There is a whole entire book about this concept, and it was written in 1971, so you won't have to endure Ron Paul to learn the ideas in it. It's "Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky is a famous leftist, but he was also a South Side community organizer in Chicago, 15 years before Obama was.
The book is unabashedly leftist in ways that are almost quaint, but it's also front-to-back pragmatic and filled with advice. It's my favorite marketing book ever.
This article was obviously written by someone who saw the support for the Paul campaign, but didn't understand the message and wrote it off as a transient meme. (While concluding that the enthusiasm could be bottled and marketed)
In reality, it's about having integrity and being principled in your words and actions over time, regardless of who is listening. Ron Paul has it. Dennis Kucinich has it. Mcbama, Occain, and Barr don't have it.
In technology, these qualities translate into openness and transparency. Allmydata has it. Wuala does not. Openmoko kind of has it. The iPhone doesn't. Openmoko is certainly clunky (probably how many describe Ron Paul), but so was Linux in the 1.2.13 days.
I agree with this comment on that article: "when a man of true integrity comes along, he doesn't need to motivate people."
How can a start up have true integrity? Easy to say, hard to do: Make something people want -- that they really want to use. And never forget that you're a company of people, not people of a company.
One of our heaviest users and occasional buyer scolded me for supporting Ron Paul on my personal blog. pg also couldn't resist a couple of jabs on primary day when I wore my Ron Paul shirt to a YC event that evening.
I find it amusing that people think Ron Paul supporters are mindless automatons who'll buy anything their cult-leader is selling. Your comment seems reflective of that belief. I'll just point out that herding libertarians is not an easy task, and the coalition that is the Ron Paul revolution is already mostly fallen apart. I wish it would stick around...but libertarians just aren't very strong on the collective effort front. It was a pretty fragile coalition to start with...many of Ron Paul's supporters had one or more serious concerns about his positions (some touchy subjects: abortion, immigration, gold standard, church/state separation).
I agree. 26 million dollars raised by a far outside the mainstream candidate is pretty heady stuff. No big names, no PAC support, and no Republican Party support. So, yes, we all definitely want that kind of passionate user. In fact, I think Apple and Ron Paul have a lot in common, with regard to their "customers". Both pay more (Paul supporters tend to be far less wealthy than Clinton or McCain supporters, so $500 is a lot more money relatively speaking), and get less (we all knew the odds of electing Paul were practically nil, and we certainly knew we weren't going to get any political favors from him if he did get elected), but they're still generally more excited than customers of other "products".
Guy Kawasaki's best (IMHO) writings cover this very topic. He's not the first, and he's not the last, as Seth Godin treads the same ground, but I found Selling the Dream and Rules for Revolutionaries at least as good as Art of the Start (which is also pretty damned good). It's mostly motivation, rather than anything particularly visionary, but it's the motivation that an introverted nerd like me needs to really go the extra mile on outward facing work.
> You know from an early age that you'll have some sort of job, because everyone asks what you're going to "be" when you grow up. What they don't tell you is that as a kid you're sitting on the shoulders of someone else who's treading water, and that starting working means you get thrown into the water on your own, and have to start treading water yourself or sink. "Being" something is incidental; the immediate problem is not to drown.
> The relationship between work and money tends to dawn on you only gradually. At least it did for me. One's first thought tends to be simply "This sucks. I'm in debt. Plus I have to get up on monday and go to work." Gradually you realize that these two things are as tightly connected as only a market can make them.
> So the most important advantage 24 year old founders have over 20 year old founders is that they know what they're trying to avoid. To the average undergrad the idea of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being admired. To someone who has learned from experience about the relationship between money and work, it translates to something way more important: it means you get to opt out of the brutal equation that governs the lives of 99.9% of people. Getting rich means you can stop treading water.
Paul Graham is popular because he points out that if you go to work for someone else, you're likely to have a decent lifestyle, but unlikely to ever be able to save enough money to be able to stop working and still live decently, because the principal beneficiary of your hard work and ingenuity will be your employer. Paul recommends that you start your own high-tech company and thereby drastically increase your chances to be free. This message is attractive to smart young men who value freedom.
Ron Paul is popular because he points out that if you go to work in the United States, you're likely to have a decent lifestyle, but unlikely to ever be able to save enough money to be able to stop working and still live decently, because the principal beneficiary of your hard work and ingenuity will be your government. Government will take an increasingly large percentage of your income as you earn more and it will devalue the money you do manage to save. Furthermore it will tempt you to borrow money in order to make you indebted. All of three of these methods (income tax, inflation, and artificial easy credit) are designed to encourage you to work steadily for the government for life.
Paul recommends that you fire your existing politician and elect someone who will end the income tax, inflation, and the federal reserve and thereby drastically increase your chances to be free. This message is attractive to smart young men who value freedom but also to a lot of other people who can't realistically found their own high-tech startup but still want to be free.
The book is unabashedly leftist in ways that are almost quaint, but it's also front-to-back pragmatic and filled with advice. It's my favorite marketing book ever.