FiscalNote manager urges attention on politics

Rebekah Kang

By Lee Min-hyung

Rebekah Kang, a market development manager at U.S.-based startup FiscalNote, believes in the power of politics to drive the nation into a more transparent place.

“My Candidate,” an application providing information about local politicians, was launched against this backdrop, she said Wednesday.

“I decided to start the service as people could not easily access information about the nation’s legislation, administration and jurisdiction,” Kang said.

She said the application was developed last year to provide detailed information about politicians, including their election pledges and their political careers.

By providing the information in one application, she thought it could reduce huge social costs from the lack of communication between people and politicians.

As part of her efforts to turn the application into a more organized platform, she decided to join FiscalNote this year. The company was founded in 2013 under the motto of “Make government data more beneficial.” It provides data-driven political, legal and regulatory information with its own big data-based software.

“I joined the company in February as a market manager,” she said. She thought FiscalNote would give her the opportunity to accelerate her dream to provide an upgraded version of the My Candidate service.

“FiscalNote’s mission was in line with that of my service, so I did not hesitate to become a member of the company,” she said.

She started her business career in 2010 as a co-founder of Friends Cube, a social networking platform provider. She stayed at the company for two years but felt a strong urge to learn more about startups and meet more people involved in the business.

This led her to compete in the AngelHack Hackathon contest in 2013 and she won first prize, a trip to Silicon Valley. The Hackathon is a social event in which computer programmers and other interested people create software or hardware-based programs to improve the safety of computer programming.

“I had always thought of launching the My Candidate service, but it did not generate profits,” she said.

Her experience in Silicon Valley helped dispel such worries, though.

“I saw so many startup CEOs working on what they want to do, not caring about whether it makes profits or not.”

As a FiscalNote market manager, she is seeking to introduce the company’s wide range of services to Korea.

“We are doing market research to expand our business across the Asia region,” she said. “And I want Korea to be the first country to introduce our services in Asia.”