Jonathan Herzog

So the answer was a no.

The first time I had set foot was with Yang just a couple of weeks prior.

But the reality was, to your point about you and your work and your audience of entrepreneurs and builders, is it's really like we actually called it from the inside.

We put together this Instagram just to kind of be...

early employees called startup politics, because that's exactly what it was.

You know, we were wearing 50 different hats, doing 50 different functions, doing the job of 50 different people, essentially.

And so everyone, you know, to your previous question, came from all walks of life with no political background, just because the urgency and the strength of the vision and the need in that moment was so strong.

So this goes back to, again, the fall of 2018.

Now, at this point, Nathan, basically, I think we were one of maybe a handful of people who had declared in a field that ended up growing to 29, the largest field in, I think, Democratic presidential history.

So people you think of like Kamala Harris, Kerry Kyrsten et al.

had not even declared at that point.

So I remember...

It was Yang, myself, and another team member, and we were at the Progress Iowa event in December of 2018.

It was Andrew Yang, Pete Buttigieg, who had not formally declared because everyone sort of declares an exploratory committee or they share some public speech indicating their interest.

Pete Buttigieg, Jeff Merkley, and maybe one other at that event

And

right after we got our first 1% in a national CNN poll.

And I remember driving back in the car with Andrew.

And again, this was the scrappiest campaign by any measure.

But he's just elated after this 1% at the end of December for 2018 because he says, we have found product market fit.