Houston #6 - There's isn't good software for managing a political campaign 🧐
Find great problems to solve.
Hi there 👋 This is Houston's sixth issue and here are the five interesting problems that we found this week:
There's no good software for managing a campaign and running for office
If you're someone young like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, it's hard to figure out how to run for office and manage a campaign. NationBuilder is the legacy player in the space you can tell it's not a mobile or video native product (doesn't natively support YouTube, Insta, Snapchat, etc.). Another problem is that this software costs some real money so playing around with the business model might unlock substantial value (e.g., charge a % of $ raised). Inspired by Riva Tez
There are a lot of learning resources online but navigating them is tedious
With the rise of Youtube and MOOCs If you want to learn something online "There are a lot of open resources available on the web, but finding, qualifying, and navigating them--let alone combining them into a self-directed system--is a challenge... There seems to be a big opportunity to reinvent the syllabus for the web and create best of class learning guides crowdsourced from the already existing open materials on the web." via Dani Grant
There's no Stripe Atlas for Freelancers and other individuals
"it is prohibitively expensive to build non-VC-backed biz in the US. want: a platform for ordinary people to start, manage, and dissolve personal projects, w/: accounting, tax (federal, state, local), cash management, legal (biz + litigation), records management, insurance" via Meltem Demirors
People are using Facebook less but we still need a good Events solution
"As people continue to leave Facebook, the need for an event planning/management solution that ties well with other social networks (beyond just “here's a link to my evite!”) continues to grow. Anyone know why there hasn’t been a leader in this area? Maybe something I’m missing?" via Erica Joy
Culture surveys tend to be tedious and inappropriately timed
Q2 just started, and we do employee satisfaction surveys (NPS style) at my company, but these are annoying to do as a manager and an employee. They also only capture how you feel in the specific moment in which you do the survey. Instead, I wish there was something like a Chrome plugin that gives employees a few quick options to select from every time they open a new tab or sporadically throughout the week. This would remove a ton of friction and probably increase engagement. Inspired by Daniel Gross
Quick Community Updates:
Houston is becoming a site! We still haven't coded anything, but we have a pretty good idea of how things will look so that we can make sure the community remains engaged. We will prototype something over the weekend and get in your hands in the next issue to get your feedback. We promise. If you have any ideas of what we should include please hit that reply button! Thank you for your patience(:
We've listened to your feedback and changed the format of the problems a bit. Reply to this email or hit us up on Twitter to let us know what you think of the new format.
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That's it for this week! If you're enjoying Houston please forward this email to a friend. Let’s find more great problems to solve(: