Chinese American Takes Political Action on the Internet
By Lenora Chu

As a child, Perla Ni was barraged with information. Her father was a “constant consumer,” surrounded by NPR, CNN and the output of countless other news organizations. Today, Ni says she is “becoming exactly like my father.” And he must be proud.

Twenty-six year old Ni, a Harvard Law School graduate, recently co-founded Grassroots.com, a company barely a year old that has become one of the hottest political action destinations on the Internet.

In the summer of 1999, Ni, a political reporter for Asianweek at the time, met civil rights attorney David Chiu at a living wage legislative hearing at San Francisco’s City Hall. Observing the hundreds of citizens who took time off from work to make their voices heard, Chiu and Ni wondered aloud whether it was possible to “take political action and effect change on the Internet.” They joined forces with Tim Dick, an experienced Internet entrepreneur, and named their effort to take political action online Project Jefferson.

Unbeknownst to the group, at the same time co-founder and Chairman of Venture Law Group Craig Johnson was hosting U.S. Senate campaign fundraisers for former California State Treasurer Matt Fong. Johnson and Fong remarked how exhausting the political fundraising process was, and soon a vision similar to that of Ni and Chiu developed.

After adding forces like former Stanford Rhodes Scholar John Crandon and venture funding from Advanced Technology Ventures, Grassroots.com was conceived. (The team purchased the domain name from a Sonoma nursery owner for $11,000).

Purely by chance, Crandon was an acquaintance of Ni, and before long they were discussing their ideas with one another. Soon after, the two groups joined forces and Grassroots.com instantly had 10 employees and a Board of Directors and Advisors. The time—November 1999.

Today, approaching mid-2000, Grassroots.com is well on its way to serving as THE forum for political action on the Internet. In February, the company secured $30 million in its second round of financing. The Grassroots.com site offers political news, chat rooms, issues forums, channels to contact representatives, and other avenues of information that include “Grassroots Radio,” hosted by Asianweek’s political commentator Emil Guillermo himself. Ni serves as the editor-in-chief, responsible for site content.

And demographic studies in the U.S. political arena support Grassroots’ growth. Ni says that seventy percent of people who vote say they’re looking for information online and how to get more involved in politics online. In the presidential campaign 2000 to date, all the candidates have used the Internet in some way to reach the public and communicate their issues across. Ni also remarks that the political market is sizeable, estimated at approximately $35 billion.

When asked about how it feels to be on the Grassroots team, with amazing players, she smiles. “These are the A players of Silicon Valley and Washington D.C.” Grassroots’ Board of Directors includes Johnson, Fong, former Stanford provost Condolleezza Rice and former Hewlett-Packard CEO John Young. The company’s Board of Advisors includes former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, President Bush’s former chief of staff John Sununu and former White House press secretary Mike McMurry.

And the list goes on and on, dotted with luminaries in the political and business arenas. “We have had incredible buzz in Washington, D.C.,” Ni says. Grassroots’ launch party in the nation’s capital this year turned out the “who’s who of D.C., including Arianna Huffington and the head of NPR.”

A recent company accomplishment Ni is particularly proud of is Grassroots’ exclusive agreement with the League of Women Voters, an organization she deems “one of the most trusted forms of public information.” The League is now one of the largest shareholders of Grassroots.

When asked whether the founders plan to take Grassroots public, the diplomatic Ni replies only that “there’s a variety of liquidity scenarios, and that’s one of them.” Ni asserts that morale is pretty high within the company, in spite of recent stock market crashes and the widely-held opinion that the dot-com bubble has burst.

“Wall Street doesn’t believe you should blow $10 million on marketing for customer acquisition [anymore],” says Ni. “But we’re an infomediary … the only thing we ship is ideas.” Ni assuredly states that Grassroots offers a unique service and has a unique positioning, and that the company will fare well when people assess who the dot-com survivors are.

