
Show HN: NationBuilder, my startup just launched - jgilliam
http://nationbuilder.com/
======
spking
Feedback: It wasn't immediately clear to me who this is for. A big headline
telling me "Online Campaign Management for Civic Leaders and Candidates" would
be helpful.

~~~
jkhaff
It's not just for civic leaders or candidates.

While we built it with an eye on the non-profit and political world, it could
also be of benefit to independent creators of all types -- artists, musicians,
advocacy groups, small businesses, sports teams, public speakers, etc. Anyone
who is a leader or creator with a following.

~~~
yan
I'd brand those as different companies with slightly different designs, built
on the same platform to cater to the market. A politician is more likely to
sign up to an awesome service for _managing political campaigns_ , and an
artist is much more likely to sign up for a service to handle her public image
that setes out to help manage gallery showings (and not just "gatherings" or
"political events").

~~~
mmavnn
Remember all of patio11's comments around SEO as well. People will search on
the problem they want to solve:

"How can I manage my political campaign?" "How can I promote my music?"

------
gokhan
My feedback:

\- Landing page does not tell me what the site is about. Who is it for?
Something like the one suggested by @spking needed.

\- Carousel is too fast for me. It should also pause on hover to let me check.

\- Heroku and AWS is most probably unknown to your target userbase. You should
drop it from the carousel, IMO.

\- Not urgent, but you should work on the YSlow score. Lots of the scripts are
unnecessary for the landing page.

\- Make the hover animations on the "features" pages discoverable. No one will
notice them.

\- Can't you make a shorter version of the screencast and put it on the
landing page?

Overall, there are lots of features inside, but screenshots are too crowded
and copy is not helping much in the landing page.

For example, there's a lot going on in this screenshot and there are many
screenshots like this one in the landing page carousel
([http://nationbuilder.s3.amazonaws.com/3dna/pages/36/features...](http://nationbuilder.s3.amazonaws.com/3dna/pages/36/features/original/supporters_widescreen.jpg)).
You have many features, but select something simple and stick to it for the
landing page.

------
neilk
Wow. Compared to what a lot of people are calling startups these days, this is
practically General Electric.

Looks great to me, although I have not tried it (since it's 100% integration
work, devil is in the details). Seems that you've done this before and built
the app you would have wanted.

~~~
jh3
> Wow. Compared to what a lot of people are calling startups these days, this
> is practically General Electric.

This made me chuckle a lot.

Anyway, this definitely looks like an idea that could take off/has potential.
As others have said, it might be better if you did not have to sign up for the
14 day trial with a credit card. However, every trial I've ever signed up for
worth paying for later has asked for my credit card information.

And for what it's worth, I understood what it was about without really doing
anything.

------
asnyder
A potential client came to us several years ago with a similar idea,
apparently there's lots of money to made since every local election needs a
site + social media. Thus white-labeling the process, as NationBuilder is
doing allows for your local sheriff or judge to harness the necessary tools
they need to get their campaign going without a cost prohibitive price tag.

I thought it was a good idea then, and an even better idea now. I think
NationBuilder did a great job. Needless to say the potential client got cold
feet, and never executed their idea.

------
specialist
You asked for feedback, so here it is.

Have you worked on any political campaigns? Candidates, issues, activism,
anything? I have. Your NationBuilder is not yet a full product.

Pitch your product to local campaign managers. That's the fastest way for you
to get your course correction.

Campaigns do need better tools. So I encourage you to keep at it.

(If you're wondering why I just don't tell you what you need, I'm working on a
business plan for something very similar. Also, I'd rather you earned the
domain knowledge firsthand.)

------
mahmud
This has a lot of potential.

Only problem I see is the pricing. You should be doing 4x what you currently
have.

~~~
shawndrost
Also, you will greatly anger your potential corporate customers by explicitly
charging them 25x more for the same services. Instead, devise a pricing scheme
that herds corporate customers into the high price tier.

------
Nate75Sanders
Hopefully General Zod will use this for 2012. I might have voted for him, but
his page in the last election, <http://www.zod2008.com/> , didn't have enough
social network engagement and I thought he was a bit behind the times.

------
emiranda
Does anyone else think people would be more likely to sign up and try it if a
credit card wasn't required for the 14 day trial? I was going to sign up to to
see what it was like, but then decided not to when I found out that a credit
card is required.

