Conservative Tech Company of the Week: CaucusRoom

Meet CaucusRoom: the online community for conservatives to gather, get organized and take action locally.

Starting today, Safe<br>Space will be launching a once weekly segment called “Conservative Tech Company of the Week” wherein we will highlight a conservative tech power player. Each week, we will have the privilege of speaking with a representative from a different conservative tech company, delving into their platform and shedding light on the pressing matters impacting the conservative technology community. Today, we sat down with Matt Knoedler, the CEO and Cofounder of CaucusRoom. Here’s what he had to say.

What is CaucusRoom?

“CaucusRoom is an online community for conservatives to gather, get organized and take action locally. I like to call it a ‘social action network’. You join CaucusRoom because you’re following a statewide campaign, or maybe a presidential campaign, but then you get involved in a local city council race or something because you were able to talk to your neighbors about it.”

“Early on we were able to put together a live chatroom and embed some livestream video. When the lockdowns happened, which was about a month after we launched, we realized we could probably host official GOP Assemblies, that all the sudden we couldn’t hold in person because of the COVID lockdowns. So that began what ultimately became our real niche which was a verified meeting environment of conservatives.”

“So we screen people for their identity and also their political affinity as they join CaucusRoom, but once you’ve gone through that screening, you can feel comfortable talking with your new neighbors you’ve just met and with people involved with campaigns across the country, knowing that we are all on the same team.”

“Our original goal was to help groups and campaigns use CaucusRoom to organize geographical - to find local volunteers and get active. But all along people kept calling us because they liked our meeting environment. They felt like it was a secure place to have conversations. They loved that we had things like secret ballot votings - it was just a really easy and understandable meeting environment. Because we verify the identities of people, they could then have important meetings: committee meetings, official GOP Assembly meetings. So that is what people have always called CaucusRoom back to use us for and we were finally able to find a good live meeting tool that made that experience much easier for the host of a meeting to launch and get started. So we just launched that last month and we are anxious to scale very quickly. We have a lot of national groups that are interested, so we are excited to see what happens this month.”

Why did you start CaucusRoom?

“Well I think conservatives on social platforms felt like they were ‘playing away games’ and we needed a home field. We needed a locker room, a place where OUR team could huddle and talk that was ours. The concept of a ‘caucus’ is closed door meeting of likeminded people looking to advance a likeminded purpose. That is the environment we set out to create with CaucusRoom that we just was very needed. In a state like Colorado where it keeps getting more blue, you can just feel alone in your own neighborhood and there really are conservatives who live in every neighborhood in the country they just have to find each other so they know they’re not alone. And if they know they’re not alone, they’re going to feel more bold and empowered to try and change something in their community.”

What feature on CaucusRoom has been the most successful? What feature has been the least successful?

“Our virtual meeting software has definitely been the best and now it’s much much better, it’s super easy to use and it works on any browser.”

“The struggle we had when we first started to scale was about 2 years ago when Parler was de-platformed and we had gotten about 40,000 accounts in a month of just individuals joining CaucusRoom just to find a place to meet their conservative neighbors. We had overbuilt the verification system, and so there were too many queries going on at all times. That slowed down the site a lot. So it really took us about 18 months to rebuild the site in a way that was much more data efficient and made for a really good User Experience. Having trouble scaling is a good problem to have obviously because there’s demand, but it was just too much and we really needed to rebuild, so that’s what we did and now we’re great!”

What direction are you going to take in the future? New features, new verification system etc.

“I think the progression of virtual meetings into virtual assemblies and stadium-like events is really big for us. We’ll also do a lot more event management even for people who are hosting in-person events; we’d love to help people sell tickets to monetize their events and so I think all of that will be happening within months. We already have designs and software in the works for all of that. So the progression is going to be quick. We definitely know there is a need for this, you know, people who use YouTube or Zoom do not feel secure. So to the name of your blog ‘Safe<br>Space’ we want to create a ‘safe space’ for these people to talk with one another where they feel safe.”

“We are going to host at least 2 GOP Chairman debates for the Colorado Republican Party next month. You’ll see that, although people can talk on YouTube or Facebook, we will have better attendance and better discussion on CaucusRoom than they will on those platforms.”

Finally, in your opinion, what do you think is needed within the conservative tech movement?

“I’ll say this, the conservative consultant world is not a world where they root for each other. They sort of root against each other. And that’s understandable, it’s a small, competitive market. But on the other side of the aisle, they do tend to root for each other, right? In the startup communities they root for each other. Like I am always rooting for all the other startups that I’m talking to, even if they’re in the same space as CaucusRoom, they’re just going to make the market a bigger, more established market. So I think the thing that the conservative tech movement needs is just to root for each other more often. There are a few out there that do that like Red Balloon, PublicSQ, those are two guys who are really rooting for everybody to succeed, and they succeed by doing that as well. Just follow your product path, and anything that you get from talking with your competitors is just going to be a boost to you. No matter what you’re building, just root for everyone else who’s building as well.”

Thank you so much, Matt for taking the time out of your day to sit and chat with us about your business. If you’re interested in checking out CaucusRoom for yourself, click here.