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Elections need an upgrade. How we get there w/ Tad Milbourn, Founder of RankedVote

It's an upgrade to our election process. Right now, there's all sorts of lawsuits and shenanigans going on to get candidates on ballots or off ballots because of the plurality voting system.

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Episode Description

Tad Milbourn, Founder and CEO of RankedVote, joins the show to talk about

  • The momentum that's building around ranked choice voting. What it is, how it works, and why it's a better method of getting consensus.
  • Lessons learned from Tad's first company, Payable, the YC experience, and navigating a successful exit and selling to Stripe.
  • "Upgrading state and federal elections".  An election software market overview and current state of election reform at state and federal levels.
  • Eliminating friction in the user experience to build stronger advocates for ranked choice voting.
  • Tad's decision to start RankedVote as a solo founder, and the differences in the founder journeys between Payable and RankedVote.

Episode Transcript

Tad Milbourn

Founder of RankedVote

Tad Milbourn is the founder of RankedVote — the best way to run ranked choice contests online. As of September 2024, over 1.6 million ranked ballots have been cast across 60,000+ contests on the platform.

Prior to RankedVote, Tad held business and innovation leadership roles at Intuit — focusing on small businesses, entrepreneurship, and tax.

Tad was also CEO and Co-founder of Payable, a software platform to pay contract workers faster. While at Payable, Tad raised millions in venture capital from top-tier firms Y-Combinator, Redpoint Ventures, General Catalyst, and Freestyle Capital. In 2017, Tad negotiated the sale of Payable to Stripe — now one of the highest valued privately held companies in the world.

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