~~~
ssebro
That's the point- he only wants people that are seriously interested in using
his service to sign up. Since giving him your credit card chased you away, you
probably wouldn't have ever paid for the service. Be honest, are you his
target demographic?

~~~
bdclimber14
This is very true, but I've also experienced this with credit card sign ups.
People who really don't want to pay will sign up, and forget to cancel. Then
they'll file charge backs and complain when they get charged. Requiring a
credit card may eliminate not-serious buyers, but it makes the ones that
actually get through even more of a pain to deal with.

~~~
ssebro
You're right, but I'd be more concerned about ppl forgetting to cancel with a
30 day trial. A 14 day trial is short enough that it'll stay on users' minds.

------
Tiktaalik
I think this would really help political candidates in countries such as
Canada without fixed election dates, where elections can begin with little
notice. Our election just started a week or so ago and parties were nominating
new candidates for some ridings at the last minute. My riding still doesn't
have a candidate for the Liberal party.

Certainly these new candidates are starting the campaign flat footed with
regards to their web presence and social media strategy and this favours the
long established incumbents. This service could fix that and get new
candidates that haven't had time to prepare up and running as soon as
possible.

------
fourspace
Nice work!

Looks like there's an errant "Edit this page" link under the sidebar here:
<http://nationbuilder.com/features>

------
epnk
As far as the idea goes, I think it's great, and very polished. Nice work!

I had a bit of a bad initial reaction when I heard the name, however, as it
feels very imperialist and negative to me. Might just be me though, so just
take it as a single datapoint. But my suggestion would be to look into names
that are a little more positive.

~~~
vln
I also like the idea and agree with you on the name. From the US point of
view, when I hear nation building, I think of the conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan, etc.

I also don't see how the name relates to non profits.

------
dangravell
Really interesting.

When I arrived at the site I had no idea what it was for. After reading the
first and second pages I _still_ had no idea what it was for... but for some
reason I didn't care. I began to form this idea in my head that 'nations'
referred to 'eco systems' and that this site was a fully integrated Internet
presence for a startup. E.g. an easy way to have a Web site, forums, integrate
social networking into everything and have it all beautiful at the same time.

It was only once I read the HN comments that I realised it was for a more
political market. It just amused me that looking down that sidebar I made
pretty much everything in my head apply to startups... "co-ordinate
volunteers? are they talking about open source projects?" ;-)

Anyway, those are just my initial thoughts. A very interesting vertical you've
_actually_ aimed for.

------
bdclimber14
I think you'll find the size of the market, measured by number of customers,
to be much smaller than you think. I say this because your pricing seems very
low. This is obviously a very comprehensive solution and complex software. The
individual components from 3rd parties would be much more expensive if they
were used separately, (e.g. MailChimp, CRM, etc.) so I think you should price
based on what the cost of all the items would be.

Another commenter said 4x, I'd say 10x plus an upfront fee.

However, I could be wrong, please correct me if you've done trials and found
this to be the best price :)

~~~
jacques_chester
> I think you'll find the size of the market, measured by number of customers,
> to be much smaller than you think.

I worked for a politician for a while and considered writing a desktop
application to do some of this -- basically CRM for electorate offices. At one
point I dug up the figure that there are approximately 600,000 elected
positions in the USA. The market is largish for an SME.

The pricing seems suitable for a bottom-up disruption strategy, but I'm not
sure whether it would produce enough cashflow to sustain that approach. Maybe
tiered pricing based on the election should be introduced.

Eg:

    
    
        Tier 1: National (President, Congress) -- $5,000/mth
        Tier 2: State (Governor, State Congress) -- $2,000/mth
        Tier 3: Local (City Council, Mayor) -- $500/mth
        Tier 4: Grassroots (School boards, fire chiefs, sheriffs) -- $100/mth

------
PStamatiou
It sounds a bit like what Flowtown is doing with their new product:
<http://v3.flowtown.com/#/flowtown>

    
    
      Connect your Facebook account to become an official Ambassador for Flowtown.
      Be the first to know, connect with other Ambassadors, and participate in
      exclusives opportunities.

------
lordlarm
When I'm using Flashblock the flash at the bottom of your site is huge:
<http://nationbuilder.com/start>

When I accept the flashanimation it works, but you may want to look into it
sometime.

And btw: the "start your trial button" looks (in my opinion) more like web 1.0
than 2.0, with all those gradients and strong colors.

Keep it up, looks good!

------
Maciek416
Wow, this is an interesting spin on a lot of previously-disconnected ideas. I
really like the branding and name. The intro screencast was well done.

