We did this because we believe it’s an innovation within the online interactive media space. My partner Joe left the HBO new media lab and I left a finance gig. It’s a space we’ve been tracking and immersed in since college, so the move made sense.

On the front end, there is a sexy video strip-quiz that gets people’s attention and engages them in a new way with information (political info for now). There is a built-in rewards program to keep people learning, by providing incentives for knowledge the same way AmEx rewards provides them for spending. On the backend, we’re just exploring ways to harness micro-targeted data, focus group capabilities, and a natural filtering process for politicos. We’re also creating a marketing channel for third-parties (like other filmmakers, musicians, etc.) to use when tapping into an audience that is gathered around a specific niche.

We believe this is a project that can leverage social media scalability. In the past few years, social networks have laid the tracks so that innovative projects can use them to move quickly and find assembled passengers. Our project is just a train that is ready to rumble down those tracks.

We’re currently in live beta-testing at SexyPolitics.com. When our social media applications are ready next week, we’ll be telling more people.

This was a chance to put on the gonzo journalist hat and interview interesting peers in all 48 continental states. I finally had a chance to ask people from a whole bunch of backgrounds all the questions I was asking myself. We profiled organic farmers in Kansas, meth addicts in St. Louis, the Jackass guys in Portland – and had great tech interviews with Zuckerberg (when there were still no handlers) and Blake Ross (Firefox) in Silicon Valley. Kind of felt like an MBA in life capital, and I’m sure most future decisions will be affected by the insights provided by that production.

We found sponsors like North Face, Maxtor, Cruise America, Nantucket Nectars, and Penske who could provide the resources necessary to document the experience. In return, we produced a feature length documentary and coffee-table book that serves as a nice time-capsule of our generation’s culture – and seem to be a blueprint for what’s happening today. Our hypothesis when we began was that our generation is actually more engaged and active than the mainstream media was giving us credit for…so I think the excitement around this election is proving that hypothesis to have been correct.

Check out the trailer here

During post-production, some solid guys at the Paradigm Agency picked us up for representation and made some introductions to distributors. These meetings provided some great insight into the marketing challenges major studios have when trying to harness the young Internet audience. Overall an eye-opening learning process, despite the film NOT getting picked up.

If success is determined by money – then this was a failure. But if success means exposure to new paradigms of thinking, relationships with great people, and the chance to face the emotional realities of a start-up – then this was an enormous success. fo It was an ideal time to lose my entrepreneurial virginity, because I was in college and had no overhead.

My roommate and I developed an ‘eBay/Elance for home improvement’ concept, found a few HBS professors to get involved, and then recruited an MBA candidate to do the financial model. We got into the HBS Business Plan competition (funny story) and then won best plan at the Boston College B-Plan competition. We launched a beta the following summer, which landed 1200 customers and helped us achieve proof of concept. Then we decided it would be smart to finish college and stop paying hosting fees, much to the dismay of our rabid customer base.

Despite the failure the experience got me thinking about the possibilities of the Internet with some smart people, right as some of web 2.0 was taking shape.