Interviews with Entrepreneurs: Kevin Baas – Creator of AutoRedistrict

At a conference this summer, I walked around asking people to share their personal stories about entrepreneurship while they were waiting in line to get in. Kevin was one of the line-waiters with a story to tell.

Fresh out of teaching a seminar at Harvard’s Center for Geographical Analysis, Kevin Baas was excited to meet with me to further discuss his entrepreneurial project: AutoRedistrict.

When our scheduled conversation came, I immediately knew my brain cells were a bit outmatched by the heavy-lifting, triathlon-sprinting statistical and technological brainwaves Kevin spewed out as if he were having a casual conversation with a friend. Luckily, we eventually got down to a level I could comprehend and I began to wrap my head around the concepts Kevin spends his free time focusing in on.

Kevin’s story is not all too unfamiliar to anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. There’s a pretty common flow to discovering a business idea you can be passionate about:

For Kevin, a full-time software developer, it was more about finding a way to do what he loves in a way that actually benefits others. I got the feeling that Kevin was motivated by a few simple drivers:

  • Have fun seeing a project through to completion
  • Do something meaningful for society

And who doesn’t want those things? What’s greater than seeing something you created become a reality? What brings more satisfaction than finding a way to positively change the world around you?

Stage 1: See a Problem

If you’ve ever gotten into a Facebook argument or “friendly discussion” (those don’t exist), then you’ve been in the same place Kevin was when he conceived the idea for AutoRedistrict.

Perhaps you’ve heard of gerrymandering. I always knew it was something politically deviant, but there are so many disreputable things about the political process that it’s generally a basket I’ve avoided talking about altogether. For those of us who aren’t aware, gerrymandering is the term for when the political powers that be manipulate the borders of their voter district in order to unfairly favor one party over another. For instance, if a Republican is in office, he may include a neighborhood packed with historically Republican voters into his voting district to increase the chance of being reelected. Or at least that’s my dumbed-down understanding of the issue.

Spurred by a conversation on Facebook, Kevin began to question why this task of redistricting is a manual process in the first place. It’s 2019, we have record-low trust in politicians and record-high ability to automate processes to remove the human-error-or-bias altogether. Kevin describes the process of politicians deciding their own districts as “like the fox guarding the henhouse.”  It doesn’t make sense.

Step 2: Do Solutions Exist?

In my conversation with Kevin, he shared that there are some ways people have tried to avoid gerrymandering, but the process is typically still manually persuaded or flawed.

Some states, hearing the cries for fair voter rights, use a non-elected, hand-picked committee of seemingly “unbiased” voter representatives. According to Kevin, these independent commissions are “the closest attempt to non-political bias we’ve come up with so far.” However, the process is still manual in nature and, as we all know, politicians still manage to fenagle their way into decisions.

In fact, a popular non-profit known as “FairVote” has gained speed in spreading awareness and reform regarding gerrymandering.

Other software has been developed to try to combat this issue, but in Kevin’s eyes, they left out crucial variables or favored certain criteria over others in a detrimental capacity.

Step 3: Can I Make It Better?

Kevin was really searching for two things at the onset of this project: contribution and something interesting to work on in his free time. “I wanted to feel like I am making a contribution, so to speak,” Kevin mentioned, and tackling gerrymandering seems like a perfect fit.

It’s not a popular topic to take on, since reform has been slow and the act of redistricting happens only every ten years, following the census. This all makes funding for research and political action difficult since it’s hard to gain momentum on a decade-by-decade basis. However, it is important. The decisions that politicians will make in 2020 after the census will hold ground for ten years, so now is the time to act.

The main solution for this issue is to take the existing manual and biased task and automate it using fair and accurate software. This requires significant understanding of geographic variables, technical skills in terms of creating the software, and dedication to solving a long-lasting issue. Over time and research, Kevin has developed all three.

Step 4: Do Something About It

This is where it gets fun. The desire to take action is what sets entrepreneurs apart from the crowd of bystanders. Facing the challenge at hand and deciding that the time and effort paired with little to no immediate reward is still worth it to make a difference or build something for yourself.

But “doing something” doesn’t come without fear. From my chat with Kevin:

“Knowing how long it takes to build something like this, the big fear was that I would get halfway done and my motivation would dry up and I would have nothing to show for it. Second biggest fear, even if I did finish it, would anyone know or care about it or would it become dead weight? Fortunately, neither of those fears came to fruition.”

Initially, Kevin talked a lot about trying to get buy-in for the software. Not a marketing or sales driven person by nature, this could seem like an immediate turn off for the project. However, he decided to pursue it anyway, and let the results speak for themselves.

Since it started out as a fun side project anyways, he wasn’t too concerned about whether or not it would be successful in the end. I would say this ended up being a strength, as it allowed him to explore things without the pressure of needing to be wildly successful. This is a powerful lesson that if you care enough about something, and you enjoy doing it, just do it. Don’t be concerned with whether or not you find smashing success in the end; just enjoy the process.

“I did a lot of research – doesn’t look like it’s been done before, so I figured I’d start it,” Kevin said. The only way to know if the software was effective was to finish it and test it out. Eventually, he created an algorithm that “optimizes multiple criteria over a geographic space. I don’t know of any other software that does that for anything.”

Is It Working?

Luckily, the final product works and has been gaining traction over time. “There is low demand because redistricting happens every ten years,” Kevin said, “but we have the tech for it now, and people seem to be realizing that.”

Fairvote.org, the organization mentioned earlier, uses AutoRedistrict to redistrict multimember districts, which is a huge win. What’s more, the software is “complementary to independent commissions, in that those commissions will need tools to analyze and optimize the plan they come up with.”

The software has started quite a few conversations and arguments, from the Wisconsin Public Radio to New York Times articles, and of course the invite to speak at Harvard. On a larger scale, it has opened the conversation to analyzing the other ways technology could eliminate political bias. “If you open the bucket of things that are touched by politics, there are a lot of manual processes where tech could get involved” according to Kevin.

Looking into the future, Kevin would like for other developers to get on board and see how else the algorithm can be applied.

Lasting Lessons

Since I, like most people, don’t have the skills necessary to build software that changes the world, I was mostly interested in gleaning from the lessons Kevin has learned by going through this process.

Be Patient

I was very encouraged by what Kevin had to say about pushing through slow results.

“It didn’t seem to pay off for a long time. For a long time there would be nothing, and then all of a sudden a big thing. It may not seem like you are getting anywhere, but sometimes it just comes in big blurbs.”

The major lesson from this was that as long as you are doing the right work and pushing for results, it’ll come. Particularly in an independent project where there are few results in the beginning to motivate you, protecting against burnout is important. “I knew I had as long as I possibly needed to do it, as long as I did eventually finish it,” said Kevin, “so I didn’t push myself too hard and I kept track of the major milestones to keep me going.”

Measure Success in Your Own Way

When building an idea into a reality, it is important not to compare your progress with the worldly definitions for progress. You have to define it for yourself. For Kevin, it was the “big quality things” like being mentioned in the New York Times. These milestones were the indicators that motivated Kevin to continue pursuing the project.

He is more interested in the story being told and applied in various ways than in finding monetary or social success. As such, he wouldn’t be as motivated by selling the software or counting followers. Defining success helps you align your actions to your values and determine what matters to you most.


If you are interested in learning more about AutoRedistrict or helping to spread the message, check out the website or join the Facebook group. “Make your vote count more” and follow the progress of Kevin’s entrepreneurial and altruistic story.

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