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I started a company that was asked to write a proposal to make what became the app that failed last night. I declined because it was outside of our core skillse

• whylie 7y ago
  >Shadow is a firm that makes custom software for Democrats and progressives. If I can ask, why the specific nature for their clientele? Isolating your solutions to a specific political party seems strange to me especially if the emphasis on making money. If anything, money normally supersedes political leanings at the end of the day which makes the whole fiasco even stranger to me. Wouldn't you want to provide a solution for both parties by default? Not doing so seems nefarious on it's own. It sounds like pairing products with political leanings is not a good business decision? Which may explain where all the 'hate' is coming from - it's just bad business and sows the seeds of doubt in their credibility in the minds of many.
  • nooron 7y ago
    Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks. Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republicans, Democrats will not work with you.
    • bluehat 7y ago
      Going to especially second that last bit. Not everybody is expressly data science, but most companies start running into some sort of data at one point or another. Campaigns aren't wrong to be concerned about who has their data. There is good historical reason for them to be skeptical that security on your system will be strong enough to prevent customers from accessing other customer's data. https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data/ https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data... Now imagine getting buy-in for using customer data to improve your models. I can't blame campaigns for being paranoid about vendors potentially going across the aisle. NationBuilder is one of the only big names I know that does it. They are in a unique and unenviable position given the death grip NGP VAN has, and they pay a big price for it on nearly every front.
      • nooron 7y ago
        I agree with all this. To your point, NationBuilder has been nearly shut out of the Democratic Party at anything above the local level as a result of serving Trump in 2016.
      • tonicb 7y ago
        Really interesting point here. Although, there is a little more nuance needed and this is one of the big issues plaguing the campaigning software space - not all are created for the same goals and not all offer the same services. If you take your example of NationBuilder, a company I know well as I led their European expansion, it only sold software not data. Unlike most American campaign software, NationBuilder does not sell data as part of their package. NationBuilder does not believe that you can create a sustainable and powerful community by using data that you have purchased, and thus only sells the platform. So yes I agree with you that while campaigns can (and should) be paranoid about who has access to their data, and even how it is being used, this data brokerage model isn't the model that all companies adopt and it's a really important distinction to make. While I am here, I will add the following, tech companies who want to democratise democracy (and I'm not saying that's the mission for everyone) and help lower the barrier to entry, cannot claim to do so if they alone decide who has access to these tools. Crucial decisions, such as which parties have access to the latest technology, should not be in the hands of a few tech titans of Silicon Valley - where the power they already wield is already unmeasurable. All of the above is a fascinating and important debate and also a very American one. Campaigning and political technology is incredibly partisan in America, compared to Europe where what we fear most are monopolies.
• war1025 7y ago
  I don't know whether I heard correctly or if the number was accurate, but I heard someone throw out $60k as the amount paid for the app development this morning on the radio. That sounds like a lot of money to a lay-person, but assuming $100/hr, which seems like at least a reasonable ballpark rate, that breaks down to 600 man-hours, or 15 man-weeks. That is a very tight deadline to turn out a critical app like this. Especially since I assume it wasn't just a single person doing the coding. People don't realize that software is expensive and a custom built application is probably not the correct choice for a single-use product. I'm sure whoever was in charge felt that $60k was a quite generous offer to build this. In reality it's basically nothing. I used to have acquaintances approach me and say, "Hey I've got this great app idea you could help me with." The response I found shut them down real quick was, "Great. Do you have $100k lying around to get the first beta out the door?"
  • tptacek 7y ago
    60k for an app that runs results collections for the Iowa Democratic Caucus sounds absurdly low. By comparison, just to get an app like that assessed for security issues --- and my assumption is that this is not an especially complicated app --- you'd already in the neighborhood of 20k.
    • Aperocky 7y ago
      Why they can't just do a https website with login is beyond me. Why an App? We all know there's nothing in it but boilerplate.
      • madeofpalk 7y ago
        Would it matter? You've still got to build it, the cost would be (roughly) the same.
        • Aperocky 7y ago
          The added complexity of having to build an app and all the boilerplate can significantly increase the complexity from just a simple website. And while an app not hard, a https website with login and post capability is on the _extremely simple_ territory. As long as precinct official are trustable, I don't see any reason why they have to use an app. I guess for the wow factor? As the entire political process is essentially becoming.
• charred_toast 7y ago
  If it means anything to anyone, my sister is naming her design company after her beloved dog, Shadow.
  • nooron 7y ago
    That's very sweet, my cousin's dog was named Shadow. I hope it goes well for her.
  • bluehat 7y ago
    That remains terrible branding. Branding is part of marketing. Her dog is not part of that.
    • charred_toast 7y ago
      Wow, can I hire you? You seem to be dripping with expertise, and so charming.
    • tim333 7y ago
      Shadow is quite relevant in design with a non sinister meaning eg https://abduzeedo.com/long-shadow-design-trend https://abduzeedo.com/long-shadow-design-trend For software, dunno
• yazboo 7y ago
  Can you share any more about the proposal process? Where was the RFP posted? What were the evaluation criteria? I was kind of assuming that this was more of a handshake deal or a cold sell or something, surprised to hear it went through a structured bid of some kind.
