Magnus Strobel: More political participation with Nexus Politics

Magnus, have there ever been moments in your life when you wished you had more opportunities for political participation but didn’t have the chance?

Magnus Strobel: Certainly. I’m very politically interested and motivated. My dad was on the local council for years, so politics was always a topic at dinner. I signed petitions and took part in demonstrations and local council meetings. But I was never really satisfied with the digital participation options. There is room for improvement in the process of contacting politicians, getting updates from meetings afterwards and gaining insights into politics. That’s why my co-founder Christoph Waffler and I started Nexus Politics. We are both interested in how democracy works and why there is so much dissatisfaction right now.

What is the reason for this dissatisfaction?

Magnus: Many are frustrated by previous experiences and feel that they cannot achieve anything as individuals or that they are not being heard. Those who haven’t given up yet lack the tools and opportunities to get involved. Many of us are busy in our jobs and can’t just go to a citizens’ consultation for half a day. We want to create digital, asynchronous opportunities for participation.

Three goals of Nexus Politics

So you are concerned with inclusion and justice.

Magnus: Exactly. The first of our three major goals is to facilitate participation and thereby increase it. Because the more representative the opinion is, the stronger our democracy becomes. The second goal is transparency, i.e. opening up the “black box of politics”. Politics is already doing a lot to be transparent, but the documentation is not easily accessible. Nobody looks at the minutes of parliamentary meetings to see whether an issue has already been discussed. We want to create a single entry point to bundle all relevant information for citizens’ concerns. The third goal is accountability. People should have the opportunity to measure politics by what was promised and what was kept, so that transparency also has consequences. We build our tools on these goals.

How does the platform work if I want to submit my request as a citizen?

Magnus: You enter your request in a chat window on our platform. During the chat, questions are asked in order to identify the problem. You then need to register with your e-mail address and name. However, the concerns themselves are anonymous; it is not publicly visible on the platform who has submitted what. Other data such as age and gender can be optionally provided to give politicians better data-based insights into public opinion.

Municipal, state, federal – at which levels do you offer your platform?

Magnus: Our goal is a digital democracy platform for all levels. A lot of democracy and participation takes place at the municipal level in particular. We have therefore now expanded our platform to include our own model for citizen participation in municipalities. A lot of money, know-how and technical expertise is usually available at federal level, but this is often not so well developed at municipal or state level. We want to provide local authorities with the tools they need to facilitate citizen participation effectively.

Focus on digital municipal policy

How does the model work for cities and municipalities?

Magnus: We want to pick up the citizens where they already are, i.e. on the municipality’s website. We offer municipalities the option of embedding our chat window and the map with the concerns via an IFrame on their website. The municipality can then run surveys or citizen participation via its own platform. The data ends up with us and can be analyzed via a dashboard. We offer them a CRM system to follow up on citizens’ concerns and resolve them.

Isn’t there already comparable software?

Magnus: In contrast to our competitors, we are very affordable. Our system currently costs 99 euros per month per access. Large providers often cost several 10,000 euros a year, which small municipalities cannot afford. Open source solutions such as “Consul” have to be implemented in-house, for which the town hall usually lacks the technical expertise. We believe that citizen participation should be an integral part of a municipality’s core tasks, and we make this possible even when budgets are tight.

Does your platform also offer an opportunity for media companies?

Magnus: As the fourth estate, the media play an extremely important role in democracy. We see them as key stakeholders. The idea is that we create a match: When citizens submit issues, we show them suitable content that the media has already created. We would also like to cooperate with the media to use our tool for public opinion polling. Newspapers could use our technology for surveys at the end of their articles to evaluate them more efficiently.

Scaling and added value for politicians

Your concept is based on politicians responding to concerns. How successful has this been so far?

Magnus: We are in the development phase. We are currently implementing processes to automatically classify, categorize and bundle concerns so that we can pass on bundled policy briefings. With this idea, we want to get more politicians on the platform in the future. So far, around 50 politicians have created an account. There are around 2,700 politicians in the Bundestag and the 16 state parliaments. The aim is to have all of them, or at least a large proportion, on the platform.

How do politicians benefit from your platform?

Magnus: For us, making politics more inclusive also means lowering the barrier to entry into politics. Young politicians need visibility, which often costs money, for example for their own website. We want to create a platform like LinkedIn where all politicians can easily create a meaningful profile. We also offer a survey tool for feedback and are developing other tools, such as for newsletter and campaign management.

Financing and promotion at the location

How do you finance your platform outside of this subscription model?

Magnus: We work for-profit. We want to be politically independent and neutral. As a non-profit, we would be dependent on donations, which are often used to pursue political goals. We also don’t want to compete for donations with organizations that are dependent on them. I am convinced that if you can build a business model, you should do so. However, we are “impact first” and not profit-maximizing. Our aim is to cover our costs in order to continue developing the platform. We are currently financed by our own funds and still have money from competitions to cover running costs.

So you can fall back on subsidies at the location?

Magnus: I like to say that if we fail, it’s down to us, because it can’t be the location or the ecosystem. We are a spin-off of the Technical University of Munich and have a place in the TUM Incubator and an office in the Munich Urban Colab. We were one of five impact start-ups from the city of Munich and part of the Social Impact Republic. In the beginning, we had the EXIST start-up grant and funding from the European Social Fund. Munich and Bavaria offer us every opportunity.