Now that it has signed its first customer and identified its first project, Saint John-based Wicked Ideas, which is devoted to the constructive online debate of controversial issues, is looking for its first group of investors.

The company, which recently graduated from the Launch36 accelerator for start-ups, uses journalism and other content to frame a calm discussion about controversial issues with the goal of understanding them.

Founder and CEO Lisa Hrabluk says Wicked Ideas is looking for $250,000 in funding, which will help it build its website, develop its business, and pay content-providers, which include journalists, graphic designers, photographers, and videographers. “At Wicked Ideas we learn by doing, and so over the next 12 months we’re going to work with our lead customers to test and refine the product,” says Hrabluk.

The company’s first project, sponsored by Halifax-based Emera, will be an online discussion about emerging energy trends and will be held in affiliation with a conference on the subject at Cape Breton University in May. What Wicked Ideas will do, with this and other projects, is assign journalists to research the various issues and present a balanced view of the story. Once the conference begins people at and outside the conference will be invited to participate in online discussions on the topics.

Wicked Ideas will monitor the discussions and ensure that the tone is respectful then will apply sentiment analysis software to help produce a report on the emotive response and conclusion of the debate. “It’s like the externalization of a journalist’s interview,” says Hrabluk, a Saint John-based journalist.

Her test case could prove controversial. Emera is a company that evokes strong emotions in Nova Scotia, with individuals, groups, and political parties angry about the high costs charged by Emera subsidiary Nova Scotia Power Corp. and the perception that Emera’s senior officials are overpaid. There’s even a group called Power to the People that wants the provincial government to buy back Nova Scotia Power, which was privatized in the 1990s.

Hrabluk entered Launch36 last fall with a vague idea and worked with her mentors, T4G VP of innovation David Baxter and University of New Brunswick business professor Daniel Doiron; they discovered there was a demand for an online vehicle to nurture constructive public debate. “Dan and David went beyond having the patience of 10,000 men,” she says. “They listened to me and helped me turn the idea into a business.”

Companies in certain industries need to work on their “social licence.” This term, adopted from the mining industry, suggests that companies need more than regulatory or government approval to carry out their business; they also need the support of society overall. To gain that societal approval, there needs to be wide-ranging discussions in which companies not only explain their plans but also adapt those plans based on what they hear.

 “Wicked Ideas is out to change the ways in which we have conversations around big issues of public policy,” says Hrabluk. “The point of the conversation is to enable people to come together in a respectful way and try to solve these problems together.”

The company is now working on a website that will serve as a dashboard for the conversations. On it, anyone can find content produced by journalists hired by Wicked Ideas or taken from other sources, giving all perspectives of the topic in question. People are invited to read the material and join the discussion. “I’ve identified energy and mining companies as my target market and hope to work with the ones that want to have a different type of conversation with the public,” says Hrabluk.