This document summarizes a civic technology startup called ElectNext that aims to equip citizens with information to become engaged in the political process. It introduces the founding team, which includes experts from politics and technology. It outlines ElectNext's existing products like a candidate matcher and political profiles that saw strong growth. It then proposes a new "Featured Perspectives" native advertising product that allows experts to provide contextual commentary appended to news articles. Projections show this product achieving profitability and scaling to a large addressable market. The document pitches this vision and milestones to grow the business.
1. WHAT IF
We lived in a world in which
every person were equipped
to be an informed, engaged citizen?*
* And getting there were a huge market opportunity?
2. WE ARE
A founding team of passionate civic technology entrepreneurs,
and a supporting team of renowned experts and investors.
Keya Dannenbaum
Founder/CEO
Hillary 2008
Stanford, Wharton
Bill Bradley
Fmr Sen, NJ
John Mertens
Chief Technology Officer
Code for America Fellow
Full Stack ROR
Jeb Bush
Fmr Gov, FL
Capital Raised: $1.3M
Tom Johnson
Fmr CEO, CNN
Manya Scheps
Chief Product Officer
Designer, Artist, Coder
Startup Veteran
Will Crowder
Comcast Vntrs.
Dave Zega
Head of Biz Dev
Politics/Policy MA
Campaign Veteran
Ben Wirz
Knight Fdn.
Charlie O’Donnell
Bklyn Bridge Vntrs.
3. WE HAVE
Established ourselves as a leading third-party content
provider to a national network of news publishers.
2012
Candidate-matcher: 50-state reach, 1000% monthly growth, 3.2M users at peak
2013
Political ‘baseball cards’: 100% monthly growth, 1M+ uniques/month, 5.6%CTR
4. THE OPPORTUNITY
Publishers’ revenues are suffering on the internet.
A recent trends offers a promising solution.
NATIVE ADVERTISING
280% to $4B by 2017
✓ Non-interruptive
✓ In-stream and contextual
✓ Preserves integrity
✓ Builds trust
✓ Adds value
3x time spent
10x engagement
67% more brand recall
24% more purchase intent
...than traditional display ads
THE PROBLEM: Most native ad units sell the editorial to sponsors,
creating church-and-state tension for publishers.
5. INTRODUCING
FEATURED PERSPECTIVES
The native ad platform that creates a premium channel for
expert commentary appended directly to the news.
HOW IT WORKS
ARTICLE HEADLINE
Experts add
contextual, branded
commentary to
issue-relevant news.
Publishers get
engaging highquality content at a
premium rev share.
ARTICLE BYLINE
FPs LIVE HERE
@ $500/FP
@ 60/40 split
6. FPs IN THE WILD
✓Appended to the editorial
✓Above Outbrain/Taboola
✓Above Reader Comments
✓50x engagement over display ads
End
Editorial
Byline
Outbrain
Comments
7. CASE STUDY
1 Publication
2 Organizations
22 business days
$348 effective RPM
$500/FP
$4250 remitted $16 effective RPC
Organization
Publisher
“I LOVE THIS PRODUCT! It’s the
only way to communicate in sync
with a developing news cycle, and
with better metrics than anything
else we’ve tried on Philly.com”
"We've been so impressed with
Featured Perspectives. They far
out-perform our other belowarticle monetization widgets, and
with great, relevant content."
Catie Stephenson
Communications Director, PennCAN
Bob McGovern
Executive Producer, Philly.com
