CLIENTS of our ventures INCLUDE:

OUR ventures MEDIA coverage INCLUDes:

Our Philosophy

We believe that truth, like infrastructure, must be deliberately built, maintained, and defended. In the absence of shared, credible signals about public will, societies drift toward distortion, and power concentrates in those best equipped to manipulate the void. Truth, on its own, is rarely fast or loud enough. It needs infrastructure. It needs resilience. And above all, it needs institutions built to hold it.

We are motivated by the need to rebuild public trust, and by the quiet power of structured knowledge to do so. At People Analytics Civic Ventures Studio, we see the erosion of public trust and the decay of truth not as trends to observe, but as conditions to confront. Polling, data governance, and civic platforms are not technical exercises to us. They are moral architectures and civic imperatives: instruments of memory, clarity, and accountability. Our ventures are built not to follow the moment, but to defend the integrity of civic decision-making over time. This is not idealism. It is a defense against the decay of truth.

Our model is not built for extraction. It is built for endurance. In our model, ventures shouldn’t exist merely to scale. They should exist to serve, to anchor public knowledge, protect civic memory, and harden the infrastructure of collective decision-making. And to do that, they must also stand on their own feet. That’s why every venture we support must have a viable path to financial sustainability. We do not fund short-term activism or grant-dependent experiments. We build enduring institutions disguised as startups.

This is not just a belief system. It is a design discipline. A commitment to backing ventures that carry civic responsibility in their architecture, and the operational clarity to survive without subsidy. Our goal is not to prop up idealism, but to engineer integrity that lasts.

Our ventures

We operate through a decentralized founder model, with each venture led by a dedicated builder-in-residence reporting to the studio. All ventures are incubated, funded, and majority-owned by People Analytics Civic Ventures Studio under Farmanesh Holdings Corporation.

Live Ventures

VoxDash™, A data governance and insight-sharing platform for survey research

VoxDash™ enables polling firms, researchers, and institutions to upload, analyze, and responsibly license survey data—while maintaining full control over access, visibility, and usage terms. Designed as both a civic data repository and a metadata-rich utility, it offers AI-powered features such as multilingual translation, automated response coding, sentiment analysis, and per-question access for public datasets.

Built on FAIR principles - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable - VoxDash offers public datasets that are free to deposit, free to use, and free forever. Data providers can manage licensing at a granular level, monetize access to individual questions, and benefit from structured discoverability (including JSON-LD metadata and PIDs).

Every survey question in every public survey will receive a standalone web presence - indexed for AI models, search engines, and civic inquiry - bridging the gap between data producers and public audiences. This transforms previously siloed SPSS or CSV datasets into searchable, reusable civic assets.

VoxDash is our flagship venture, envisioned not only as a data platform, but as an instrument of democratic self-defense: protecting truth through transparency, and making distortion harder to sustain. It is envisioned to offer civilizational resilience by making early signals of societal fragility - shifting sentiment, declining legitimacy - visible through open data.

Supported by the Microsoft for Startups program, VoxDash leverages Azure AI and cloud infrastructure. It is currently in alpha release and is slated for public beta by early 2026 at www.VoxDash.com

VoxNations®, data collection frontiers

VoxNations delivers field-validated public opinion research in environments where reliable data is scarce, misrepresented, or politically fraught. Physically based in Toronto, it has developed and refined methodologies for remote data collection across high-barrier contexts such as China, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. By tailoring its approach to local constraints while upholding international standards, VoxNations enables credible insight where speculation or distortion too often prevails. Its work has helped policy communities better understand closed societies, fragile states, and hard-to-reach populations. Several of our country-focused polling ventures - including IranPoll and IraqPanel - were first incubated under VoxNations before growing into independent brands.

Our ventures are built to operate across borders without being captured by them. We deliberately avoid any physical presence in jurisdictions where political interference or legal overreach could compromise data integrity or founder safety. This isn’t just risk management, it’s a design principle. VoxNations maintains no office, no staff, and no infrastructure inside the countries it studies. Its entire operational footprint is in Toronto, Canada, outside those jurisdictions.

We believe polling is not a luxury reserved for stable democracies; it is a civic necessity in places striving to become one. Visit us at www.VoxNations.com

IranPoll®, Proven PREDICTIVITY

Remotely operated by our Toronto-based team, IranPoll delivers structured, methodologically transparent insight into Iranian public opinion; one of the most closed and consequential data environments in global affairs. Operating under a Specific License from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), IranPoll enables the lawful provision of research services to institutions navigating complex regulatory and geopolitical terrain.

