The politics of owning a tech company - POLITICO
▻https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2026/05/19/the-politics-of-owning-a-tech-company-00927804
▻https://static.politico.com/4d/c4/6948651c4961baa7b3af4b2ac8a2/https-delivery-gettyimages.com/downloads/522495892
Aligner le capital d’une entreprise avec les causes qu’elles défendent... c’est comme une réinvention usaméricaine de la notion de scoop.
Hustle is a popular app among Democratic campaigns for sending personalized messages encouraging recipients to vote and organize. Hustle first rose to prominence by supporting grassroots outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential bid, and has since worked with campaigns for Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). Despite working with progressive candidates, Hustle has been owned by prominent tech entrepreneur Chamath Palihapitiya’s venture capital firm Social Capital since 2020. Palihapitiya, a co-host of the popular All-In podcast, became a well-known supporter of President Donald Trump during the 2024 election.
Hustle announced today that Social Capital has sold the company to its employees, who hope that the new ownership structure will better fit their values. Palihapitiya told DFD in an email, “I sold Hustle to them to harvest capital losses to net against some other gains. I initiated the transaction on my own volition. That said, I wish them the best of luck.”
DFD spoke to Hustle CEO Jesse Hassinger about what led up to the sale, and what it means for a tech company to be owned by its employees. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was the issue with Hustle’s previous ownership?
Unfortunately, in 2024, what we encountered was Chamath’s decision to support Trump in the election. There was now a misalignment between the values of customers, and the values of leaders and ownership of the company. Though the day-to-day operations did not change ... that was very difficult on a human level for employees of the company. You can imagine dedicating yourself to a cause or a mission, and [then] you learn that your boss is dedicating his time and energy to causes that are in competition with the vision that you’re trying to see in the world.
Coming out of 2024, it was a hard year for customers and employees who were sticking with it. Some trust was lost in that period of time, understandably.
What makes this ownership structure unusual in the tech industry?
It’s a very rare win for employees. Employees are not having a good year. [The structure] is unusual in a lot of dimensions. Going from VC ownership to employee ownership — that’s unusual.
How we’ve organized governance as well as financial ownership of Hustle is also really different. For a typical VC-funded organization, as a new employee, the ratio of distribution of equity between you and a leader might be like 500 to one. We’ve essentially made sure that even for the most recent employee, that ratio is like four to one. When there’s a vote that requires participation from the owners of the company, employees will be able to cast a vote and make decisions that determine the direction of the company.
Why is it that campaign tech companies tend to only work with one political party or the other, along partisan lines?
It’s about trust — trust with data, trust with support and services. Partisanship is at all-time highs, so we see in this particular space [that] there is a bifurcation between tools that support one set of causes or the other, and they generally fall along partisan lines. This is not typical in other marketplaces, but [trust] is very important in civic tech. There are tools that work with all sides — they tend to be used less often because of that trust principle.
I would’ve thought working with only one party would limit your business. But working with both parties limits it even more?
If you’re working for all sides, it’s definitely a choice. In my experience and from conversations, picking a side is an important decision that a business will make when operating in this particular space. One of our first customers was Bernie Sanders, texting college kids that if they were feeling the Bern, they should head to the stadium. That’s where we got our start, so we made our choice a long time ago.
There’s a growing divide between the political values of tech company executives and their employees. What do you think is driving that divide?
The social contract between employers and employees has been somewhat frayed, which we’re seeing increasingly in software engineering and technology. These were jobs that were not just coveted, but were also highly rewarded and incentivized for commitment to those tech companies. There’s anxiety and precariousness around longevity in those careers, and there’s been an incredible number of layoffs. Just at a very human level, being dislocated from a job you might have had for 20 years at an organization that’s printing beaucoup bucks — it’s heartbreaking.
The pendulum has swung very fast in one direction that favors some of these larger corporate entities. Employees will find it hard to have their voices heard by the leaders of those companies. That is where organized labor traditionally has come in. The role of labor in this new environment will become more relevant. I suspect that will become a new opportunity for employees to organize their workspaces.
#Scoop #Economie_numérique #Economie_sociale_et_solidaire #ESS






