8 Lessons Learned from Political Startups
A look back on working to make a difference from 2009–2016
Since walking away from Brigade last year, I’ve been approached by a lot of bright eyed entrepreneurs who want to make a difference this election and beyond. I love sharing my war stories, but after a few dozen runs through, I’m sharing what I’ve paid years to learn from founding or being around political startups for the past several years. Enjoy, and respond with any questions.
1: Find a discrete problem.
My journey down the rabbit hole of mixing politics and tech began in December 2007, when I saw my first episode of Meet the Press with Tim Russert, an interview of Ron Paul. From that day until November 2008, I didn’t miss a Sunday. I didn’t want to miss anything in fact. The wide open primaries of 2008: Hillary, Obama, Biden on one-side; McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Paul, Giuliani on the other provided simply too many storylines to consume. Coming out of that election I created what looked like a Bloomberg terminal for political news to try and make sense of the blogs, tweets, conversations, and news being produced almost 24 hours a day.
