What I learned from Kansas and Iowa
I’m far from what you would consider a “political junkie”. I vote. Occasionally, I donate money to a campaign, resulting in 1,456,978 emails and text messages asking for more donations. Then, I go on with my life.
On the other hand, I am the textbook definition of a pessimist. For years, I have heard people say that Texas, Iowa and Georgia could support the Democrats in one election or another. For Georgia, I thought,
“Not very damn likely, but, then again, there are a lot of people in Atlanta.”
Iowa and Texas, on the other hand, you’re dreaming. And KANSAS? The state that last elected a Democratic senator in 1932? You’re flat out delusional. Every election, I would read stories about people from Texas or Iowa or I don’t know, maybe even Kansas (did you not read the first line about not a political junkie?) They would say things like,
“Yes, we lost, but we lost 43% to 57% this year instead of 30% to 70% in the last election.”
And I would think they were fooling themselves, that state is NEVER going to vote for a Democratic senator/ governor/ county equine commissioner. But, then it did.
I am really struck with admiration. (Can one be struck with admiration? Is that grammatically correct?) How can you be the county office for the Democratic party for 20 or 30 or – in the case of Kansas, 94 – years and keep thinking,
For sure, this is going to be the year that we take it!
Yet, in a triumph of optimism, perseverance or pure stubbornness, they were right and I was wrong.
The lesson I learned
The Julia Group has been around for 18 years and we have made a profit every year, some years more than others. In contrast, I have another company, 7 Generation Games, in which I am a co-founder and it has been up and down, but we are still here, going in to our twelfth year.
Lately, I have been a little up and down as well. For three years, we have been working on a platform to make creating an educational game as easy as writing a blog. Because we made the decision not to do another seed round, we have been bootstrapping this project, alternating customized game development and statistical consulting services with beta testing and adding new features to 7 Gen Blocks.
What I realized today is that we have been very much like those county Democrat offices in Iowa and Kansas. Every month, we have been making the game builder better, adding users, adding new asset packs. Lately, I have become convinced that, just like in the 2026 midterms, we will eventually get there.