Episode 11 | Ryan Anderson

The Atlanta Story

The Atlanta Story podcast features meaningful stories of Atlanta’s builders, creators, and entrepreneurs. In this episode Jon Birdsong sits down with Ryan Anderson, Founder of Georgia Votes.

In today’s episode, Jon sits down with Ryan Anderson, Founder of GeorgiaVotes.com. What started out as a fun rabbit hole analyzing voter data, has turned into a premiere source of analysis for any and all Georgians looking to understand voter data and demographics. In today’s episode Jon and Ryan talk about the trends happening with Georgia voters, how Andre Dickens won the local mayoral run-off in a landslide, the upcoming 2022 election cycle, and much much more.

The Atlanta Story is put together by the folks at Atlanta Ventures -- and we can’t wait to share some of the personalities behind the brand. Atlanta Ventures invests in entrepreneurs through community, content, and capital -- most notably through our Studio with companies like Greenzie and Intown Golf Club. We believe the best entrepreneurs learn from other great artists in different fields.

In this episode, we discuss…

1. You are a Georgia Tech graduate, analytics guru, data junkie, and newsletter writer. Before we get into more about you, let’s give the readers a quick overview of what is Georgia Votes? And maybe what it isn’t?
2. How did you come up with the idea to start it?
3. Before we get into the mayoral election that just wrapped up, tell us how long it’s been going and what the past year 14 months of running Georgia Votes has been like? It seemed like the whole world was watching us a year ago.
4. Any insights or learnings from that election that is worth sharing?
5. You’ve been doing this for several years, what trends do you see from 2018 to 2020 to coming up in 2020?
6. Do you believe that Covid has made or will make a dramatic difference in the voter makeup of Georgia’s electorate?
7. Do you have any insight into how redistricting will affect 2022?
8. What percentage of your time do you spend on Georgia Votes?
9. Let’s switch to local politics. X candidate won last night, what trends do you see in the Atlanta constituency that lead to yesterday’s results?
10. Tell us more about your newsletter, what piques your interest, etc.
11. What is in store ahead for Georgia Votes? Any major features requested that you’re like, “We need to do that?”
12. Why Atlanta and what has Atlanta done for you?

Resources discussed in this episode:

https://www.georgiavotes.com/

How you can get involved:

Visit atlantaventures.com/studio if you’re interested in learning more about Atlanta Ventures and the Studio.

Where you can find us:

Website: www.atlstory.com

Twitter: @theatlantastory

Instagram: @theatlantastory

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