Delilah app aims to simplify legislation, boost civic engagement

Each year, I highlight a Florida-based startup or tech company doing something different. This column began when my former assistant and intern, Addison Engle, introduced me to a new story.

Addison, a student at Florida State, interned with Aegis last year. After finishing her internship, I encouraged her to stay in touch, as we do with all our interns, and she did. She introduced me by email to Joseph Visconti, the founder and CEO of the app Delilah, where she now works. Delilah is designed for people involved in shaping policy. It provides bill analysis, summaries, and legislative breakdowns, plus a social platform where Americans can learn what legislation means for them.

The app’s name has a meaningful story behind it. Virgil Price III, a free diver from Florida, went missing after a dive near Ft. Pierce. When he died, his black labs stayed by his side. While Virgil was in the water, Delilah, one of his dogs, would wait at the edge of the boat until he returned. This loyalty inspired the app’s name and purpose: to serve as a technology watchdog that tracks every bill and vote in every state.

Joseph and I had a great conversation about the app and his career. Today, I’m sharing highlights from our talk as part of our People in the Process interview series.

Thanks for spending time with us today, Joseph. Tell us about yourself and what you do.

I’m the founder of Delilah, a civic-tech platform designed to make legislation understandable, accessible, and actionable for everyday Americans.

My path into building Delilah wasn’t traditional — it’s been shaped by athletics, economics, and real-world exposure to how government actually works.

What is your background?

I started college at Bates College in Maine, where I was studying global macroeconomics, computer science, physics, and American history. (This really helped mold my perspective when applying the knowledge I gained in those subjects to Delilah.)

At the same time, I was competing as a member of the varsity xc/track team at Bates in the NESCAC — one of the most competitive academic-athletic conferences in the country.

Due to COVID, Maine was already shut down hard, especially athletics, and that forced me to reevaluate everything. That’s what led me to transfer to Florida State University, which was open due to Gov. (Ron) DeSantis.

At Florida State, I started training on my own — running 80-mile weeks in the woods around Tallahassee, trying to walk on to the team. When that didn’t happen, it became a turning point. For the first time, I had to ask myself: What do I actually want to build my life around besides surfing, running, and my love for economics?

How have your interests and career intersected?

I’ve been surfing my whole life. Being in the water is when I think the clearest – it keeps me grounded. And growing up around the ocean, I started to notice something—people talk about protecting the environment all the time, but very few people actually understand how legislation directly impacts things like water quality, coastal protection, and conservation.

That disconnect stuck with me.

I realized the real leverage point isn’t just awareness — it’s understanding policy and actually being able to act on it.

What did you do before founding Delilah?

I had an internship at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee (also bc JMI is an economic think tank that seemed aligned with my passion for econ).

When I started, I didn’t fully understand what JMI did beyond being an “economic think tank.” But over that year, I was immersed in real policy work—analyzing domestic migration trends, breaking down elections, writing bill synopses, comparing state economies, and publishing op-eds on major national issues.

Toward the end of my time at JMI, something clicked for me:

The biggest problem in modern democracy isn’t a lack of information — it’s that the information is too complex, fragmented, and inaccessible for the average person to actually use.

What did you do after that?

After JMI, I continued into public service, including working as a judicial intern in Florida’s 15th Circuit Court. That experience showed me how policy, law, and real-world outcomes connect — but also how difficult it is for everyday people to navigate that system.

That path led me to apply and later get accepted into the Florida Gubernatorial Fellowship, where I worked inside Florida’s executive / FloridaCommerce, focusing on automation, economic policy, and artificial intelligence.

What are some of your proudest achievements in your career?

On April 24, 2025, I completed the fellowship and was honored to receive the Jeb Bush Award for Outstanding Achievement. My work focused on positioning Florida as a global leader in AI through a pro-business environment, workforce development, and improving government efficiency.

After the fellowship, I was tapped to join the Executive Office of the Governor to lead / build out AI implementation within the Florida Department of Government Efficiency, starting in March 2025.

At the same time, I was building Delilah.

While working 60+ hour weeks in government, I spent long nights / early mornings and weekends teaching myself the foundations of consumer software and building a full-stack iOS app / Terabyte database from scratch. What started as an idea shaped by my experiences—from surfing and thinking about policy research to working inside government—turned into a real platform.

In January 2026, I launched Delilah on the App Store.

Let’s dive into the app. Tell us all about it.

Since its launch, Delilah has gained real traction, reaching the Top 73 News Apps in the United States alongside platforms like The New York Times, Fox News, and X.

We were also invited to the White House to meet with the Office of Public Liaison to talk about what we’re building and how AI can improve civic engagement.

At its core, Delilah pulls real-time legislative data from Congress and all 50 states and uses AI to break down complex bills into plain English.

But more importantly, it doesn’t stop at understanding.

Delilah allows people to take action.

Users can create posts tied directly to legislation, form movements around specific bills, coordinate with others who care about the same issues, call their representatives, track voting timelines, and push for real change.

It turns policy from something people passively consume into something they actively participate in.

More recently, we’ve expanded into Midterm intelligence — combining prediction markets, legislative data, and campaign finance data to paint a real-time picture of American politics using AI in a way that hasn’t been done before.

There are two core parts of what we’re building:

— Delilah: a consumer app that turns legislation into a real-time, interactive, action-driven experience

— Delilah Pro: a professional platform for policy teams and analysts—something closer to a Bloomberg Terminal for public policy

The mission is simple: unlock democracy.

Not just by helping people understand it, but by giving them the tools to actually engage with it.

Thank you, Joseph, for joining us today. We enjoyed our conversation so much that we continued it on our latest Biz & Tech Podcast, where we talk about politics, the Grateful Dead, and more details about the app.

Inspiration and drive are contagious, and for me, this experience was truly motivating.

Download the app, currently ranked 152 in the nation, and see for yourself.