Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer (Part 2)

Lori Steele Contorer: I thought I would do it forever until I was asked to speak at a United Nations Conference where I had an interesting opportunity. The week that I was speaking at the conference in Switzerland happened to be the week that Arnold Schwarzenegger won the gubernatorial election in California. All of the best minds of technology were at this conference. They were talking about how to use emerging technologies in the early 2000s to help not just transform industries but also to help developing countries throughout the world.

Strangely, because of this election, everyone was talking about voting. They were of course talking about how Arnold Schwarzenegger was now Governor of California, which seemed odd in Switzerland. I kept thinking that the really interesting thing was all these people were doing extraordinary technological things but no one was looking at elections. No one was saying, “Why aren’t we using these advanced technologies to solve election problems.”

When you think back to 2000, it was really clear to me that probably the world’s most important business process was using some of the most antiquated technologies and certainly the most antiquated process in the world. I looked at the business leaders around me and said, “If you think about what you’re doing, it’s authentication and security. You should think about voting.” Nobody would.

Sramana Mitra: You decided that you were going to build something to address that?

Lori Steele Contorer: That’s right. If one sees a problem in the world that is significant and they ignore it, they become part of the problem in my mind. I wanted to think about how to bring together my expertise, which was looking at how to make companies successful or who was making companies successful and see if I can do the same thing with voting.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking?

Lori Steele Contorer: This was 2004.

Sramana Mitra: Did you decide to start the company right then?

Lori Steele Contorer: I didn’t actually think that I could do it. It seemed like something that was way out of my area of expertise, but I couldn’t let it go. For months, I thought about it and found myself feeling sad that it wasn’t happening. A friend of mine said, “You should do this. You can do this.” I said, “How? Why?” She said, “You’ll figure it out.”

I then saw that Jeff Cole was putting together the World’s Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and there was a note saying, “If you tell us your story and if it’s an interesting story, we’ll invite you to this conference.” I thought that was going to be it. I applied and was accepted. Two weeks later, I quit my 17-year-old career and headed to Oxford for three days. The funny thing is I found out years later that everyone was invited that year because it was a new conference. It wasn’t quite the litmus test that I thought it was.

Sramana Mitra: But it solved the problem that you needed to solve in your life. Who cares, right?

Lori Steele Contorer: Exactly.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Raising $20 Million from Angel Investors: Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele Contorer
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