Votem

Votem offers a suite of election management services from online voting via blockchain (and non-blockchain) to its exclusive FastPass Voting where voters can avoid the long poll lines by marking their ballot on their mobile device and immediately printing out a pre-marked, tabulatable ballot.

Election management bodies pay Votem for supporting their elections. These election management bodies include cities, counties, and states in the public sector as well as a variety of different organizations for private elections (Emmys, Rock Hall, Associations, Pension Funds, etc.). Votem charges an annual subscription fee to utilize its CastIron elections management platform and charges additional fees for election services such as Voter Help Desk, customized integration, etc. as needed. The Company holds a patent for "Express Voting” (U.S. Patent # 10,109,129) and several trademarks including "Voting for a mobile world” and "FastPass Voting’. 

The elections market is a $888M a year global industry projected to grow to $1.39B by 2028 serving public (governmental) & private (associations, labor unions, fan voting, etc.) entities. There are 136,990 polling stations in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., Votem competes and works with the top 3 voting machine vendors, ES&S, Dominion, and Hart Intercivic, and competes directly against the two largest e-voting vendors, Voatz and Scytl. Votem’s core technology is already running in 253 Voting Centers on almost 30,000 voting machines in Los Angeles County. It is initially targeting the top ~ 100 counties in the U.S. that have large poll service centers and where wait time for voters exceeds 30 minutes. 

Since its establishment, Votem has generated revenue of more than $5.2M and facilitated over 13 million votes on its platform, serving various clients such as the Emmy's, Rock Hall, and Radio Hall of Fame, as well as states like Montana, Alabama, and Washington, DC. The revenue for 2022 was $274.7K against $79K in 2021. 2021 was down due to covid and the company had higher revenue in 2022 since it sold and delivered to its public sector clients in the election cycle of 2022. The gross margin was 75% in 2022 and the net loss stood at $419k.

The company plans to use the proceeds for engineering, inventory, company employment, sales/marketing, working capital, and platform fees.

The company has a strong and experienced management team. 

Peter G. Martin, CEO & Founder, Director 
Pete worked in sales, operations, and executive management for over 25 years, beginning in sales at IBM, executive management at SAP, and then building six of his own companies. He has been personally involved in the sales of over $1B of software, services, and technology to global companies and small to medium-sized businesses. Pete started, scaled, and sold previous companies including car leasing, systems integration consulting, business process outsourcing, and software distribution. His previous firm, EntryPoint Consulting was sold to the global auditing firm, KPMG. Peter is a Member of the Forbes Technology Council currently where he works about 1 hour per quarter. Additionally, he is an Advisor at AskMyBoard where he works about 2-3 hours per week.

Michael Barett, Advisory Board Member
Michael has an accomplished career in technology and has been at the forefront of security and privacy as an early employee at PayPal, which led him to be the first CISO there. He’s led industry standards, including SAML 2.0, FIDO, DMARC, and indeed Cequence Security. Michael contributes 1-2 hours per week to Votem Corp.

Steve Babbage, Advisory Board Member
Steve is a renowned industry expert in cryptography and mobile telecoms security, having served as Chief Cryptographer for Vodafone Group until 2021. He has led the security research team in Vodafone Group R&D and was appointed as one of the first Vodafone Distinguished Engineers in 2012. He has also served as a technical advisor or director for several security-related companies.

Peter Haynes, Advisory Board Member
Peter Haynes, former New York Bureau Chief and US Business Editor of The Economist, has transitioned from a Senior Director of Advanced Strategies and Research at Microsoft to a startup founder, funder, and advisor. He has also been an early investor at SeekOut, a $1.2B startup, and a contributor to The Economist since 2014. Haynes is also a co-founder at Polyverse, a cybersecurity tech company, and a former Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.