7 Answers for 7 Questions

1. Who is our target audience (hint: Don't try to be all things to all people)
Our audience would be people who read the metro section of newspapers. We want to launch limited to a small geographic area. Our audience would also be people of voting age, reporters and people who work at local nonprofits.

2. What is the competitive landscape? (hint: Sites that do it well)
Who Represents me? http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/
opensecrets.org

3. How do we differentiate ourselves? (hint: Secret sauce)
Forum for users. Also, editorial input would be limited to posting legislation and straight-talk translation.

4. How do we create our site? (hint: Staff and schedule)
Site Manager, IT, undergrad/grad interns to do research, editors, forum moderator,

We would need at least 6 months out past hiring staff to launch the site in order to establish a backlog of information.
Once launched, new legislation, ordinances and zoning will be posted within 24 hours of being posted by governmental body.

5. How do we get our content? (hint: Pre-built, manual, automatic, updated)
We will cull legislation from online postings via Sunshine laws and open meetings acts rules, we will establish relationships with legislators and local government members and also find places where the info is posted on the web already so that we can become a one-stop-shop.
We will scan in legislation/type it up and then the straight-talk translation will be done with intern research and editorial write ups. Forums will be created by IT and maintained by the forum moderator.
Design will be very simple, almost Drudge-esque, but with better fonts.

6. How do we market our site? (hint: Spread the word)
Since we plan on embedding the technology into established sites, most of the marketing is done for us.

7. How do we sustain the site? (hint: Show me the $$$)
The start up will be through venture capital and investors. Lots of interns.

Elevator Pitch

Many times citizens don't know about important local legislation that will affect their lives until it's too late to act. This happens because newspapers often don't have space to follow every local ordinance and zoning variance. This searchable feature will allow people to enter their address and search for upcoming laws, ordinances and legislation that will affect them. The technology would be a perfect addition to a newspaper's website.