Right About Now with Ryan Alford - How a Viral Congressional Trading Tracker Became a $1B+ Fintech Business | Autopilot

Episode Date: June 19, 2026

Ryan Alford talks with Chris Josephs, co-founder of Autopilot, about how political stock-trade tracking became one of the most talked-about ideas in finance media and how that momentum evolved into a real investing business. Chris explains the origin of the Pelosi Tracker, why the topic hit such a nerve with both parties, and how Autopilot now gives users a way to follow portfolios from politicians, hedge funds, AI-driven strategies, and vetted independent investors. The conversation also digs into product design, marketplace thinking, and what Chris believes is broken in traditional investing. Ryan and Chris explore the black-box problem with advisors and retirement accounts, why transparency matters more than ever, and how accountability can become a real competitive edge in a world increasingly flooded by AI-generated noise. They close by talking about virality, founder strategy, and the difference between chasing attention and using attention to build durable trust. It is a useful episode for entrepreneurs, investors, and operators who want to understand how a sharp media insight can turn into a differentiated product with real staying power. Topics Covered The origin story behind the Pelosi Tracker Why political stock trading became such a viral topic How Autopilot works inside existing brokerage accounts The marketplace model for following investors Why transparency and verification matter in modern finance Chris Josephs’ view on AI, emotion, and stock research Why virality is overrated without product-market fit Ryan Alford and Chris Josephs on trust, investing, and founder execution Links Right About Now https://www.ryanisright.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/right-about-now-legendary-business-advice/id1346054199 https://open.spotify.com/show/0gy9HkTiwpAAgu1DFyIW9h https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford Ryan Alford https://www.ryanalford.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/ Chris Josephs / Autopilot https://www.joinautopilot.com/ https://www.instagram.com/chrisjjosephs/ https://x.com/pelositracker https://pelositracker.app/

We're not going viral just to get views. We are writing up these tweets saying, trying to make people money, trying to call out the corruption, trying to get changed through. So the virality is not the input. The virality is the end product doing the time, research, and effort to craft up good quality content. That leads to viral stuff. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something really.

real, no theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. Hey, it's not about what used to be, what has been. It's about what is right now. What started with the Pelosi stock tracker turned into something much bigger. Chris Joseph with Autopilot, designed a platform that helps everyday investors follow proven portfolios, of guessing on their own. He helped expose the trades everybody was talking about and suspicious about and then turn that insight into a real business. Chris, welcome to write about now. What's up, Chris? How are we doing, Ryan? I'm good, brother. It's good to have you. It's been fun reading about your journey. There'll be some topics that are familiar to our audience, but we're going to

get underneath it. I haven't really done too many longer form podcasts. We usually do the 10 to 15 second news segments. So it's always fun to be able to go into the broader details, explain kind of how we do it, why we did it. So I'm excited for it. You kind of surfaced what I always questioned myself when all that went down. I was just like, these people were privy to so much information. They represent us. They do this. There's got to be insider knowledge there. I feel like you surface what everybody is thinking. Click it all kind of partly started aside from autopilot. We pretty much just started speaking stuff that was happening right before our very eyes. Just no one was calling it out. It originally went viral back in 2021, 2021, 22, because a lot of people didn't necessarily know that they were

allowed to do it. When I started, I didn't know that politicians were allowed to trade individual stocks. I thought they were held to the same standards that, you know, a banker in New York would be where they can't trade individual stocks, but they can own broader ETS. When I found out that the politicians were allowed to trade individual stocks, I'm like, well, that's kind of interesting. It's probably a little bit hypocritical, but I'm sure they're not doing anything kind of too crazy. Contrary to believe, of course, I wasn't thinking too deep into it. They obviously were using their insider knowledge, whatever committees they sit on to start making some trades. And looking back, it's pretty understandable or not necessarily understandable.

It's pretty obvious why they were doing it. Give them a foot. They'll take a yard. That's what they were doing for the past 10 to 12 years since the stock act started back in 2012. We've been calling them out. We've seen some egregious trades. They're getting a little bit better now. They still are allowed to trade.

They still are allowed to do it right before our very eyes. And our goal is to keep calling them out until a ban actually does happen. I've always wondered, why would anybody want to get into politics? Or why do they want to keep these jobs so much? Maybe we've uncovered it. Another piece to the whole thing, too, is there are two or three things that all Americans can agree on in this polarizing time. One is the stock trading.

They all just want them banned from stock trading. 90% of Americans want that. And then two is term limits. A lot of people are like, how can a politician be a term be a politician for 40 years? 40 years is insane. They're career-long politicians. It shouldn't be like that. I don't think anything will happen.

but at least people are calling it out more than they were five, 10 years ago. How's that going since that moment? How crazy was all that, all the publicity around it, everything that went down? It's kind of been incredible. A little bit frustrating, incredible in the sense of how big it's actually gotten. The history of it was we started it back in 2020. And it actually started in 2021. It actually started on TikTok, where TikTok was the first kind of viral moment.

We saw Nancy Pelosi making trades and we wanted to essentially build a way to get notified. of her next stock trade. We could copy it. Why would we not? Why am I trading my own stocks? I could just do what she does. I got behind the camera on TikTok, started talking about it. And the next thing you know, that video went viral and PR reached out. Fox News reached out. There's some validation to this, not only on the viral fun side, the me-me-me-side, the way that we described it, but also on the actual alpha side. Maybe there is actual alpha in following the politician's stock trades. Fast forward to 2022. That was when we started the Pelosi tracker on Twitter. and then we transitioned it over to Instagram.

Funny enough, the Instagram account actually got banned. Zuckerberg and then they cut it right early. It's a bummer because Joe Rogan was following that one. Was it because they felt like it was like you were showing personal information or someone else? I think what they were doing was they were saying we were probably using her name. Likeness, her likeness. Yeah, her likeness. On Twitter, you're allowed to do it, especially after you're on bot Twitter.

On Instagram, it was always a shady one. So what we did, though, was, and this is kind of like a little bit of our founder story. We recreated the Pelosi tracker on Instagram, but called it the politician trade tracker. And what we would do is we would use one piece of content and we would call out the politician on Twitter on X, take a screenshot, make a little nice cover and then post that same piece of content on Instagram. Funny enough, the Instagram account actually gets more views and more impressions, more engagement than the Twitter account. But the Twitter account is the original insane, life-changing trajectory. And it's been fun. I go to the bars in New York.

I chat with friends. Everyone's always like, oh, my gosh, you're part of the team behind the Pelosi tracker. Yeah, I've been doing this for years. I know more about politician stock trades than probably anyone in the world, which is embarrassing.