I was reading A Promised Land by Barack Obama and noticed how similar startups are to political campaigns.
Founders and politicians are doing the same job: convincing people to believe in a future that doesn’t exist yet.
Every successful campaign has three things: a promised land, an opponent, outspoken disciples.
A promised land. The title A Promised Land references the biblical story of Moses leading people toward a future they might never fully reach.
That's what great startups do. They sell a version of the world that doesn't exist yet.
Uber sold a world where you never wait for a cab.
Stripe sold a world where payments just work.
SpaceX is selling a world where humans live on Mars.
These are futures, not features. Early on, customers usually aren’t buying the product itself because the product is still incomplete. They’re buying the belief that you see where the world is going before everyone else does.
An opponent. Every campaign needs a villain.
Without one, you’re just describing incremental improvement. People mobilize faster against something than for something. It's why politicians push sharp narratives and why the startups that get real disciples almost always have a clear opponent.
Linear understood this perfectly. The villain is Atlassian’s Jira. Bloated, slow, corporate software. The product itself is the argument. You understand what Linear believes within ten minutes of using it.
Sometimes the villain is broader than a company. For SpaceX, the villain is stagnation, the idea that humans should stay on one planet. But there's always something you're against. Companies that try to be against nothing end up standing for nothing.
Outspoken disciples. The third ingredient is the people who carry the message for you.
Politicians can't talk to every voter. Founders can't sell to every customer directly. The campaign only scales if there's a group of people who believe in it enough to spread it on your behalf.
This is Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 true fans idea. You don't need everyone. You need a small group of people who care enough to bring others along. Linear has those people. They'll tell you, unprompted, how much they love it. SpaceX has those people. Apple had them for decades. Once you have the disciples, the campaign spreads on its own. Without them, you're stuck doing all the talking yourself, which doesn't scale.
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A lot of founders get this backward.
They start hiring. They start fundraising. They start doing speaking tours and podcasts and growth tactics. Before they’ve figured out what they actually believe.
Obama didn’t start with distribution. He started with a platform. The narrative came first. The campaign came second. A surprising amount of what looks like an execution problem is actually an identity problem. You can’t out-execute a missing point of view.
Yes, startups still require relentless iteration. Yes, products need incremental improvement. But the companies that matter usually pair micro iteration with a macro narrative.
A promised land. An opponent. Outspoken disciples.
That’s how products turn into movements.