IranPoll maintains no presence on the ground in Iran. Its research infrastructure is fully based in Toronto, by design; deliberately outside jurisdictions vulnerable to government capture or legal overreach.

Its findings have informed leading academic centers - such as Princeton, Tufts, Rice, and UCLA - as well as policy institutions including the RAND Corporation, International Crisis Group, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. IranPoll’s data has reached the floors of the U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, the Library of Congress, and the Munich Security Conference.

It has been cited by newsrooms across the political spectrum - The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Reuters, Time, Newsweek, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Associated Press (AP), Forbes, The New Yorker, and more - demonstrating its unique relevance in contested spaces.

In a data environment where public sentiment is often inaccessible or distorted, IranPoll provides a steady, lawful signal to those navigating one of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes. Visit us at www.IranPoll.com

IraqPanel, largest online panel of iraqis & kurds

Remotely operated by our Toronto-based team, IraqPanel builds public opinion infrastructure in one of the world’s most fragmented and under-surveyed political ecosystems. With survey reach across all major provinces, it provides actionable data to support development planning, foreign policy, peacebuilding, and civic education.

IraqPanel maintains no physical presence in Iraq. Its research infrastructure is fully based in Toronto, by design—deliberately positioned outside jurisdictions prone to government interference or legal overreach.

This venture reflects our core principle: to support data integrity even in contested or transitional states, while upholding a strict no-presence model in high-risk environments. Visit us at www.IraqPanel.com

People Analytics Testing Corporation

This venture owns and operates national-level proctored testing centers in Toronto. While not a polling venture, it reflects our broader belief in infrastructure: that civic resilience also requires trusted systems for education, credentialing, and assessment. Built to high integrity and data security standards, it serves both public and private institutions. Visit us at www.Peopleanalytics.ca/testing

Ventures In Development

Azure AI-Powered Public Data Collection Platform

This stealth venture explores how artificial intelligence can be used to autonomously conduct structured public opinion research, without traditional field teams or manual enumeration. Built on Azure’s AI infrastructure, the platform integrates natural language understanding, dynamic dialogue modeling, and adaptive survey logic to collect credible civic data at scale.

Designed for use in environments where conventional data collection is slow, costly, or obstructed, the system enables rapid, structured engagement with the public—expanding access to reliable insights across sectors, geographies, and time zones.

Insightica

This venture applies artificial intelligence to the challenge of discovering and connecting with scholars and academic experts at scale. Built on Azure infrastructure, Insightica integrates keyword-driven search, citation-network analysis, machine learning scoring, and compliance-by-design outreach tools to create a research-intelligent prospect engine.

Designed for institutions, think tanks, publishers, and NGOs, the system enables the identification of relevant experts, validation of their academic profiles, and the initiation of compliant engagement campaigns across regions and disciplines, thereby accelerating collaboration and expanding access to scholarly insight worldwide. Once matured, the platform will be available at www.insightica.com

Sample.Directory

This venture addresses the structural challenge of providing reliable survey samples across multiple modes, including phone, online, SMS, and messaging. Built on Azure infrastructure, Sample Directory integrates probability-based RDD design, demographic stratification, channel-aware validation workflows, and compliance-by-design onboarding to become a trustworthy source of respondent samples.

Designed for survey research firms, academic institutions, NGOs, and global organizations, the service provides direct access to respondent samples across diverse regions and populations. By focusing on quality assurance, geographic breadth, and compliance-aware delivery, Sample Directory enables researchers to execute projects more efficiently and at scale. Once matured, the platform will be available at Sample.Directory

PollingChina

Remotely operated by our Toronto-based team, PollingChina is an under-development initiative incubated within VoxNations, designed to provide reliable public opinion research into the People’s Republic of China, a data environment long considered impenetrable by conventional survey methods.

Built on a pre-filtered RDD bypass methodology developed and tested by our Toronto-based team, PollingChina will enable the collection of high-quality, probability-sample CATI data from within China, without reliance on Chinese state approval or infrastructure. Its design bypasses telecommunication barriers, respects all legal boundaries, and remains fully outside Chinese jurisdiction. The platform will eventually graduate into an independent venture - mirroring the path of IranPoll and IraqPanel - with its own public-facing presence at PollingChina.com.