But things have not always been so easy for Ni. She says she grew a tough skin during her Harvard Law years, when she held down broadcast jobs while enduring a grueling law school curriculum. Her initial efforts to launch the Harvard Asia Quarterly were also difficult; the administration “was doing a moratorium on funding, [so we] didn’t get funding that way,” she says. The Quarterly also faced fierce competition from the many other upstart publications on campus.

Instead, Ni and a staff of 20 editors from the different schools met weekly in her Cambridge apartment and managed to raise $50,000 for the initial launch. “We had a list of law firms, consulting firms, and we would call, fax and send letters,” Ni says.

A joint publication of the Harvard’s law, business and Kennedy Schools, the Quarterly is now an official publication of the Harvard Asia Center. The publication solicits articles by well-known leaders; while Ni was at Harvard the publication secured original work by Benazir Bhutto and John Templeton of the Templeton Fund.

Today, Ni remarks that her childhood experiences strongly influenced the person she is today. One of Ni’s biggest inspirations came at the tender age of 14. Living in Canada at the time, Ni read about a security scandal concerning local officials who were using cell phones. Roused, Ni wrote a letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun, who promptly published her words.

“That was a huge validation that I could take part on politics,” exclaims Ni. Even as a teenager, Ni was able to eloquently express her view that “people only complain about the fences in the backyard being too low when other people catch [them airing their] dirty laundry.”

Ni has felt very strongly attached to the Asian community from an early age. Born in Shanghai, China, she immigrated to Canada when she was 6 years old. After high school graduation she moved to the Bay Area to attend UCLA and then later UC Berkeley. “When you come from an immigrant background, you are much more aware of the political [landscape].”

Ni says that in overseas countries like China, Spain, and Italy, politics is the number one issue—she cites corruption and civil liberties as top concerns. Conversely, Ni finds that the “U.S. has so many political freedoms we take for granted.”

As for Asian American involvement in politics, Ni has much to say. She proclaims that Grassroots is a company “in which Asian Americans are almost over-represented. Asian Americans are so much the face of this company.”

She feels fortunate to be Asian American in the Bay Area, primarily because APIs enjoy solid representation here. Ni cites Judge May Ming Lee, San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Teng and Judge Lillian Sing as examples, saying that Sing is a particularly valuable role model. They met when Sing came to Harvard to talk about the need for Asian Americans to go into litigation and public interest instead of corporate litigation.

Ni admits that she was surprised when she and Chiu were in nation’s capital and found that there “weren’t that many Asians in D.C.” And she says the representation of Asian Americans in government is still very much lacking there. “I’m not sure what the solution to that is.”

However, Ni asserts that being Asian American is easier than it used to be. “Being Asian is a plus in the Valley because of the ‘model minority’ myth—‘they’re smart, they work hard.’ There aren’t any huge obstacles to being Asian and getting funding,” she says. But she concedes that people are still surprised when she says she founded a company. “I don’t think it’s very common in the Valley [being female, Asian American and founding a company].”

In between 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays (sans lunch) and weekend work schedules, Ni is busily “Feng Shui-ing” her new apartment in San Francisco. She recently purchased 9 goldfish—8 red and 1 black—in accordance with Feng Shui rules. Ni exclaims that “it’s a good thing… well, an OK thing if they die,” because they would be absorbing the bad spirits in the house.

If her friends could sum up Ni in one word, Ni says they’d most likely describe her as “energetic.” “Sometimes they call me ‘Popcorn,’ because I come up with ideas constantly.” Her friends are most likely reffering to the lively nature of corn in the popping, and not to the common connotation of the epithet “popcorn” among the Asian American community—referring to an Asian person who turns “white” under pressure, much like yellow corn kernels do when popped.

When asked to speculate about the demographics of the presidency, Ni pauses for a second. She finally proclaims that in this lifetime, she thinks we will probably see a female in the Oval Office before an Asian male. “But if it could be an Asian American female, that would be great,” she exclaims. When asked about her own prospects for the White House, she murmurs, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”