WEB-BASED POLITICS
When White House press secretary Mike McCurry left Capitol Hill and the Clinton administration, he wanted a career change. Last fall, the man responsible for damage control during the Monica Lewinsky scandal became CEO of Grassroots Enterprise, a nonpartisan dotcom rushing to release the first Net-based software for the political marketplace. As Grassroots nears its September launch, McCurry is finding that his current job isn't so different from his last one: "The culture of the startup is hauntingly similar to that of a political campaign."
The San Francisco-based company has spent the past year creating Grassroots Multiplier, an application that lets organizations send templated email alerts, with some customization, to scores of e-addressees. The mailings guide people to software-generated Web pages encouraging them to take action, whether it's donating cash or contacting a politician. The email responses and Web pages are stored in a subscriber-accessible database managed by Grassroots. Grassroots plans to charge an installation fee and a monthly service rate, which will add up to more than $60,000 annually per customer.
Much of the company's success will rest on the sophistication of its software - whether it can avoid sending mailings that will be mistaken for spam. Although this shouldn't be a problem for organizations contacting self-selected subscribers, it could become one when these people, in turn, follow Multiplier's prompts to contact politicians, who may not want the email. McCurry is aware that politicians are already overwhelmed by the volume of email they receive, and he's using this knowledge and his DC experience to his advantage: McCurry has been canvassing members of the House and Senate, hoping to show them how Multiplier can work as a virtual town-hall meeting that filters valid appeals from junk mail.
Grassroots is looking to attract subscribers from its partner IDI, which offers similar Web-based services to about 1 million users through its 59 clients, including Verizon. Though McCurry is tight-lipped about other possible customers, he suggests that a prominent political party could be next: "We have one pending sale to a political organization that could put us in front of 25 to 30 million people."
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