PollingChina maintains no physical presence in China. Its research infrastructure is fully based in Toronto, by design; deliberately positioned outside jurisdictions prone to government interference or legal overreach. Visit us at www.PollingChina.com

TurkmenPoll

Remotely operated by our Toronto-based team, TurkmenPoll is an under-development initiative incubated within VoxNations, designed to provide scientifically valid, representative public opinion research from one of the most inaccessible information environments in the world. Following Turkmenistan’s effective ban on foreign polling since 2019, TurkmenPoll has pioneered a methodologically rigorous CATI approach, conducted entirely from outside the country using native Turkmen interviewers recruited from the global diaspora.

With near-universal mobile coverage and a structurally randomized RDD framework, TurkmenPoll enables the collection of dependable probability-sample data without any reliance on Turkmen state infrastructure or permissions. Its approach bypasses digital surveillance barriers, avoids internet dependency, and ensures full operational independence from Turkmen authorities.

TurkmenPoll maintains no physical presence in Turkmenistan. Its entire research infrastructure is based in Toronto and other international locations deliberately chosen to avoid government capture, legal overreach, or reputational risk.

Once matured, the platform will evolve into a standalone brand - mirroring the path of IranPoll and IraqPanel - with its own public-facing presence at www.TurkmenPoll.com

AfghanPoll

Remotely operated by our Toronto-based team, AfghanPoll is an under-development initiative incubated within VoxNations, designed to sustain high-quality public opinion research into Afghanistan amid political upheaval and state collapse. Operated remotely by our Toronto-based team, AfghanPoll draws on decades of experience in CATI-based polling and leverages deep cultural, linguistic, and regional expertise, particularly in engaging the large Afghan diaspora community residing in Iran.

Utilizing Random Digit Dialing (RDD) and stratified sampling across all 34 provinces and 421 districts, AfghanPoll conducts nationally representative telephone surveys reaching over 89% of the population via Afghanistan’s six mobile network operators. The platform enables rigorous quantitative and qualitative insights, even in Taliban-controlled regions, without requiring physical presence or government cooperation.

AfghanPoll maintains no staff, office, or infrastructure inside Afghanistan. Its operations are fully based in Toronto; deliberately positioned outside jurisdictions vulnerable to political interference or legal overreach. It currently operates in incubation mode and will eventually graduate into a standalone venture, building on the precedent of IranPoll and IraqPanel. Visit us at www.AfghanPoll.com

Our Principal

Dr. Amir Farmanesh is a policy analyst and public opinion researcher with a career rooted in difficult contexts and complex environments. His work spans over two decades of designing and executing field research and survey architecture across emerging markets, conflict zones, and fragile democracies. From founding global public opinion ventures to advising multilateral institutions, he has built and led teams that bring clarity where data is most difficult to gather, and most critical for safeguarding civic discourse.

The ventures and research programs under his leadership have served clients ranging from the United Nations and the World Bank to global corporations like Nestlé, P&G, LG, and Carlsberg. Their survey work has shaped strategies at institutions including Princeton University, the University of Maryland, Rice University, and Cornell University. The work he directed received Gallup’s award for Quality, was described by The Washington Post as “methodology [that] stands up to scrutiny,” and was called by Agence France-Presse “one of the few considered reliable” in the region. Media coverage of his work has appeared in more than 30 languages, cited over 1,200 times across 470 outlets, including The Economist, CNN, Bloomberg, and The New York Times.

Dr. Farmanesh’s academic foundations include fellowships with Harvard University, the University of Toronto, and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. He earned his doctorate in policy studies under Nobel Laureate Thomas C. Schelling, whose pioneering work on strategic behavior, credible commitment, and conflict resolution continues to inform Farmanesh’s approach to venture design. As Schelling once wrote in support of his mentee, “[He] will handle all projects with utmost integrity and professionalism… [with] statistical skills, mastery of various research techniques, and exceptional understanding of the dynamics.”

This philosophy – of civic resilience through structural design – guides every venture the studio supports. Platforms must be more than technically sound; they must carry civic integrity, withstand stress and disinformation, and become financially self-sustaining. Our ventures are built not just to scale, but to serve; structures of public insight and long-term institutional memory.

