We built Reach for the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign as a tool for ourselves after we realized traditional door-to-door canvassing methods were limiting who we were talking to and when we were able to effectively collect data in the field. Reach allowed us to canvass in the streets, subway stops, and community events in so many new ways that it revolutionized the way we connected with voters. This is a part of how we won, and we knew that other progressive people-powered campaigns could use it to win too.

We began the effort to spin Reach into its own product shortly after the AOC primary in early July 2018. We formed the company and assembled an all-volunteer team. Three weeks later, we had launched on our first campaign and knew it was poised to take off.

We began this project as volunteers with a passion and a vision for making new better technology for campaigns, but knew that if we were going to be able to serve the movement effectively for the long-run, we would need to work on this on more than just our nights and weekends. We raised some funding from mission-aligned investors so we could hire our volunteer team to work on Reach full-time. Reach is now a PBC which serves as a technology vendor to campaigns, labor unions, non-profits, activist groups, and other progressive organizations all over the country.