I'm looking forward to hearing how well this takes off, especially with the
pricing plans currently in place. I have an idea for a political action
campaign, but I'm kinda on the fence with your lowest tier price.

------
mryall
Interesting idea. How much manual legwork do you have to do when a new
customer registers? Is there manual effort involved in setting up Twitter and
Facebook accounts, mailing lists, etc.? I imagine many of the online services
you use would prevent automatic creation of accounts somehow, like with a
CAPTCHA or something.

------
nethsix
My first impression was, this was a useful convenient internet mass-media
platform, not only targeted at political people, but anybody who wanted to
appeal to a group of people. It had a twist of painting the user as a
leader/creator with 'nation'. I guess you're on the right track if every one
read it like I did =).

------
m0dE
Is Corporate Pricing suppose to be all 499/mo regardless of # of people? Why?

------
impendia
"ammount of people", down low in the FAQ (check the spelling)

------
jacques_chester
Is this built on CiviCRM or is a custom platform?

~~~
jgilliam
It's built from the ground up, Ruby on Rails mostly.

~~~
jacques_chester
Have you worked in this field before? It seems like a pretty comprehensive
package. If I was still involved in politics I'd pick this over the dreadful
crap most offices work with.

------
Tycho
So it's basically a dashboard for social media PR campaigns?

(if so then I can't believe nobody's used the word 'dashboard' yet)

------
petervandijck
I think this is awesome and have been trying to convince a political party to
use something like this.

------
ssebro
BTW, I'm working on a webapp that needs subscription billing. Who'd you go
with, and why?

------
ssebro
This is amazing. How long did it take to spec + build? What's the background
story?

------
epaulson
Can you talk more about your VAN integration?

------
jdp23
Nice work, Jim!

------
pitdesi
My initial feedback is that there are too many pricing layers and that is
confusing. Maybe have a few and then do some sort of step function.

I like the idea, I think it makes a lot of sense and this market probably
really needs this sort of thing... that being said, I don't know the market AT
ALL.

Give me a shout if you want to talk payments, we can probably help you figure
out the best way to manage that.

------
ddkrone
This looks like a joke. Is this real?

~~~
mattdeboard
Please take a look at the HN etiquette guidelines here:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

Specifically the following paragraphs: "Be civil. Don't say things you
wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.
'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 +
1 is 2, not 3.'"

If you've got some criticisms, how about stating them explicitly instead of so
off-handedly insulting someone else's hard work?

~~~
ddkrone
I really meant it looks like a prank. So I don't see what the point of taking
out the etiquette guidelines does in this case. The whole premise of managing
twitter, facebook, tumbler, etc. all in one place sounds like a joke to me.
What's next? Browse in IE, Firefox and Chrome all at the same time from one
convenient location. Every single social app currently has the option of
blasting every single thing you post on them to all the other ones and that
kind of setup doesn't sound like a feature it sounds more like a bug.

~~~
mattdeboard
_The whole premise of managing twitter, facebook, tumbler, etc. all in one
place sounds like a joke to me._

I'm sure Facebook didn't think it was a joke when they paid $50 million for
FriendFeed, which did exactly that.

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-
friendfee...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/)

~~~
ddkrone
And how many people still use FriendFeed? It is now overrun by auto quote bots
and viagra spam. Also, I don't see how facebook approving of something makes
the idea any less idiotic.

~~~
mattdeboard
See, here's the thing -- thinking the idea of feed aggregators is a dumb one,
and a net negative to society is one thing. But shitting all over a guy's work
by calling it a prank or a joke in a venue that is predicated on the value of
small-time entrepreneurs taking gambles on their ideas... How do you think
that is ok?

Just to be clear, this guy didn't invent feed aggregators. There are a
bajillion of them. You've got a beef with society, not this guy's work. He's
trying to make money serving an underserved niche. I hope he makes a billion
dollars.

~~~
ddkrone
I have nothing against society but I do have something against the OP. Clearly
he and his friends have the technical expertise to make something but instead
of doing something worthwhile they have created another weapon for the spin
doctors. And yes he will make millions because campaign managers these days
manage more money than some hedge fund managers but the rest of us won't be
better off because of it.

~~~
mattdeboard
Then go to Reddit and bitch about it. This isn't the venue.

~~~
ddkrone
May I point you to the etiquette guidelines for the proper way of shooing
someone away. You have hurt my feelings by the blunt way you have expressed
yourself.

