The Great Battlefield Entrepreneurship in Democratic Political Tech with Danny Hogenkamp
Jan 30, 2026
Danny Hogenkamp, entrepreneur who led Grassroots Analytics and now runs dumb.co, explains why he left to build a movement for dumb phones. He discusses product lessons from scaling a political tech company. He describes device-less meetings, experiential marketing like phone-free bars, surprising Gen Z uptake, and how a synced secondary dumb phone can free attention and time.
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Promote Internal Leaders Fast
- Let strong leaders take the wheel and promote from within to unlock growth.
- Rotate leadership every decade to avoid stale messaging and create promotion opportunities.
Fundraising Tools Pay The Bills
- Fundraising tools are lucrative within political tech, while organizing and advocacy products are harder to monetize.
- Grassroots stayed on fundraising to drive financial viability and allowed expansion into nonprofit fundraising.
Win Attention Long Before The Fall
- Stop assuming fall ad dollars alone win elections; influence accumulates over years of content exposure.
- Invest earlier in shaping where people spend attention, not just late-stage advertising.
