Hawkfish is the technology and data firm founded in the name of Mike Bloomberg and backed with million dollars of money from the billionaire is closing down.
It’s the latest departure of major Democratic donors following the results of the 2020 presidential election. Bloomberg and other mega-donors with a wealth have devoted their wealth during the Trump time to helping the party upgrade its technology and data modeling. Although they initially spoke of long-term plans for revival, the donors are cutting back on some of their goals in the wake of Trump has left his post.
Hawkfish informed employees on the day that they was closing its business in May.
“After elections, Hawkfish’s leadership and its stakeholders began to explore possible possibilities for the future of the business and decided that Hawkfish could not operate under its current form,” Hawkfish’s CEO, Josh Mendelsohn, told employees in an email. “The decision to shut down Hawkfish’s operations was not taken lightly, nor without considering other possibilities.”
The firm was founded in part by Silicon Valley players like the former Facebook Chief Marketing Officer Gary Briggs, Hawkfish was initially a major element of Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. Following the mayor’s tenure was a failure, the company was able to attract others Democratic clients. Hawkfish had a difficult time securing major contracts -for instance, the most notable one was in partnership with Biden’s Biden campaign but it did sign agreements in conjunction with both The Democratic National Committee and American Bridge the largest super PAC. Bloomberg invested 35 million dollars into this operation, which ran until November.
When the election was over, Hawkfish arrived at an obvious pivot point, and had to determine if it was making sense to continue after Trump’s presidency.
Hawkfish’s move follows the same decision at Alloy, which is a Democratic company that is backed by thousands of dollars from Silicon Valley donors like Reid Hoffman. Alloy took the decision to end its operations at the end of last year , after determining that it was also facing an uncertain future which was that was accelerated by internal turmoil.
For certain Democrats their decisions by the billionaire-funded groups outside of the party to shut down speaks to what the Democratic Party establishment itself has developed. It is clear that the Democratic National Committee’s data operations are better-known than they were in the 2016 presidential campaign during which Hillary Clinton referred to the information provided by the party to be “poor” — which was a statement that explained why so many big Democratic contributors during the Trump time frame decided to address the issue at the beginning. The problem is now that Democrats are betting that the establishment itself could solve the issue.
