The Fastest Startups In The World

8/9/2019 The Fastest Startups In The World

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rom a business perspec-tive, modern presidential

campaigns are the fasteststartups in the world.

In the roughly 18 monthsbetween the announcementof a presidential campaignand Election Day, the generalelection candidates will likelyhave raised and spent over abillion dollars each. They will

have built an organizationwith hundreds of paid staff-ers and untold thousandsmore in volunteers. Beyondthat, the formal campaignorganization is just one partof a large ecosystem of orga-nizations working to supportthe campaign in coordinatedand uncoordinated ways.

Even the fast-growing start-ups in Silicon Valley have notseen growth this explosiveor complex. Snapchat, oneof the fastest, was valued at$2 billion just two years afterfounding, and in less thanthree years has raised over abillion dollars in funding. Butthe presidential campaigns

Hamilton Place Strategieswww.hamiltonplacestrategies.com

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The Fastest Startups In The World

Hamilton Place Strategiesprovides analysis, communi- cations, and advocacy solutions at the intersection ofbusiness, government, andmedia.

Matt McDonaldTaylor ThomasElliott Owensby

Findings:

• Modern presidential cam-paigns raise and spendmoney aster than anystartup in the businessworld, even the astestand most successul inSilicon Valley.

• The ability o a presiden-tial campaign to scaleeffectively at the righttime can be one o thedifferences in winning orlosing the White House.

• There are a handul oshared best practicesacross the worlds ocampaigns, startups, andmanagement that canhelp a campaign to meetthis challenge.

will hit that mark in half thetime (See Figure 1).

This rate of growth is a ma-jor management challenge.There are certainly lessonsto learn from the tech start-up experience. These areamong the handful of mod-ern companies that havedealt with truly exponentialgrowth and the struggle

of scaling at superhumanspeed.

But despite the lessonsfrom Silicon Valley, thereare also differences in thepractical logistics betweentoday’s tech startups andpresidential campaigns. Atech startup can leverage asmall number of staffers to

support a large digital foot-print or a broad user base.But a presidential campaignrequires an comparative-ly large staff. They need toorganize at the local level,engage with national andlocal media, test messages,create ads, produceevents, and more. They are


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in a race to 50.1 percent, witha monopoly for the winner.The nature of this ‘business’requires many people allworking in concert during ashort period of time toward

that single goal. Growing theteam in an effective way inline with resources is a sig-nificant challenge (See Fig-ure 2).

Of course, a presidentialcampaign is not a business.There is no profit or loss;there is just Election Dayand win or lose. And there

are rules and systems forcampaigns that the busi-ness world does not have todeal with, in terms of lim-its on fundraising and theparty and third party appa-ratus that exist around thecampaigns. Some of thiscomplexity creates moreproblems, and some offers

solutions to the scaling prob-lem. Indeed, outside groupsoffer one way to relieve thepressure of scaling rapidly.

In this context, campaignsthink most about two basicresources: money and time.Given the constraints on

both, what campaigns valuemost in staff is the abilityto get things done and getthem done fast.

The problem is how to helpstaff get up this learningcurve. Many campaign staff-ers are young and lack signif-icant work or management

experience.

So if you were to create acheat sheet of lessons fromstart-up thinking, MBA think-ing, and campaign thinking,

what would that look likeand what lessons would ithold for the teams on thepresidential campaigns thatare just now beginning?

There are many ways tothink about this, but thereare four common themesacross all three of these dis-ciplines that any campaign

should pay attention to. First,the culture of the campaignand how it works; second,the management style andhow people are organized;third, the strategy of how acampaign makes decisions;and fourth, the systemsdefining how a campaign isable to scale.

... what campaigns val-ue most in staff is theability to get thingsdone and get them doneast.

2Hamilton Place Strategies

Source: FEC data, Crunchbase

$0

$1 B

$500 M

30 4

$250 M

$1.75 B

$1.25 B

$750 M

52

$1.5 B

1

Fig. 1: Fundraising For Presidential Campaigns Has Been Faster Than Tech Startups

Years

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i n g


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Culture matters. Whetherit’s the “No Asshole Rule”from Stanford’s RobertSutton or the president’scampaign approach of “Nodrama Obama,” both thebusiness world and thepolitical world recognize

the power of culture in anorganization. Former GEChairman Jack Welch has agood way of talking aboutculture. He largely abandonsthe idea of organizational‘values’ in favor of thinkingabout ‘behaviors.’ This is amuch more concrete way ofthinking about culture, while

still acknowledging the coreimportance of the topic.What would the effectivebehaviors of a presidentialcampaign look like? It’s prob-ably different for each, butsome basic ground rules for

campaign life might be:

1. Pay attention to detail.Presidential campaignsare under the microscopeand the little things mat-ter. Own your work fromthe details

to the bigpicture.

2. Make mis-takes once,but nottwice. It isgood forpeople to learn, but thereisn’t enough time forpeople to have to learnfrom the same mistakeover and over.

3. Spend time on thingsthat matter. Understandwhat matters for yourpersonal big picture andspend time appropri-

ately. This doesn’t meanthat everyone’s job is bigpicture strategy, but re-gardless of the role, somethings always have moreimpact than others; figure

out how tomake the im-

portant thingsyour focus.

