We bring you into conversation with the entrepreneurs, funders, and operatives who drive the business of politics.
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All Episodes"He could get in the day before the caucuses, because we don't print ballots in Iowa. We have blank sheets of paper. You write down your preference, you pass it in."
"I think it's a really good time for Americans to say, let's lean into AI as citizens to hold our representatives accountable and to make sure that what they say they actually do and what they do actually works."
"The podcast is a great outlet for a lot of this frustration, right? Now, finally, we have like an opportunity to be part of that conversation."
"It's infuriating because some of the best known biggest publishers are really doing everything they can to discourage political advertising."
"You could come out with a logo, the designers are like, oh my gosh. And it just falls flat with voters. You're not designing for designers, you're designing for voters."
"If you're not writing with short paragraphs, what are we even doing here? Most people are going to read these on their phones. You want to write it so that it's easy to read, easier to skip."
"Why don't we take just a teeny little bit off of the placement and make a damn good ad."
"If you are looking at this landscape with all the tech changes that are happening now and that are gonna happen in the next year, five years, et cetera, and you are not thinking about how to totally restructure your process and your company, you are already a dinosaur."
"It's a little bit like old time radio. I think a lot of our audience in the political space have that in their DNA. It was something that we grew up with and it's not surprising to me that it's come back."
The creative process, there's inherent risk. And in politics, or at least within government, we are incredibly risk averse creatures. Ultimately, politics is a people business. So if you build trust first, then you can build lots of other cool stuff later.
"Organizing your campaign to take the best advantage of the tech options that are open to you. That is a really big question."
"Suddenly there is this new standard where everybody has this tool and the new challenges not competing against each other with the tools, but competing with each other against the ideas of how to use it."
"What you want to know is whether this message will shift somebody's vote, not whether they think it's a good message."
"The key to undoing that skill and aversion problem is to build an ecosystem that is right wing friendly, heartland friendly, patriotism friendly."
I think you'll see political campaigns sort of leading the way, even in front of corporations in terms of how they're utilizing this technology because they've gotta take risks to win.
Everybody wants to get to streaming right now, and it's also the future of the business. If you are a TV buyer, the only way that you can hold onto the media budget long term is to own streaming.
"Not every donor prospect needs to receive every email, and that most especially applies to the major donors."
"Just imagine going to the Super Bowl and getting the playbook handed to you from the team that you're going up against. This is basically what the Democrats do."
Go run a state Senate race. You're gonna learn 10 times more about campaigns and politics and how to do it by running a state senate race than you ever will by working on a presidential campaign.
"We have to do this better. There's no chance we'll catch up to the Democrats, at least come to parity with them unless we start treating our donors better."
"The call came in at noon. We were up at 6:00 PM on St. Patrick's Day and ran all weekend, and were successful on Wednesday. So as long as you have a relationship with your digital consultant, we'll take that call and we'll get it done."
"I'm looking for the numbers first and foremost and then contextual intelligence to inform us and give us a clear picture."
"OTT has that kind of measurable reach that is valuable to a wholistic approach to political ad buying."
That's what the policy world in Washington is. Everything that you start to take for granted, there's always shifts. Three, two, every four years that shift can come, and it's a question of how are you prepared for when that shift happens?
"Campaigns are a hundred percent ready for having a specialized firm in fundraising. We've seen this take place with firms making just TV ads, even some for just knocking on doors."
"What the party has to be careful of is not to become that quintessential establishment unit that nobody pays attention to."
"We are seeing fundraising abuses on the part of some candidates and some party committees that are just the highest form of malpractice."
"If you can bank votes early, it'll save you money down the stretch during GOTV, so you don't have to send those people mailed to remind them to turn out an election day. You don't have to text them, you don't have to call them."
"Comscore will tell you you're wrong about your October media. By on Thanksgiving, Nielsen will tell you that you were wrong. Next year. We needed something that gave us the speed to know if we were right or wrong last week."
"The spamming and scamming tactics that have become all too common are doing real damage to our ability to reach people and hold their attention."
"Not only were Democrats on those platforms really far outspending their Republican opponents, they were doing so in really smart, interesting ways."
"Most people say, 'Look, this kind of hyper polarized political debate, we don't want to have that in Europe.'"
"There's a small group of people who are so good at this that they can make as much money as well-heeled lobbyists downtown. Who do you want to take advice from?"
"We can drill down and make sure your persuasion is only going to persuasion, and you're putting GOTV messaging in front of the folks that are already in your camp."
"There's a big difference between somebody spending $4 million in a week and $7 million in a week, and we needed to figure out what were the accurate numbers and we were able to build an algorithm to do it."
"One campaign always wants to know what the other campaign is up to."
"I learned more from my experience of running for office than I did majoring in political science."
"The crypto community is a powder keg of political energy."
"My brain works in very weird ways. Number one is that when a script comes, I can't get to the laptop fast enough."
"Once someone sent a message to their lawmakers on this issue, they cared about they're, bought in and they were much more likely to then donate to the organization than if they'd just been asked directly for a hard solicitation."
"We look at political contributions as a 15 billion market where the candidates have had their needs prioritized for years, while the donor experience has fallen behind."
"Having real conversations with people and not just reading from scripts, I think, would make a huge difference in how connected people to politics."
"Even the candidates who don't win end up with positive impressions among voters that lets them run for future offices."
"They were focused on building a data operation for the party. And that's kind of what led to the Data Trust in how we operate. You know, we are an entity and again, a utility for the party and not just for one candidate or one individual."
"Training works and the number of effectively trained activists on your side directly contributes to your success."
"We are nonpartisan and we mean it. We have integrity around it."
"When the cancel culture mob comes for you, they don't want you to just lose your job temporarily. They want to make sure you are destroyed for life."
"People are visual. You have to pierce the heart, then move the mind. To do that it's emotion based."
"We had a more comprehensive picture of the Ohio primary electorate than any other campaign in the state in history."
"Data in the car, hopefully in your passenger seat, but not necessarily the driver's seat."
"My only experience ever with political campaigns was one Saturday in New Hampshire where I volunteered to go up with the Harvard Republican Club and knock doors for a day. It opened my eyes to this new opportunity for where technology and entrepreneurship we see in Silicon Valley hadn't really permeated as deeply.".
"When you make the jump from operative to entrepreneur, you have to understand that your objectives are aligned with your clients' but they are not identical."
The Business of Politics Show is a weekly interview podcast with conversations you won't hear anywhere else.
Managing Partner of Startup Caucus