Just after the inauguration in January 2017, Nathaniel Teichman, chief operating officer of an audio sharing app, went to a rally for Planned Parenthood in Washington Square Park in New York City. He saw a problem. Activists who called the offices of their representatives in Congress became stuck on hold and had to endure long waits before they could voice their messages.
“It seemed like there had to be a way to use technology to make it easier for people to take part in the democratic process,” said Teichman, 30, who studied business at Columbia University.
Since graduating, Teichman had wanted to pair his business background with his passion for music. In 2015 he began working for Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail on an app called Ense. It functions like an audio version of Twitter allowing musicians to share sound clips. After the election of President Donald J. Trump inspired Teichman to political action, he wondered if Ense’s model could be repurposed so that citizens could share their personal stories with their representatives.
In early 2017 he began working pro-bono on nights and weekends with collaborators, Aneesh Bhoopathy and Phil Ditzler, whom he met through Ense. With “a little bit of computing magic and a little bit of manual labor,” he said, they co-founded the app Stance. It delivers audio clips, many of them wrenching testimonials, from users’ mouths straight into representatives voicemails.
For the activist on the go, Stance means no more navigating automated phone prompts, no more waiting on hold, and no more being unable to get through when…