LaunchBox Blog

Imagine a start-up that on Day 1 has no full-time employees and no revenue ... just a small team with a big idea in a crowded market dominated by one player. Now roll the clock forward a year. The startup has generated over $100 million in revenue, hired several hundred employees working around the clock, and has taken very significant market share, including from the main competitor previously thought to be invulnerable

This start-up, it turns out, is the Barack Obama presidential campaign.

There are a number of ways to look at the 2008 Presidential race. The most important ways relate to the future of our country ... but that is for a different forum.

For here, consider some lessons for startups based on the Obama experience. (I have been fortunate enough to see this close-up, as a long-time friend and advisor of the candidate. That person you're grabbing dinner with at school ... hey, could be president some day!)

1. Focus early on revenue generation. In a political campaign, revenue generation is fundraising. In the first quarter after the campaign launched, the Obama campaign raised about $20 million ... just about as much as its strongest competitor. This accomplished two things: first, it gave the campaign the ability to hire great people (see #2 below) and therefore execute on the rest of its strategy; second, the fundraising achievement itself was significant public validation of the campaign. (For another day: How the campaign accomplished this notwithstanding its small starting network of contributors and fundraisers (ie, a small salesforce) and a reduced pool of potential money due to the decision not to accept contributions from federal lobbyists and PACs. Hint: it involves using technology to reach a broader audience. See today's piece in TechCrunch, reporting on January fundraising totals for Obama. $32 million total for the month, $28 million, an astonishing 88%, raised online: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/04/obama-sets-record-with-january-donations-online-donations-88-of-total/)

2. Hire great people, organize them well, and empower them. When the story of the 08 campaign is written, one of the chapters will be about how the Best and Brightest of this generation went to work on the Obama campaign. An extraordinary number of incredibly talented people, particularly twenty-somethings, left great schools or great jobs to work for the campaign. They’ve done incredible work and deserve a large portion of the credit for the success of the campaign. They’ve been able to accomplish so much in part because the candidate and his senior team started the campaign with focused attention on the campaign organization and processes, and because of an ethic and willingness to empower talented people to accomplish their objectives. If you are starting a company, who you hire, how you organize and empower them will be as important a factor in success as anything else you can do.

3. Set clear, metrics-based objectives. Throughout the campaign, there has been a focus on clear objectives and metrics-based goals, rolling all the way through the organization. This too was the result of policies set at the top early in the campaign, and was a key part of how the organization, as it scaled, was managed, and a key contributor to success. Know your goals, state them clearly in metrics terms, track how you're doing and react fast when the numbers tell you something, good or bad - those are lessons for any organization, particularly startups.

Ok, maybe there are more more differences than similarities between starting a company and launching a campaign – but I’d argue they’re more similar than you might think.

Labels: campaign, lessons, obama, startup, technology