About Allen Fuller
The Short Story
Allen Fuller is a seasoned entrepreneur who has spent 20 years weaving emerging technology with advocacy for the principles he believes in. During his career he has served as a legislative staffer in the US Senate and a communications director in the US House, staffed numerous campaigns, advised Fortune 50 companies, led a think tank, and founded Flat Creek – a unique digital studio focused on developing new products and services that blend advocacy and technology.
Allen’s current focus is Datrm.in — a contact data platform that helps users build better relationships so they can mobilize their network to help them achieve their goals.
Allen holds a masters degree in eCommerce from The University of Alabama and is a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies where he received the 2013 Defender of the Declaration award. He resides in Boulder County, Colorado with his wife and three children.
The Long Story
What do you get when you mix marketing, design, technology, and politics? Allen Fuller loves to find out.
A native of Nashville, Tenn., in middle school, Allen would sneak onto the family’s IBM PS/1 at night to browse Prodigy and other early outposts on the World Wide Web. In eighth grade, he hacked a Macintosh during typing class and built a Star Trek game written in BASIC (he blames this experience for being a horrible programmer to this day). But his curiosity about technology was balanced by one of the nation’s best high school curricula in English literature, and he developed an early love of creative writing.
A start-up junkie, in college he found there were no classes on the subject of eCommerce. So he successfully pitched a professor on starting an independent study. He spent his entire senior year devoted to the study and, based partly on his experience, the University of Alabama launched a masters degree in eCommerce & Marketing the following year.
Just as Allen was finishing his masters, the dot-com bubble burst. Dodging the imploding tech sector, he went to Washington DC to explore the world of politics. During that time, he served as a legislative staffer in the United States Senate and a communications director in the US House. He was also the communications director for U.S. Representative Bob Beauprez’s successful 2002 campaign, the most competitive U.S. House race in the country that cycle. Mr. Beauprez won the race by only 121 votes.
With an opportunity to pursue his joint interests of communications and technology, he left the Hill to join the Interactive practice at Fleishman-Hillard, a global PR firm. There he consulted for a number of Fortune 50 clients as well as the Library of Congress, the Department of Homeland Security and NPR. He realized the gap between the digital tools and strategies used by global brands and those used by political campaigns and became passionate about bridging that gap.
With that objective, Allen left FH to start Flat Creek, a digital agency named after a small community near his family’s horse farm in Tennessee. At Flat Creek he built a team that served more than 300 clients across 35 states and 3 continents, focusing on bringing his passion for weaving digital strategy into communications to local campaigns and causes. Under his leadership, Flat Creek launched several branded services, including RootsHQ, a popular blog for political entrepreneurs, and Datrm.in, a unique platform that helps leaders build stronger relationships, increase referrals, and reach their goals.
After Flat Creek’s web design business was acquired, Allen dove deeper into building applications for grassroots advocacy by joining Voter Gravity, a tech startup creating a map and mobile-based application that helps campaigns analyze data and communicate with targeted voters. As Voter Gravity’s Chief Operating Officer, Allen revamped the company’s engineering and support teams, making the application faster and adding new features.
In 2014, Allen returned to his communications roots when his father-in-law, former Congressman Bob Beauprez, ran for governor of Colorado. As the campaign’s communications director, Allen managed an aggressive, integrated statewide communications effort. Despite being outspent 3 to 1, the campaign was able to pull within a close margin and nearly defeated a popular incumbent.
Having seen how voters could be manipulated to vote against their own self-interests, Allen took on the leadership of Principles That Matter, an innovative non-profit built to develop research and best practices to educate citizens about solutions based on the principles that inspired America’s founders. He also co-founded CaucusRoom, an online community for conservatives to gather, encourage, and mobilize locally.
His passion for integrating digital and advocacy extends to his community involvement, and he has served on the board of several community organizations including Ascent Classical Academies, The Steamboat Institute, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of Murfreesboro, and Rutherford LEAP. He is a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies and the recipient of the 2013 Defender of the Declaration award. He lives in Boulder County, Colorado with his wife and three children.