Jon Braun, a Bradley alumnus with a computer science degree, presented his self-started app Perikles at the Launching Innovations Speaker Series on Oct 3.
The Launching Innovations Speaker Series is a set of guest speakers at Bradley that occurs as a feature for students in the Innovation for All Living Learning Community. The initiative highlights startup founders from the G-Beta Accelerator program.
“It’s a really cool program,” Managing Director Marcos Hashimoto said. “We specifically contacted people from the program and looked for especially compelling stories.”
Braun participated in this program to create Perikles, a neutral source for voters to obtain information on potential candidates in their area.
“I really just want everyone to be able to be confident in their vote, without having to sell their soul to a political party,” Braun said.
The idea for Perikles came from Braun’s roommate.
“I was never into politics, but my roommate was; he got me interested,” Braun said. “I thought, ‘I’m a computer science major, I could actually do something with this.’”
Braun initially titled the app “Digital Democracy,” but later decided that it seemed too supportive of the Democratic Party. He wanted the site to be neutral, so he renamed the platform after Pericles, a historic Greek politician who inspired our current system of democracy.
Working a traditional full-time job and as a bartender, Braun works on the app when he can, currently running information for around five districts.
Since Perikles is a voting app, Braun doesn’t expect it to be used more than once or twice per year, so he tracks its success by the rate of new downloads.
“We are getting about double the amount of new downloads each year,” Braun said. “Our most recent numbers was over 600 downloads from new users and that is just through word of mouth campaign.”
The Launching Innovations Speaker Series can benefit students by showing them projects from various fields. Students in and out of the Living Learning Community listen to get inspired and start thinking.
“We want to get the students dreaming for themselves,” Executive and Academic Director Mary Conway Dato-on said. “Listen, respect feedback and stay true to your mission.”
