Chris Evans, Mark Kassen, Joe Kiani on political venture A Starting Point

A Starting Point Co-Founders, Chris Evans, Mark Kassen, and Joe Kiani, join Yahoo Finance’s The First Trade with Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi to discuss their new political venture A Starting Point, key issues lawmakers are currently addressing and much more. Evans also weighs in on the entertainment industry.

Video Transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: The go-to place for unbiased politics, that's the goal of the video-based app, A Starting Point. It was created by Hollywood stars Chris Evans and Mark Kassen and tech entrepreneur Joe Kiani back in 2017 and officially launched in July of 2020. All three co-founders join us now. Good morning to you all, gents, here.

Chris, let me start with you, though. You're a busy guy, you're out there filming movies here. What made you get involved with this new venture?

CHRIS EVANS: I'm just trying to use my platform in a helpful manner, I suppose, trying to create engagement, trying to get people more comfortable with the world of politics. I think we don't have nearly enough interaction in our country with the political process. And I think part of that is because it's an overwhelming landscape.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I think the idea of this site is a noble one. You guys are coming up with some questions I think we all have, we might not be clear about. And you're putting them to our leaders in Washington and giving them a platform to speak directly to us. I know you launched in July. Mark, what are your numbers like? And I'd love to know how many folks have registered to vote through your platform because I know that's one of your main objectives.

MARK KASSEN: Yeah, thank you very much. We've had in about, I guess, three months, about 300 million, 330 million engagements across all of our content. We registered over 10,000 people to vote. You can also contact your rep directly, over 100,000 people have contacted their reps through our site that we know of. The folks that choose to go in and, you know, look up information on our site, go elsewhere and then continue on we don't track.

But directly through our site, about 330 million engagements and then, you know, a hundred or so thousand people that contacted their rep.

BRIAN SOZZI: Joe, I've been watching a lot of these videos. Really, this is really great work. I do think you guys are onto something here. What has it been like, how do you-- how have you been getting some of these interviews? I imagine you have to win over the trust of lawmakers.

JOE KIANI: Yeah, I think that's been critical. And I think, at the beginning, it was a little hard because they did not know what our intentions might be, especially the worry that, you know, what if this is just something we're in and out of, we're not serious about? But secondly, given some of the ways that we individually lean, I think there was a worry that we might be biasing what we're presenting.

And it didn't take long, but they quickly realized that, no, we're going to lay the framework for both parties to speak on the same issues and let people decide which way they think is the right way.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I want to bounce off that because this is being billed as a nonpartisan civic engagement site. And Chris, I know that you've been pretty vocal on Twitter and elsewhere about your dislike of President Trump and his administration. So how do you sort of reconcile, you know, your personal politics with your involvement in A Starting Point?

CHRIS EVANS: Sure, by being transparent about it, by owning that, by acknowledging it and not pretending that I don't have personal opinions, but that the goal of this site is to prioritize engagement. And in order to do that, you have to remove your personal opinions. And if the end game is to try and let politics work the way we hope it all could, it's about not injecting my personal opinions and letting elected officials communicate their beliefs to their constituents and then letting American people make their own decisions.

BRIAN SOZZI: Mark, are you getting any indication from all the politicians that you do talk to that this polarization we've seen arguably for, what, eight to 10 years, is this-- is it going to stop? Does it get any-- is it going to get better at any point?

MARK KASSEN: Well, I don't know if we can get indication, but they all tell us they want it to. And they all have different opinions. In fact, excuse me, one of the questions that we asked pretty much everybody in the first three years when we were going to DC over two and 1/2 years was, what could we do to improve? Or what could they do to improve bipartisanship?

And all of them had opinion. And most of them had to do with empathy and finding ways to communicate individually. A lot of them critiqued the media in stoking a conversation about divisiveness and not talking about the things that they were trying to do, whether that's, you know, the actual issue or not, who's to say. But they seem to all want to find ways to at least herald what they were trying to do.

A really interesting example, actually, was we had a counterpoint, which is our version of a debate or a conversation around an issue between Dave McKinley, who's a Republican from West Virginia, and Kurt Schrader, who's a Democrat from Oregon, on environment. One's from a coal area, and one's from an area with wildfires. And they both had opinions about what was causing those and if we should or should not be in the Paris Accord.

