Countable

The bet

Countable launched in 2014 to fix a familiar problem. Most people have no idea what Congress is actually voting on, and no easy way to weigh in. Founded by Bart Myers and backed by Canaan Partners, the app summarized pending legislation in plain language and added short video explainers. A user could tap yea or nay and send that position straight to their representatives.

The bet was that if understanding and contacting government became easy enough, enough people would use the app that the scale would eventually be worth something.

Peak

The product was good, and people noticed. Countable earned steady press as the app that made contacting Congress painless, drew millions of downloads and became a recognizable name in the second wave of civic apps. In 2019 it acquired both Brigade and Causes from Sean Parker, putting three of the era's best-known civic-engagement brands under one roof. On paper, Countable was the survivor of its cohort.

What worked

The legislative explainers were clear and honest, and the video was well made. The one-tap message to a representative took friction out of an act most people find intimidating. The engineering was strong.

That quality is what made the later pivot possible. The community-engagement technology Countable had built for citizens turned out to be good enough that large companies would pay for it.

What failed — the mechanism

Countable built a good civic app. TechCrunch wrote in 2019 that consumer apps for improving democracy are tough to monetize, and by 2021 Countable was selling engagement software to brands such as Starbucks, Uber and Patagonia. Agora reads this as a sign that the consumer civic app could not carry the company.

Corporations were another matter. They wanted to mobilize customers and employees, the same technology did that well, and that market paid. So the company followed the revenue. TechCrunch dates Countable's pivot to 2017. It bought Brigade's technology and Causes in 2019, and Wikipedia dates its enterprise relaunch to 2020. By 2020 the civic app had been merged into Causes.com and the countable.us address redirected away from it. Countable rebuilt itself around enterprise brand communities and in 2021 raised a $12M Series A on a client roster of Starbucks, Uber and Levi's.

The civic tool was left behind by the business that grew out of it.

What Agora takes from it

In Countable's case the money was in engagement technology for brands. Governments elsewhere do pay for engagement tools, so the lesson is about the consumer app. That gradient pulls civic tools out of civics and toward whoever will fund them, and Countable followed it.

Who pays has to be settled early, before the fundable path leads away from participation the way Countable's did. Agora keeps participation free, and the platform stays anchored to verified officials and the substance of their work. A general-purpose engagement platform is one any buyer could redirect, and Agora isn't built as one.

Countable survived. What survived was no longer civic.