Today, Dr. Farmanesh brings this blend of field-tested expertise, ethical design principles, and venture discipline to a select set of mission-driven startups. He invests not only capital, but strategic guidance, institutional partnerships, and operational infrastructure to help build enduring public goods disguised as startups.

Team Confidentiality & Security

Due to the extreme sensitivity of data collection in the countries we cover and the critical importance of ensuring the safety and security of our team, we do not publicly disclose the identities of our staff. This is not a limitation, but a deliberate protective measure aligned with our operating model: our work is conducted entirely from outside jurisdictions prone to interference, and our team operates remotely under strict security protocols.

However, the chart below provides an anonymized overview of our active team members and their tenure with our ventures.

founders we back

We back founders who combine vision with grounded expertise. Civic infrastructure doesn’t tolerate guesswork; it demands builders who know their domain, understand its constraints, and have a track record of navigating them. That doesn’t mean you must be a serial founder. But if you're proposing a platform for legal data, we expect legal and technical fluency in the team. If you're building tools for researchers, we want to see a founder who has been on the receiving end of broken systems. We look for teams where the knowledge is already in the room; not entirely outsourced, aspirational, or deferred.

We also prioritize founders who view venture creation not as a quick exit, but as long-term stewardship. Our ideal applicants aren’t chasing trends, they’re building tools they wish had existed, for communities they already serve. They don’t just want to launch a startup. They want to leave behind infrastructure.

Lastly, our strongest applicants are those who’ve already done the hard thinking. They come with a coherent view of the problem space, a credible path to financial self-reliance, and the humility to test, iterate, and hold their product to public-impact standards. We can help with capital and architecture, but the moral compass needs to be yours.

Venture Criteria

We don’t fund causes, we fund systems. Every venture we support must have a clearly defined civic purpose and a viable path to long-term operational independence. If the core business model relies on indefinite grants, donations, or handouts, it’s not a fit. Our standard is ventures that stand on their own feet, not because they avoided public-interest obligations, but because they embedded them into a working, sustainable model.

We’re looking for ventures that build infrastructure, not just features. A good product solves a problem. A great civic venture builds a system that prevents the problem from recurring. That means we’re drawn to designs with embedded safeguards, deliberate governance layers, and models that remain resilient under stress, bias, or misuse. We don’t expect every startup to begin as an institution, but we do expect it to have institutional ambition.

We’re also pragmatic. Your MVP doesn’t need to be finished. But your thesis should be. You should know what civic failure you’re trying to prevent, what existing systems aren’t doing, and how your solution creates lasting clarity, trust, or accountability. Market potential matters, but the civic function matters more.

Finally, we’re not swayed by hype. AI, blockchain, open data, civic tech; none of these impresses us unless they’re being used with precision, for a reason. The tool is only as meaningful as the problem it solves. We invest in ventures that treat technology not as spectacle, but as scaffolding for truth.

Team Fit

We give priority to founding teams who understand the terrain, not just the tools. The strongest applications come from founders who’ve lived the problem they’re trying to solve, or who bring prior experience from operating in complex civic, policy, or research environments. We don’t require a long track record, but this shouldn’t be your first exposure to the domain.

Civic ventures aren’t built on vibes. They’re built on expertise. If you're creating a platform for public knowledge, your team should include someone with meaningful experience in data, research, or governance, alongside technical founders who can actually build. If you’re missing a piece, acknowledge it and tell us how you plan to fill the gap. We don’t expect perfection, but we do expect clarity.

We’re especially supportive of teams with unusual combinations, where lived experience meets technical capability, or where a deep understanding of systems meets a design for scalability. You don’t need to be a repeat founder, but you should be the kind of person who sees startups as a vehicle for stewardship, not just disruption.

We don’t fund teams that are still “figuring out” what they want to build. Come with a conviction. We’ll help refine it, but we won’t invent it for you.

Stage of Engagement

We support ventures that are early enough to benefit from strategic and architectural support, but advanced enough to stand on their own feet soon. That means you’ve done the legwork: talked to potential users, mapped out the infrastructure needs, and thought through the hard questions around trust, scale, and sustainability. You don’t need a pitch deck polished for VCs, but you should have something deeper than a mood board.

We’re comfortable with technical ambiguity, but not with mission drift. If you're still choosing between three fundamentally different business ideas, you're too early for us. If you're already knee-deep in building a civic platform but need architectural, strategic, or infrastructural support to take it further, this is where we come in.

