Hilltop: A Lobbying App for the People
- Alyssa Ann
- Oct 5, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2025
In 2021, I clerked for the United States Senate with the Senate Finance Committee. What I witnessed and learned about the political process while there inspired me to create a business called "Hilltop," which would essentially be a lobbying firm - but for ordinary people rather than companies.
The Big Picture: The Circus
Politicians, the news, and social media publicly focus in on hot-button issues virtually all the time, and I don't think that's by accident. If those in power can drum up your emotions and draw all your attention to those who disagree with you on those issues, then you are less likely to be scrutinizing what they are up to in Washington, allegedly on your behalf. I call it the "circus" effect.
Although issues like abortion, gun control, and Trump's agenda, merit attention, they represent a tiny percentage of the issues that our politicians consider and decide on each and every day. My proposal will make it easier for the people - all people - to have a say on policies of importance both big and small.
The Specifics:
PROBLEM: From my time with the Senate, here is how I understand that things currently work:
Companies, special interest groups, and ambassadors often write our laws and/or advocate for policies directly - via in-person meetings or even Zoom meetings, wielding significant power.
Even though we were still living in a post-COVID reality in 2021, when many of the lobbying and ambassadorial meetings I witnessed were taking place online, I worked alongside seasoned government employees and politicians daily. I learned firsthand how the legislative process works. From that experience, I can confidently say the following:
Corporations and lobbying groups are "more equal" than others, in that they are given premier access to our legislatures and influence over our legislative process:
Government officials spend a significant amount of time visiting with corporate leaders, public interest groups, and lobbyists both in-person and online.
These government employees and politicians develop personal relationships with these leaders that involve fringe benefits - even if those benefits are relatively insignificant or emotional.
In exchange, corporate leaders gain unprecedented access to our lawmakers; they even prepare draft laws for our offices to review and refine.
By contrast, the people are rarely able to self-advocate with the government or interface with their representatives in any meaningful way unless they have some type of clout (publicity, pesos (money), power):
Despite modern technology, most ordinary people can only hope to email their representatives at best, and at worst, write their representatives a letter. Most will never speak to their "representatives" face-to-face.
Ordinary people have no access to the staff of government employees or their representatives, with little to no exceptions.
Ordinary people cannot routinely, let alone daily, get a private audience with lawmakers to propose laws behind closed doors or offer government employees fringe benefits - perhaps because they rarely have fringe benefits to offer...
Surprise, surprise.
Legislatures and government employees argue that this is justified because companies have expertise that legislators and ordinary people lack.
It is often true: companies understand supply-chain issues, manufacturing processes, and other inherent business data points and challenges directly. However, companies are not unbiased. Publicly traded companies, as well as private companies, are in business to generate a profit for their owners or shareholders.
That means corporate "expertise" can sometimes be concealed, twisted, or tainted for the benefit of the company at the expense of ordinary people and constituents.
For example, think cigarettes.
Marlboro, Camel, and Lucky Strike knew long before it became public knowledge that their products were both addictive and carcinogenic.
Though neither addictions nor carcinogens are good for consumers, addiction is a bonus to companies looking to make a profit.
I mean, when the doctors said "addictive," I can imagine those c-suite moguls' brains going: "Ding Ding Ding! Jackpot!"
However, the Congressional Research Service provides written reports (known as CRSReports) to our legislators to educate them on proposed laws and policies involving complex issues to help them better assess potential outcomes.
Enter: Congressional Research Service ("CRS"). The CRS produces short reports called CRSReports to help "ignorant" legislators better assess potential policy outcomes before taking a vote or position. Once generated, the reports are uploaded to a website called CRSReports.gov, which is not publicly available.
That said, you can find many CRSReports (or perhaps every CRSReport) at EveryCRSReport.Com.
These provide some counterbalance and answer to the (fairly lame) justification that corporations and lobbyists are the experts, but not much. We can't be sure that legislators read the reports to education themselves, and even if they do, if education outweighs the incentives legislators have to provide favorable outcomes to their corporate buddies - sometimes at the expense of their constituents.
Oh, what's a poor ordinary American citizen to do?
Problem Summary:
The current process needlessly omits the people - our legislators' constituents - from the lawmaking process. As such, laws are often passed in an echo chamber of lobbyists, corporations, and lawmakers with very little input or oversight from ordinary people.
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SOLUTION: Hilltop
An App that harvests data from citizens and people alike to provide politicians insight into how their constituents and residents feel about various policies.
Big Picture: Hilltop Mobile App
Imagine this:
To make your voice heard politically, you simply sign into an app. This app first verifies your identity and identifies your representatives based on your home state.
On the main page, you can access swipeable content. This content: (1) gives you the ability to learn about an issue in a short, user friendly way with data harvested from the same CRSreports used by legislators; (2) gives you the ability to share your opinion and sentiments on how your representatives should decide the issue; (4) enables you to accrue points through engagement and voting.
These points are redeemable on a separate page populated by participating businesses for your content engagement and opinion.
The data - your opinions - are then available at scale, at all times to be be used by ordinary people, news organizations, and public advocates to hold legislators accountable to voting in such a way that they factor in the sentiments of their constituents too.
The Specifics:
Solution: As I see it, this is how things could - and maybe should - work:
Either the government itself or a private company should fund the development of Hilltop.
To me, it makes sense that our tax dollars, which are already used to fund the postal service through which letters to representatives are mailed, as well as the email servers that support our legislators' government email addresses, could be used to modernize communication technology to reflect modern advances. App development is more affordable than ever.
I don't think I care which at this time, I can see pros and cons to both government and corporate development.
Hilltop will employ individuals to (1) synthesize CRSReport data; (2) collect contributor data; (3) keep cybersecurity intact; and (4) promote usable metrics so that the legislative process is more conversational and less a black box for the well-connected.
Though of course, a lot of these processes would be automated, I imagine a team would be necessary to promote the interests of the business, manage the technology, and oversee operations and finances.
But once built-out, this infrastructure could be as prolific and powerful as Facebook and other social media platforms - only instead of being used to harvest data at the expense of your privacy for monetary gain, it could be used to educate and benefit the people by more authentically democratizing the legislative process.
Over time, the app can integrate technology, allowing for real-time participation in lobbying meetings and other acts of government.
In essence, people could log into the Hilltop app to schedule a call with their legislator or peek in on proceedings and lobbying meetings that are usually held behind closed doors.
Scale - how do we make this feasible for hundreds of millions of people when there are only 535 (as of Oct. 5, 2025) members of congress?
I would like a think-tank on this. Given the scale of potential users, I've thought of a pay-to-play scheme.
Though at first blush pay-to-play feels wrong, I think we already live in a pay-to-play scheme . . . it's just reserved for corporations and billionaires. A pay-to-play scheme would at least be honest.
The question then is: who would get paid?
My thoughts are that the funds should go into publicly allocated "chests," either for the maintenance and development of Hilltop or other tax-payer funded causes that assist people directly - such as government funded hospitals and nursing homes for the needy, reform for government housing, initiatives for the homeless, and support for the foster care system.
Solution Summary:
Hilltop could help bridge the gap between citizens and their government, addressing the sense of disconnect that often leads to frustration and disenfranchisement.
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