are changing. Host can you incorporate the human factor . Will john boehner put this on the calendar and will harry reid allow this to be voted on the floor . Guest yes. We have the second algorithm we came up with was actually a prefloor algorithm that was capable of forecasting similar levels of backers say whether or not something would get to the floor. Thats actually based off of matching issues with leadership, matching committee sponsorships and how likely something is to get through this committee supposed to this committee and looking at those analytics we are able to get to those answers. Guest its interesting because i feel thats what lobbyists do. Have you had any kind of pushback are people saying you spend thousands of dollars in relation to fiscalnote. Guest in terms of the dissemination of information by itself i found it so frustrating going back to how i started the company that it takes a human to get you the information the first place. Its like going to the library and asking to search for a certain book. There are certain things that are taken as they are happening and we should be able to know what they are happening. For attorneys or for lobbyists or Compliance Professionals to be sitting there searching and tracking things in todays age doesnt make any sense. The way i view it is we provide the service that allows them to be able to trade some level of monetary value, opening up their time for strategies for assembling coalitions, for doing whatever they need to do to get to that, the outcome is. Guest i know you have done a lot of time with the Obama Campaign in 2008. Have you done much work on political . Guest as we look at future opportunities internationally particularly the parliamentary structures, parliamentary structures are interesting from an electroperspective because the elections decide the policy agenda so we are monitoring the electoral activity a lot more heavily in most places. Host mr. Hwang on your web site fiscalnote you have what it cant potential candidates for president in 2028. How did you come up with some of those names and some of those names are local officials. Guest yeah so its really interesting we actually have a good indicator of who the most influential legislators are in their state and part of the things we do is we have to rank how likely they are to push a bill forward and the outlook they have on being a cosponsors. We can actually look across the country