We’ve backed ventures while they were still pre-launch, pre-funding, and pre-revenue, but never pre-thought.

What We Offer

We offer more than capital; we offer conviction.

At People Analytics Civic Ventures Studio, we back ventures with layered support: strategic, infrastructural, and operational. We know early-stage founders wear every hat. Our job is to remove the ones that waste your time and make sure you have what you need to build with integrity.

Depending on your stage and needs, our support may include:

• Cloud infrastructure: Cloud resources, credits, and AI capabilities through our partners

• Product architecture guidance: From backend design to civic trust UX

• Data governance frameworks: So you can steward public data with clarity and compliance

• Strategic advisory: Real-world advice rooted in decades of field-tested institutional work

• Credibility scaffolding: Introductions, affiliations, and signal-boosting to get you taken seriously faster

• Long-term thinking: Help to design ventures that won’t just survive, but matter a decade from now

We’re not here to hyper-scale disposable products. We’re here to help you build meaningful institutions, ones that can survive stress, serve the public, and still stand on their own feet.

Our support is grounded; literally. We operate from three professional office locations across Toronto, providing space for collaboration, secure infrastructure, and in-person advisory when needed.

Our studio operates from three professional offices in Toronto:

• Main Office – 707-7191 Yonge St

• Scarborough Hub – 3601 Victoria Park Ave

• Admin & Support Unit – 7191 Yonge St, Suite 708

OFAC LICENSE & SANCTIONS COMPLIANCE

People Analytics Inc. operates under a specific license granted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), authorizing us to conduct public opinion research - including in countries under U.S. sanctions such as Iran - while remaining fully compliant with U.S. law.

• How the license works: OFAC issued the license in September 2015 and has reissued it periodically (most recently in July 2025), enabling U.S. persons and entities to engage our services without legal risk.

• Physical integrity: All research is managed remotely from Toronto, Canada. We maintain no physical presence inside sanctioned countries, ensuring operations remain outside U.S. jurisdiction and insulated from local legal constraints.

• Who this applies to: Any venture incubated within our studio that meets the conditions of the license benefits from this standing authorization.

Selection Process

We run a lean, principle-driven evaluation process. We don’t believe in bloated pitch rounds or performative paperwork. If your venture serves the civic interest and can make a case for eventual financial self-reliance, we’ll give it serious consideration, no matter how early it is.

The process begins with a short form. If your submission aligns with our mission and filters, we’ll schedule a conversation; not a pitch, but a dialogue. We want to understand how you think, where you’re headed, and whether our studio can actually help get you there. We’ll also test for fit; not just with our team, but with our infrastructure, our philosophy, and the realities of operating in civic spaces.

Following that, we may request a deeper look: your product logic, your team’s capabilities, your assumptions around user behavior, cost, and sustainability. We won’t ask for made-up financials or vanity metrics. We care more about structural clarity than projected growth curves.

Final decisions are made quickly. If we say no, we’ll tell you why. If we say yes, we don’t just invest, we go to work.

What to Prepare

We don’t expect polish. We expect depth. Whether you have a pitch deck, a prototype, or just a rough doc, what matters most is your reasoning: how the venture works, why it’s needed, and how it can become self-sustaining.

At a minimum, you should be able to clearly explain:

• The civic function of your venture, what public-interest role it plays

• Your theory of sustainability, how this will eventually fund itself

• The institutional problem, what decay or dysfunction you’re solving

• Why now, why this moment calls for your solution

• Your team’s unique edge, why you're the ones to build it

We’re not interested in buzzwords, market theater, or inflated TAM slides. If you're building something enduring, we’ll see it. And if you’re early-stage but structurally sound, we’ll help you get there.

If you're not sure whether you're ready, send it anyway. Clarity often emerges through conversation.

Ready to Build Civic Infrastructure?

If you’re working on a venture that serves more than markets, one that protects truth, strengthens civic memory, or builds public knowledge infrastructure, we want to hear from you. We support ventures at the intersection of public interest and platform design, with founders who value integrity as much as innovation.

We review applications on a rolling basis. Whether you're in the early ideation phase or already building, we’re open to thoughtful, well-grounded proposals that match our mission. If your venture carries civic intent and is designed to stand on its own financially, you’re in the right place.

Use the form below to tell us about your idea. Your submission will be treated with care and confidentiality. If it aligns with our current focus areas, we’ll be in touch to explore next steps.

[ Apply Now → ]