YC: Requests for Startups

https://www.ameelio.org/ sort of followed this route with prison communications. Non profit startup, but needed policy as rocket fuel to nuke entrenched for profit incumbents. Prison reform feels much more weighted towards policy work, but perhaps I'm missing a path.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ameelio

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hy70st/i_am_zo_orchin...

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/01/1146370950/prison-phone-call-...

> When the law goes into effect next month, Massachusetts will join Connecticut, California, Minnesota and Colorado in eliminating prisoner phone call fees.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38454743 (citations)

Commissary Club (formerly 70 Million Jobs) tried on the post incarceration jobs topic, but did not obtain traction (casualty of the pandemic).

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/commissary-club

(some solutions simply cannot succeed when profit is a requirement; they require systems you throw money in and outcomes come out instead of profit)

CTO of Ameelio here. Yes we are still working on it! You are right that policy is highly important. One of the biggest challenges we have faced with getting our video call system adopted, is the kickback system. Basically, for-profit incumbents charge outrageous rates to incarcerated people and/or their family members, and then "kick back" some amount to the DoJ. In some cases, this is an important part of their budget, so even if they want to switch to a non-profit provider like us (who doesn't charge families or incarcerated people at all), they can't without inducing a budget crisis. That's a pretty tought sell, and the only way to fix that is with policy, which fortunately some states are doing.

That said, there's still plenty that can be done without policy work, but it's a hard slog and requires a lot of legal work. Reviewing RFPs, submitting RFPs, integrating with the existing systems, implementing regulatory requirements, all while trying to keep the codebase and tech stack manageable with a small team and when contract periods can be multiple years long.

It's going to take some time, but we're still going and still growing.