Alex Setzer, Explaining A Business Situation! | Biz To Biz Podcast

15 Mar 2025 · 2 min

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2:08

In this Biz to Biz podcast excerpt, Speaker B recounts the origin story of a new platform that lets ordinary people pool small donations to fund legal and political battles on their behalf. The idea was sparked three years earlier when an HOA in Orlando faced a costly water‑rights dispute and could not afford professional representation. After the HOA president raised the needed money by knocking on 1,000 doors and collecting $25‑$100 contributions, Speaker B realized the model could be scaled using modern crowdfunding technology. He connects this to the long‑standing political‑lobbying industry, noting that both sides have never been able to work together despite a shared need. Speaker A frames the problem as a loss of traditional media (newspapers) and a lack of voice for low‑income citizens, positioning the platform as a way to give everyone a voice in legal and policy matters. The conversation highlights the gap between existing crowdfunding and lobbying mechanisms and proposes a hybrid solution that democratizes access to legal advocacy.

The newspapers are gone, right? That we don't have the, the, uh, the ability for people that don't have a ton of money, right? Yeah, that they don't have a voice, you know? And this gives everybody a voice.
So the origin story of this is actually very funny, um, if I'm being— if I'm being honest with you, uh, so I had an HOA, which is kind of like, you know, the scenario you're in right now, right? And this was like 3 years ago, who wanted to hire me. And they really were kind of getting screwed over on multiple levels of government. And it was a water rights issue and they were getting bounced back and forth. It was very, very complicated. And the more complicated the issue is, the more expensive it's going to be. So I quoted them a certain price, you know, immediately they said, "We just don't have that money." I said, "I totally understand that. I get it." And that's why the little man gets screwed over because they don't have the ability to hire somebody like myself. And 3 or 4 months go by and I get a phone call from the HOA president out of the blue. He says, I've got your money. And I said, you gotta be kidding me. I said, I gotta just ask, how did you get the money? He says, oh yeah, I just, I just went up like every Saturday morning, I'd go knock on— there's like 1,000 rooftops in the neighborhood. He goes, I just go knock on all the doors. He's like, you know, it was like $50 here, $25 there, a couple people gave me $100. He's like, before you know it, you know, I was able to get all of your money. So I go— I live in Orlando. I go to Orlando Magic basketball game that night. I'm a couple beers in, but I'm sitting there, I'm like, why can't you scale this concept? Why couldn't you like take this exact concept using crowdfunding and scale it on a platform that allowed everybody to do this? Because crowdfunding exists, we all know that, and political lobbying exists. And these are two industries— I mean, if you think about it, political lobbying is the oldest industry in America. 250 years old, right? It's been around forever. But you've never— you've had two groups of people that have never been able to do business together. So both sides want to do business together, they just never had the ability to do it. So we created— yeah, yeah.
And more and more, more so, it's, it's not really like crowdfunding, it's more like, hey, here's the bill, but we're all gonna