Steve Adler and Mark Sullivan founded the Voter Activation Network in 2001; it was based in Cambridge, Mass., and had offices in Providence. Its political canvassing software, VoteBuilder, eventually grew to 1 million users and is used by the National Democratic Party in all 50 states.
Adler has gone on to create rVotes, based in Saunderstown, and took the time to answer five questions about his new venture.
rVotes is a campaign software that can be used to maintain a voter database. Among the capabilities listed on the rVotes website are: event management, volunteer management, bar-coded, web-enabled walking and calling lists, data warehousing, voter contact systems and voter registration drive … and it’s iPhone/BlackBerry/Android capable.
PBN: You sold out your half of the Voter Activation Network in 2005. Why the departure?
ADLER: I sold my half of VAN because I wanted to spend more time with my family, and because I saw that after [the terms of my non-compete agreement were up], there would most likely be a huge opportunity to help fiscally conservative candidates fight back from the beating this technology was giving them.
After the five-year noncompete [had finished], it was clear that my prediction was correct. This technology is still far advanced from what the Republicans have.
Carol Greenberg, a conservative investigative reporter from Ohio, did a story on my previous Democrat system, VoteBuilder. She said that she actually cried when she saw how powerful the Democrats tools were and how the Conservatives had nothing like it to fight back with. Now they do.
*Adler did not disclose how much he sold his stake in VAN for.
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PBN: VoteBuilder was Republican-barred; rVotes is Democrat-barred. Is it the same software?
ADLER: It started as an identical codebase as it existed in 2005. Since then, I worked on it and VAN continued to develop their copy of it. It is still profoundly similar in functionality and core design. The ability to securely combine the efforts of many different – sometimes even hostile factions – of one side of a political spectrum was the real grass roots win here and that is what I concentrated on enhancing most for rVotes.
PBN: According to the website, rVotes was incorporated in January 2010. What’s its current client base? Did any local Republicans use it during the November elections?
ADLER: We currently have Rhode Island online. Last November, we had every top statewide race and dozens of smaller campaigns using it. We had almost 70 campaigns actively using rVotes and collected several hundred-thousand data elements from the efforts of these campaigns. We are currently fielding demos to about 10 other states and expect a flurry of new clients very soon. If we get a donor or investor, we intend to do a 12-state rollout immediately.
PBN: It says on the website rVotes is free! Was VoteBuilder free as well?
ADLER: No, VoteBuilder has a completely different business model. On the left, the Democratic Party pays for the system and gives or sells access to campaigns as they see fit.
On the right, rVotes is not part of the RNC. In fact, efforts to get the RNC interested in rVotes resulted in lots of unreturned phone calls. After attempts to take this to the RNC failed, I decided to look for an investor or donor to help get the ball rolling with the “Freemium” model. I came up with the “Freemium” model, and I think it’s a winner! rVotes is a bottom-up system, a true grassroots system with a grassroots marketing strategy. Give it to most; charge only the big guys.
Like my Dad used to tell me, nothing in life is free – someone’s paying for it somewhere.
The rVotes business model is designed so that about 99 out of every 100 campaigns get it completely free of charge. A modest monthly fee is paid by the largest, statewide and federal campaigns using the system.
These larger races would be silly not to use the system because it’s being “bottom fed” with value by the 99 campaigns using it under them. These smaller campaigns are all knocking on the same doors that the big races need to and rVotes allows for a complex coordination of cooperation of efforts. It is a serious force multiplier. There’s nothing else like it except, of course, VoteBuilder.
PBN: Will it always be free? Is this a for-profit venture? Do you have any employees? How do you envision rVotes growing as a company in the future?
ADLER: The “Freemium” model is sustainable and self perpetuating. We’re not a nonprofit and I hope we don’t unintentionally become one. I have the unusual experience of having already built this company once before, and I see the brass ring again. It’s very unusual, but because of the politics of politics, there is a product that’s a complete monopoly on one side of the fence, yet an unfulfilled hunger for it on the other side.
Officially, rVotes world headquarters is made up of just me and one other person, Ryan Neil Lund, but things are getting very exciting out there, and I suspect this will change very soon.
