Interview
a16z Podcast | You Just Thought You Were Building a Software Company. It's a Community.
- Jim Gilliam, founder of NationBuilder, defines community as the central mechanism for accomplishing diverse goals, citing personal examples ranging from organizing a double lung transplant to political campaigns like Obama's.
- NationBuilder was established to democratize community organizing tools, bridging the widening digital divide where resource-rich entities previously monopolized capabilities like donation processing and email marketing.
- The digital shift has transformed community from requiring physical proximity to enabling global connectivity, allowing for a spectrum of "weak ties" alongside traditional "strong ties."
- Modern internet-based business models (e.g., Lyft, Airbnb) function fundamentally as communities scaling production, rather than merely aggregating users or operating as traditional marketplaces.
- Political organizing principles, such as mobilizing specific individuals through volunteer networks, are being adapted by corporate sectors to organize hosts and users, with Airbnb's Douglas Atkin noted as a key practitioner of this transition.
- NationBuilder has institutionalized storytelling within its company culture, employing a dedicated storytelling director to help employees craft narratives that align personal motivations with the company mission.
- The company has restructured its commercial approach, replacing a traditional sales team with an "organizing team" trained to share stories during free trials and conference interactions.
- Initial core markets for the platform remain politics and non-profits, though the methodology is increasingly applicable to crowdsourced projects like Kickstarter and Crowdtilt.
- Gilliam identifies a significant opportunity to leverage untapped potential among employees in dissatisfied corporate roles, enabling them to launch creative projects through community support rather than traditional capital.
- NationBuilder's forward-looking thesis posits that established community relationships allow individuals to bypass traditional permission structures, enabling the execution of projects that were previously impossible without external approval.