Jackson Talley: The 19-Year-Old Mapping Political Influence

Salt Lake City, Utah — March 18, 2026

A political candidate used to spend weeks tracking down the right donors, lobbyists, and power brokers. Jackson Talley thinks that should take minutes.

At 19, Talley has already worked inside multiple layers of the political system: state parties, campaigns, international government offices. Now he’s building something that sits just beneath it all: a platform designed to map who influences whom, and where the money flows.

It’s called Ping the People. And depending on who you ask, it’s either a transparency tool—or an accelerator for political influence.

Learning the System From the Inside

Talley’s path into politics wasn’t theoretical. He started working in campaigns at 17, quickly finding himself in rooms most people don’t enter until much later in their careers.

He has worked with Utah Senator John Curtis, participated in caucus organizing, and spent time with state-level party operations in Utah. Through the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah, he landed an international internship with Australia’s parliament, working with members of the country’s Liberal Party.

He was, by his own description, usually the youngest person in the room.

That mattered less than what he noticed.

Politics, at its operational level, runs on relationships, many of them informal, slow-moving, and difficult to access unless you already know where to look.

The Gap: Public, but Practically Inaccessible

Lobbyist data in the United States isn’t secret. In fact, much of it is legally required to be public.

But “public” doesn’t mean usable.

To get a full picture, campaigns often have to file open records requests, wait days or weeks, pay fees, and then sort through incomplete or inconsistent datasets. Even then, key details, like direct contact information or clear organizational ties, can be fragmented.

Talley ran into this firsthand while doing political strategy work in Georgia. He was manually pulling records, trying to identify who to contact and how.

It struck him as inefficient.

“I can make this a better system,” were his sentiments at the time that he shared with TechBuzz in a recent interview.

Turning Influence Into Data

Ping the People is built on a simple premise: take scattered, hard-to-access public data and turn it into something structured, searchable, and immediate.

The platform aggregates lobbyist registrations, cross-references them with additional sources, and builds a usable network map, who they are, who they represent, and how to reach them.

For candidates, that means skipping weeks of research and going straight to outreach.

For lobbyists, it means identifying candidates aligned with their interests without relying on in-person events or introductions.

Talley describes it more bluntly: a “dating platform” for candidates and lobbyists.

The current version is intentionally simple. A subscription—priced at $14.99 per month—unlocks access to contact data and network visibility. Future iterations aim to go further, layering in campaign finance disclosures and an AI-driven recommendation engine.

Early Traction—and Expansion

For a product still in its early stages, Ping the People is already finding a foothold inside the system it aims to map.

Talley says current users include candidates for Secretary of State in Georgia, sitting state senators, and lobbyists operating in both Utah and Georgia. The mix is notable: both sides of the political marketplace, those seeking influence and those selling it, are adopting the same tool.

That early traction is fueling rapid expansion.

After launching in Georgia and Utah, the company is now pushing into larger and more competitive political markets, including New York, California, Texas, and the Carolinas. The goal is straightforward: build coverage across all 50 states as quickly as possible.

If successful, Ping the People could become a national layer of political data infrastructure.

Who Benefits—and Who Doesn’t

Tools like this don’t exist in a vacuum.

On one side, the value proposition is clear. New or lesser-known candidates, such as those without deep political networks, suddenly gain access to the same ecosystem of donors and advocates as more established players. Journalists and transparency groups can more easily trace relationships and funding sources.

In that sense, the platform lowers barriers.

But it also raises a more complicated question: does easier access to influence make the system fairer, or just more efficient?

Talley is upfront about one potential friction point. Some candidates may not welcome how easy it becomes to trace where their support originates, especially when money flows in from outside their state.

That information has always been technically available. What changes here is the speed and visibility.

Speed Changes the Equation

Ping the People doesn’t introduce new information into the political system. It compresses time.

That alone can be disruptive.

In politics, where access is often built slowly and guarded carefully, reducing friction can shift advantages. The candidate who knows how to use the tool best may be able to raise money faster. The lobbyist who identifies opportunities first may gain earlier influence.

Transparency, in this context, isn’t neutral. It redistributes leverage.

A Founder Close to Power

Talley doesn’t fit neatly into the usual startup narrative. He isn’t building from the outside, trying to break into politics. He started inside it: observing, participating, and then identifying inefficiencies.

His co-founders reflect that blend. One is a political strategist, Rick Thompson, Vice Chairman of Georgia State Ethics Commission. The other is Samuel Friel, the company's Chief Technology Officer, a University of Utah student studying Economics and Physics. Friel developed the startup's technology that finds the lobbyist information.

Talley handles outreach and growth, leaning on a network he began building before most founders his age have chosen a major.

The tone he brings is informal, sometimes irreverent, but the underlying approach is pragmatic. He’s less interested in ideology than in how systems function—and where they break.

The Bigger Question

Talley’s pitch is straightforward: make political data easier to access, faster to use, and more transparent.

What that ultimately leads to is less clear.

If influence becomes easier to map, it may also become easier to optimize. If transparency increases, so might competition for attention, funding, and access.

The system doesn’t disappear. It adapts.

And if political influence is increasingly shaped by data—who has it, who can interpret it, and who can act on it quickly—then tools like Ping the People won’t just describe the landscape.

They’ll help define it.

Learn more at pingthepeople.com.