Prof. Honest Tea Steps Up To Save America

The fate of our democracy hung in the balance as Barry Nalebuff took step number 2,500 at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Humphrey Street.

If Nalebuff meets his goal of 10,000 steps, he will raise money for progressive voter turnout. If he doesn’t, friends and families will get a notification that he has failed the cause for the day.

Nalebuff is tracking his steps on a new app timed to help freaked-out politics-watchers harness their nervous energy to a productive use as they fret over whether President Trump will win a second term and decimate democracy.

This carrot-and-stick donation app is the latest creation from Nalebuff, the Yale School of Management (SOM) professor responsible for Honest Tea.

Like his other entrepreneurial side gigs, this is not an academic project.

“This is my activist hat,” Nalebuff said. “[But] I am using things I’ve learned about regret and self-contracts.”

The app, Step Up for Democracy, achieves three goals: It raises money for local voter turnout and protection groups through the Movement Voter Project. It spreads election awareness among the app user’s friends, family and neighbors. And it keeps users exercising during the Covid-19 pandemic, when those working from home can stay there all day.

Golden leaves swirled around Nalebuff’s feet as he insisted that I download the app and click through the set-up screens.

Each user sets a goal to walk either 5,000 or 10,000 steps per day. I set my goal at 5,000 and allowed the Apple Health app to give Step Up for Democracy that data. (Nalebuff’s app is available only on iPhones.) I already had a surprising number of steps and decided that bike rides must count.

The app makes no bones about what the voter turnout is meant to do. Within the first screens, the app advertises itself as a way to help defeat Donald Trump.

No particular moment prompted Nalebuff’s virtual battle against the 45th president.

“Four years of this [did],” Nalebuff said.

Nalebuff walked and talked briskly as he rounded the corner from Orange onto Edwards Street. Fellow Yale professor Alan Gerber has found peers — like neighbors and roommates — are good at voter turnout, he explained.

Step Up for Democracy uses that research. When users invite friends and families to sponsor them, as they might in a walk-a-thon, the invitations themselves are part of the voter turnout effort.

“If you’re doing this, there’s no way you’re not voting,” he said.

He stepped aside for a mother with a baby in a stroller, then pressed on. Research indicates that we stick to goals better when we choose a punishment for ourselves for failing to meet it and a referee who will enforce the punishment. This is the idea behind another Yale entrepreneurial brainchild, stickK.com, through which users lose money if they do not keep their commitments to themselves.

These deterrents are effective, Nalebuff said. He once started a semester by telling students he would teach his last class in a Speedo if he failed to lose a certain number of pounds by that point. He encouraged his students to set similarly embarrassing self-contracts. He was hauled into an administrator’s office and told that the contracts were wildly inappropriate. He countered that he would not be teaching in a Speedo because he would meet his goal — and he did.

Nalebuff said that originally Step Up for Democracy had a weightier punishment: The donations would go to the Republican Party if users failed to meet their step goals. However, too many people told him that risk outweighed their desire to use the app, so he scrapped that consequence.

The notifications to sponsors are a significant stick too, he said. If a user is shy of the steps they need for the day, the app notifies their sponsors that they may need a little nudge to get walking.

Nalebuff admitted he has failed his goal multiple times. Still, he’s already raised $1,061 for Movement Voter Project just in the week that the app has been live.

Nalebuff turned the corner at Whitney Avenue, skirting the border between Yale and East Rock. He raised his voice over a leaf blower further down the street.

A former student, Peter Kostka, and his son volunteered to create the code for the app. Sophie Spiegelberger created the Step Up for Democracy website and its online campaigns. Spiegelberger is part of Democrats Abroad, the arm of the Democratic Party that helps overseas voters.

The hardest part of the process was getting someone to take donors’ money, Nalebuff said. He tried the Democratic National Committee and a whole slew of other liberal organizations. All use ActBlue to process donations and follow election contribution laws, but ActBlue was too busy to integrate Step Up with its system.

Finally, Nalebuff found that the Movement Voter Project uses Momentum, an app that ties donations to everyday acts like a coffee purchase or a Trump tweet. Momentum was willing to work with the Step Up app.

Cycling through liberal organizations set the app launch back two to three months, Nalebuff said.

The team took the app live last week and sent out their first Twitter campaign on Thursday.

Since then, 58 people have downloaded the app. They have taken over seven million steps and raised over $13,000 for the Movement Voter Project, which splits donations between local groups like Black Votes Matter-Florida, New Voices For Reproductive Justice-Pittsburgh and CT Students for a Dream.

As Nalebuff wrapped up the interview, he spotted one of his neighbors. His neighbor offered to bring him peppers; Nalebuff offered a variety of tropical fruits in return. Did he and his daughter want a jackfruit? Some persimmons? Had they heard of breadfruit?

Nalebuff dug into his garage and returned with not a jackfruit but small jars of his other side gig, Maker Oats. He had sold the overnight oats kit to Pepsi. Pepsi was no longer interested in developing it, so Nalebuff recently bought it back.

Handing over the jars to me as a farewell, he led his neighbor inside to get the fruit.

“You should download Step Up for Democracy,” Nalebuff said to the neighbor. And his daughter should try it too.