But they really wanted to focus on how they can work together to find a way to balance not losing jobs in the fossil fuel industry, while bringing up technology in our country. And so they really are trying to find ways to deal with that. And they spent a lot of time on our site talking about that.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, Joe, you've been a lot-- around a lot of Big Tech companies. You've got companies like Google and Facebook struggling reining in misinformation on their sites, especially as it relates to the election. How do you tackle that at a starting point? Do you feel a responsibility at all to have to rein in this misinformation?

JOE KIANI: We do. We do, and we are sensitive to not just let anyone say whatever they want to say on the site if it's untrue. If it's true, they are welcome to it. So we do some level of fact checking. We don't do it ourselves, we have another group who does it for us. But, you know, at the end of the day, the facts should be the facts, and people should have different viewpoints of them.

But we don't want people to portray things that are not true.

MARK KASSEN: But also, if I can speak to that, you know, the disinformation that you talk about comes from other folks infiltrating the mechanism. Our mechanism is closed, the contributors are elected officials. They're very easy to track down. So there's not really a room for someone-- we don't have likes or dislikes on our site, we don't have message boards on our site.

So there's not really a way for someone to galvanize a base for or against or sway what people are actually saying. If you don't like what they're saying, you know exactly who's saying it.

CHRIS EVANS: Yeah, well said.

BRIAN SOZZI: Chris, and as you've gotten to know some of these politicians and talk with them, are you surprised that we still have no stimulus plan?

CHRIS EVANS: Yeah, no. Because again, to inject a little bit of my personal opinion, you have someone in the White House whose main goal is to create division. So I'm not surprised that we can't find commonality, and that's what this site is hoping to rage against.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Chris, since we have you, we've got to talk about the state of Hollywood during this pandemic. Came to a grinding halt, as many industries did, starting to come back now. What have things been like working in Hollywood during this pandemic? What's it been like for you?

CHRIS EVANS: Slow. You know, it's tricky. I mean, everyone's-- everyone's kind of on pause right now. And I will say that, you know, Hollywood is slowly making steps in the right direction of going back to work. I have a few friends who are in productions right now. And there's a lot of overhead, trying to make sure that they can work safely during this time.

But, you know, hopefully, hopefully, it's not too much longer before things can get back to normal, at least within-- at least within my industry, I suppose. I mean, I know everyone's in for a lot of challenges, which is a tough pill to swallow.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, and we all need the distractions. We want you guys to go out there and make these movies and these TV shows. I read that you're going to be in "Little Shop of Horrors," the remake of it. Can you share anything about that with us?

CHRIS EVANS: Yeah, the dentist. God, that's so exciting. I was so-- I'm thrilled to be a part of that. Again, this is all, it's one more job that's kind of up in the air right now because I think a lot of people have a lot on their plate. So hopefully, that goes next year sometime in the summer. And I really can't wait.

BRIAN SOZZI: Chris, are you still bullish on movie theaters? Really, they continue to close down, but it's such a key avenue for the Hollywood industry.

CHRIS EVANS: Yeah, wouldn't that be a heartbreaker if that goes away? I don't know. You know, I mean, again, I'm ever sanguine that things will equalize and get back to some sort of recognized ability. I don't know how and I don't know when, but I'm hopeful.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's--

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I'm really curious, [INAUDIBLE], is this a for-profit venture, and how do you make money if it is?

CHRIS EVANS: Now that's a good question.

MARK KASSEN: [INAUDIBLE] For profit, we would take in money, I think. I mean, Joe has more experience with this than we probably do. We haven't quite worked that piece out, but we intend to. I mean, you know, we really drill down on making sure we have a mechanism that could deal with things that go on like, you know, the Supreme Court hearings and be relevant to elected officials and make sure that people wanted to pay attention to us.

If that happens, if we're relevant, then eventually we'll find a way to work with probably either other media organizations or other financial institutions to grow, which we'll eventually need to do if this continues to grow because we can only handle so much. And as Chris just said, he will get back to doing movies eventually, and then we'll need to actually find ways to support ourselves and have other people help us on this.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there, guys. Chris Evans, Mark Kassen, and Joe Kiani, good to see you. And really, founders of A Starting Point, I think you guys are on to something with this website, it's a great-- it's a great visit.

CHRIS EVANS: Thank you so much.

MARK KASSEN: Thanks so much.