These three‘rules’ may notbe the answerfor every cam-

paign, but it is worth think-ing through and articulatingthe culture and then rein-

forcing it repeatedly. Cultureis the unspoken structurethat allows people to makedecisions within a broadershared framework of howto think and behave. A highfunctioning culture enables

3Hamilton Place Strategies

Source: FEC dataNote: Cumulative burn rate is defined as the cumulative spend/cumulative fundraising in a given month

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Fig. 2: Campaigns Need To Balance Spending Over Time To Match Against Resources

Month

C u m u l a t i v e B u r n R a t e

Every new staffershould understandwhat the organizationvalues and it shouldecho through everymeeting.


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less rules-based manage-ment and ultimately em-powers individuals to makegreater contributions. Everynew staffer should under-stand what the organizationvalues and it should echothrough every meeting.

Management is about mak-ing others better. Given thehours and the pay, it’s nosurprise that campaigns area young person’s game. Butthat fact also points to the

importance of actively think-ing about management andhow to do it effectively. Thisisn’t a skill set that comesearly, so many on a presi-dential campaign may haveno experience managingothers at all.

It’s important to understand

that management is funda-mentally about leveragingpeople’s time. A managershould be able to organizetheir team’s time and effortto make the group moreeffective than they would beotherwise. This implies thatif you are not making otherpeople better at their job,you are not managing prop-erly.

Some basic approaches forgood management:

1. Push work down whiletraining people up to dothe job. Don’t worry, there

is always more work thatwill come. Make yourselfdispensable.

2. Encourage and practice

transparency. Try to givepeople context for thework they are doing andwhy it matters.

3. Create the space for feed-back. You want your teamto tell you when there’sa problem, but you alsoneed to create the oppor-tunity for them to do so.

Sometimes this is as sim-ple as saying, “if there’s aproblem, tell me.”

Different people will havedifferent styles, but remem-ber: the right style is the onethat gets the best out of yourteam, not the one that youare most comfortable with.Practice different styles.

Fig. 3: Four Lessons From Startups And Business For Scaling Presidential Campaigns

Application

• Think through and articulate the culture ofthe campaign and then reinforce itrepeatedly throughout the race.

• Work to leverage your time by makingothers better at their job, and then coachthem to do the same.

• Make trade-offs between what isimportant and what is not. If you don't,you do not have a strategy.

• Spend time early on the systems that willallow a small organization to quicklybecome a large one.

Culture matters.

Management is aboutmaking others better.

Strategy is choice.

Spend time early onprocess and principles.

... i you are not makingother people better attheir job, you are notmanaging properly.


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Strategy is choice. Strate-gy is a difficult concept andin the political world it canoften be mistaken for tac-tics. These are two differentthings. You can have multi-ple strategies, but they eachmust entail a choice and a

trade-off within the cam-paign limitations of time andmoney.

If your primary calendarstrategy is to win Iowa,then time spent outside thestate does not contribute toachieving that strategy, un-less your persuasion strate-

gy is driven by ad buys paidfor by out-of-state fundrais-ing. Strategy can be complexand interdependent, but forevery strategic decision, un-derstand the trade-off (ex-plicit or implicit).

When evaluating strate-gy, one of the most usefulquestions to ask yourself is:

what wouldyou have tobelieve aboutthe future forthis to be agood strate-gy? This testlays out theassumptions,and in developing strategy,assessing assumptions is asimportant as evaluating thestrategy itself, especially inambiguous situations com-mon to campaigns.

Spend time early on processand principles. The abilityto scale is most dependenton the strength or weaknessof the systems underlying

the campaign. Systems canscale; individual dependen-cies can’t. Systems are thefoundations that allow youto make fast decisions andfocus on what’s importantdown the road. Put time intohow you process informa-

tion, how youorganize peo-ple, and howyou make de-cisions. Timespent makingsystems effec-tive has a mul-tiplying effectas the campaign moves on.

The Obama campaign didthis with a structured salarysystem where people slottedinto predetermined levels.There was no negotiation,which saved time and en-ergy, while simultaneouslycreating a structure staffersperceived as fair.

Likewise, ev-ery modernpresidentialcampaign hashad an hour ormore of emailor networkoutage atsome critical

moment (every moment is)where people were unableto access the tools to dotheir job. Smart campaignswill figure out how to useBox, Dropbox, Slack, or Goo-gle Apps to simply outsourcethis function and ensurean IT system that will scaleso they can focus on otherthings.

Conclusion

One of the great challengesof a presidential campaign isdealing with the crisis of thenext five minutes and carv-ing out enough time to workon the things that will help

you in fiveweeks or fivemonths. Thatbalance canbe especiallydifficult be-tween strate-gic and tacti-cal priorities,

as you are pulled into the

tactical crisis of the moment

Campaigns have alwaysmoved quickly, but moderncampaigns are bigger andfaster than ever, and man-aging this new reality effec-tively will require tips andtricks from other disciplinesand situations.

For campaigns that runespecially lean until their‘moment,’ it will be critical togrow in a smart way. Whenand how to scale a modernpresidential campaign is themanagement achievementthat could put someone inthe White House. [ ]

Further readings:• Winning by Jack Welch

• The McKinsey Mind byEthan Rasiel

• Good to Great by JimCollins

• How Google Works byEric Schmidt and Jona-than Rosenberg

When and how to scalea modern presidentialcampaign is the man-agement achievementthat could put someonein the White House.

Strategy can be com-plex and interdepen-dent, but or everystrategic decision, un-derstand the trade-off(explicit or implicit).

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The Fastest Startups In The World