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Higher Ground Labs has achieved a tremendous year of growth and results, and we wanted to pause for a moment of reflection and gratitude.
In 2019, our team:
- Hosted a political-technology convening with over 400 attendees
- Diligenced & selected 14 new startups for our accelerator
- Led 2 Series A investment rounds
- Participated in 6 follow-on investments
- Facilitated 128 hours of accelerator programming in Chicago, D.C. & LA
- Built a series of Investor Demo Days with over 100 investors in Boston, NYC & D.C.
Today, our portfolio is providing key infrastructure for over 6,000 progressive campaigns, causes and labor groups. Every 2020 Democratic Presidential campaign is using at least three of our tools, while in 2018 every federal Democratic campaign used at least one. In 2019, ten of our companies worked with campaigns and organizations that drove victories in Kentucky and Virginia.
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HGL ran an open-application for our 2019 accelerator, which resulted in over 150 applications and 14 new companies, bringing our portfolio to 36 companies. These startups are solving core challenges in politics today: generating and optimizing compelling content, optimizing organizational performance, fighting disinformation, and unlocking a broader electorate. We also made ten follow-on investments in our top performing companies across all three cohorts, including new investments from our Relational Organizing Fund.
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We continued to invest in the political tech community to raise our shared understanding of the impact technology can have on our politics. In January, we worked with our partners to convene 400+ stakeholders in Chicago for three days of sharing learnings and best practices around the progressive technology that powered the 2018 midterm elections. We also revamped our jobs board (that currently has 75+ open positions), started a monthly newsletter The Higher Ground Lab Report, and hosted our first webinar on Data-Driven Messaging in a new webinar series that will explore how the political technology ecosystem is shifting ahead of the 2020 elections.
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Supporting our entrepreneurs remains core to our model. We hosted four accelerator intensives for our third cohort with 128 programming hours, 66 speaker-led sessions, and 500+ event attendees. In addition, we built a series of Investor Demo Days for our Cohort 1 & 2 companies with over 100 investors in Boston, NYC, and DC. Finally, we’ve participated in convenings across the country at the Democracy Alliance, SOCAP, ASDC, NMV Summit, & elsewhere.
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We want to thank you - our community of entrepreneurs, activists, donors, and investors for supporting us this year. We are looking forward to accomplishing even more in 2020.
Happy Holidays!
Betsy, Shomik, Hillary, Teddy, Sarah & Maggie
PS - If you’re as excited about progressive political technology as we are, join our team! We’re hiring.
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