Will Future Forward, co-founded by Gaurav Shirole, Help Elect Kamala Harris

Pro-Kamala Harris billionaires fund Future Forward PAC to try and defeat Donald Trump, who is backed by billionaire Elon Musk's America PAC

October 27, 2024

As in most elections in democracies around the world, one key factor determining the results of elections in the United States is the amount of funds raised by rival candidates.

As of October 17, Kamala Harris’s campaign raised $906 million while Trump raised $367 million, according to OpenSecrets.com, an independent non-profit which tracks such information. In addition, funds raised by political action committees (PAC), which support Harris totaled $586 million while those backing Trump raised $694 million.

But, despite these figures, it is possible that the Harris campaign has no overall edge in funding since some large PACs, known as Super PACs, do not have to immediately disclose the amounts they are spending on campaigns to the Federal Election Commission. So, whether or not Super PACs helped Trump raise more money overall than Harris may not be known for weeks after the November 5^th election.

America PAC is one of the large super PACs backing Trump. It was set up by Tesla founder and billionaire Elon Musk. As of mid-October, his personal contribution to America PAC was $119 million, according to CNN.

Future Forward USA Action (FF PAC) is the official and largest Super PAC backing Harris. Together with an affiliated group it has raised more than $700 million, according to The New York Times. The Washington DC based group’s “mission is to help rebuild America's middle class — and American democracy — by advancing new ideas and fresh perspectives.”

FF PAC is “probably the most analytics- and evidence-driven PAC I’ve ever seen,” David Nickerson, a political scientist who worked on Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, told The New York Times.  

Major donors to the Super PAC include Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg and former mayor of New York City, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and CEO of Asana. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft who has not publicly endorsed Harris, quietly donated $50 million to FF PAC, according to The New York Times. His former wife Melinda French Gates, who has endorsed Harris, is also a donor.  

(Photo: Gaurav Shirole, co-founder, Future Forward)

The bulk of FF PAC’s funds are spent on digital and TV advertising aimed at the wider population. Earlier this month, it also began spending $75 million on advertising in key swing states aimed at convincing Hispanics, through ads in Spanish, as well as youths and Blacks to vote for Harris, according to Politico.

Chauncey McLean runs FF PAC which he co-founded with Gaurav Shirole and Jon Fromowitz. On his LinkedIn page, Shirole, 34-years-old, states that since 2022 he has been the full time Executive Director for a “Progressive Non-Profit”, which he co-founded in 2017.

Shirole and the other co-founders of Future Forward worked on Barack Obama’s 2012 winning Presidential campaign. Based in Chicago with the others, Shirole led reporting and analytics for the campaign’s $120 million plus digital advertising operation. The campaign raised more than $100 million for the digital ad program. Shirole analyzed voter records and TV set-top box data to optimize advertising spend.

Larry Grisolano, who oversaw the Obama campaign’s advertising spending, told The New York Times Magazine that their database identified wavering voters in the country, whom the campaign needed to persuade to vote for Obama, by name, address, race, sex, and income. Grisolano also hinted they knew how to get campaign television ads in front of those voters with a high level of accuracy.

In 2013, Grisolano teamed up with McLean, Shirole and others to co-found New York based Analytics Media Group. The group combines data sets and algorithms to measure, experiment on, and optimize TV advertising. Clients included Walmart, Uber, and Expedia. Shirole was vice president, product and client services at Analytics Media. In 2016, the firm was acquired by Dolan Family Ventures and re-launched as 605.

Shirole stayed on at 605 till 2019. As a senior vice president, product strategy and analytics, he sought to optimize clients' advertising effectiveness on TV. Based in New York, 605 offers TV measurement, attribution, media planning, optimization, and custom analytics along with viewership data from more than 21 million U.S. households.

From 2020 to 2022, Shirole was a senior director, advertising measurement, at Roku, a TV streaming platform. Earlier in 2011, he was an analyst at Cornerstone Research which provides expert testimony and economic and financial consulting in complex litigation and regulatory proceedings.

Shirole earned a BS and BA in business and political science from the Haas School at the University of California, Berkeley.

In his LinkedIn profile, Shirole states, “I've worked on quantitative analysis of individual behavior for large consumer businesses and political campaigns. The analyses tend to fall into four categories: (1) Who is important to reach? (2) What's the most efficient way to reach them? (3) What's the best message to reach them? and (4) How well did it work?”

In this year’s U.S. presidential election, Shirole and his team are competing with Elon Musk, owner of X/Twitter, who likely has as good, if not a better grasp, of voter data and use of digital media to mobilize voters. Musk is apparently managing Trump’s voter mobilization efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other swing states. Each day, Musk is awarding $1 million to a voter in the swing states who fill out a form. Also, he has enlisted some senior managers of his businesses to work on Trump’s campaign, according to BBC.

Whether Shirole and the Future Forward team, with the backing of major technology company founders, effectively counter Musk and help Harris win the presidency, may be known in ten days, assuming the election results are not challenged in court.