Competitive Advantage Research provides software production, data research, and cartography since 2013.

We build your web services, data warehouses, GIS resources, API wrappers, workforce automations, and integrations; we also take our own medicine and build products for ourselves which we use to conduct millions of person-hours of automated research.

We have proven that innovation and production don't require a large team, long cash, an exit strategy, or an over-wrought website. We build quickly, reliably, custom, confidentially, and by your side. You can speak directly to the people who are building your products. Yes we really offer that.

Please leave us a message on our Google Voice number: (929) 274-4112 or email us. And while you're here, enjoy checking out a few of our projects below.


Datamapper is a Mapbox integration combined with a crawler of Associated Press election returns data, interpreted for you as interactive maps. We have been using our own Datamapper platform to serve customized maps to clients for many years now.


Master Patient Index is an open source codebase offering a containerized API microservice with a PostgreSQL database. MPI is used to improve the interoperability of medical records by conducting entity resolution (matching) on patient records. Improved entity resolution on patient records is vital because medical errors are a huge cause of death in the United States. Chart errors and duplication of records have other big impacts on facilities' costs as well.


CSPANOPTICON is a data warehousing suite for conducting open source intelligence (OSINT) on public officials, candidates for office, and their counter-parties. We are acquiring new data and extending new features continuously.


PayAnArtist is under construction. When fully launched, PayAnArtist will serve as a set of digital tools for seamless art merchandising experiences--experiences without middle-man "platforms", surveillance capitalism, or high app-store fees. Artists will plug in their own Stripe accounts, set up products and prices (in physical or downloadable merchandise, ticketed events, and subscriptions), and provide their audiences with well-customized payment opportunties using PayAnArtist.


Since 2017, we offer private and small-group instruction in the disciplines of product planning, software production, service deployment, and accessing the open source technology knowledge base. While anyone can learn a programming language using the wide variety of free or paid resources that are available, we focus on tying it all together into the set of knowledge, skills, and practices we have gleaned from deploying and maintaining products in the real world for many years. These instructional sessions go at your speed with a curriculum customized towards your own project goals. This is not a "bootcamp for entry-level software developers" so much as a learning environment to weave software production skills into the career you've already got. We provide this course on the belief that software production skills will become increasingly useful in careers of every shape, just as computer skills did. Download the sample 10-hour lesson plan to learn more!


Sam is a full stack software/GIS engineer, cartographer, and former campaign field director who started in politics as an activist before becoming a technologist.

Sam's years of bringing geographic and GIS expertise to political data have included authoring tens of thousands of maps of political, finance, and demographic data, the development and mass production of algorithmically derived shortest geographic walking paths for canvassing, as well as prize recognition by the New York City Department of Education for expertise in developing a predictive model for the growth of public elementary school class sizes.

Sam has a B.A. in political Science from George Washington University, and is also a licensed airplane pilot.

Jon has more than twenty years of experience working in technology, including twelve years in software production, database design, and Linux administration.

Jon founded Competitive Advantage Research in response to demand for his campaign finance analysis. Moving out of spreadsheets and into SQL, and immediately into using the open data science software stack to build and maintain data warehouses of campaign finance filings. He has worked directly with clients in leadership of major institutions on how to harvest their own internal data and work with public datasets in order to leverage strategic opportunities.

Jon has a degree in Film & TV Production from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. You can check out his photography at jonreznick.com


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