  • nooron 7y ago
    I'll do my best, but I'll probably disappoint! A friend of mine who works in politics told someone in the IDP that I might be helpful because my company makes software for Democratic political campaigns. I had a conversation with the IDP staffer, learned more, and told them very quickly we wouldn't be able to help with this. They might have ran a more formal RFP beyond that, but I have no knowledge of it, because we did not advance beyond that conversation.
• dv_dt 7y ago
  One underlying question is why there was an app for this in the first place, when election process activists basically say do it on paper and by hand with people and audits. Anecdotally, nations doing it that way seem to report faster than when software and electronics become involved.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• atwebb 7y ago
  Sounds like Hanlon's Razor in practice. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
• robomartin 7y ago
  Please educate me on something. I fail to understand why "making custom software for <insert party here>" is something anyone would want to do in the context of owning and growing a real business. This seems fraught with all kinds of issues. First of all (and it seems I've been using this word a lot lately) this turns software development into a religion rather than a business with solid business strategy. The equivalent in other businesses, like the entertainment industry, are people who do work for stars for nothing or nearly nothing because they think it will lead somewhere. All they get is a weird and abusive form of servitude (I've seen this first hand) and no future. Why would someone not write software for politics instead and make part of their value proposition that they are not biased (and, of course, take the steps necessary to actually deliver that). We have a close relative in South America who owns a company that makes and markets voting hardware and software. They are not aligned with any specific political party, movement or cult. They sell to everyone, in and outside South America and have a very nice business.
  • nooron 7y ago
    Hey, I appreciate your comment and I'm happy to share. It is very hard to make into a real business, very few people have succeeded. You do it because you believe in a cause or a candidate or a party. As far as why people don't sell to everyone, the above explains a lot. Another explanation is that political sales (which is different from true election tech, which is purchased by governments) are driven by trust and personal relationships. Once you work for one party in the US, the other will not trust you.
    • robomartin 7y ago
      This is interesting and, yes, I do understand. Yet, another take on this is that groups (parties) would then rob themselves from perhaps working with or searching for the most capable of providers. I am not trying to diminish anyone at all, but I would think these kinds of party line attachments mean that not everyone ends-up with the most capable developers, particularly so if what drives this is passion rather than a skilled software shop that with proven capabilities and experience across a range of relevant domains with an equally proven track record of delivering quality, well tested bug-free product. Of course, the parties would have to we willing to pay more than hobby money for what they need.
• ihunter2839 7y ago
  Can you comment on whether the proposal was part of the the SBIR / STTR program? Just curious as to the scope of companies that were participants in the proposal process. As an aside - these instances of underfunded and underdeveloped services, specifically in the political sphere, are really painful reminders of the flip side to the idealistic technocratic future that I think a lot of folks around here assume to be an inevitability.
  • azernik 7y ago
    Caucuses are run by the parties, not the government; it went through whatever podunk procurement process the Iowa Democratic Party has, not anything federal or even governmental.
• Benjammer 7y ago
  Why is any sort of "Democratic software company" even remotely necessary? Why can't they pay for white-labeled solutions? Or pay an established consulting agency to build things?
  • Kalium 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22241577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22241577 You may find this discussion enlightening. In short, trust is at a premium and there are few white-label providers.
• megablast 7y ago
  > I declined because it was outside of our core skillset. Um, isn't this app allowing people to enter data, and sending that to an API? How could that be out of anyone's core skillset? Almost every single app must do that.
  • trianglem 7y ago
    We had to turn down a democratic contract because we could not fulfill the security requirements in time. Maybe that played a part.
• allovernow 7y ago
  >There are not a lot of companies that make software for Democrats because it’s an awful job. You make very little money. Everyone hates you when things go wrong, which they will, because the product testing cycle and margins are nonexistent. Then everyone will assume things went wrong because... In other words it's exactly the kind of business that attracts activist types who have non-monetary motivations and it could therefore present an opportunity for tampering, particularly since any discrepancies can be dismissed as bugs from underfunding and rushed development. Whatever is actually going on, the system is clearly insanely broken.
• saluki 7y ago
  y, wow, can't believe they named the company Shadow.
• bradgessler 7y ago
  Is there a world where this type of software could be open source?
  • fapjacks 7y ago
    I realize this is HN but let's not be so milquetoast about the critical infrastructure of our democracy. Non-free, closed-source software DOES NOT belong in the machinery of our democratic processes.
• r00fus 7y ago
  The problem didn’t come from making software for the Buttigieg campaign but the CEOs wife was on the Buttigieg campaign and he was a supporter. Also Shadow was openly hostile to the Sanders campaign in numerous encounters. It’s not as bad as the CEO of a major voting software company saying he’ll “bring home the votes for Republicans” (Diebold, 2004) a but this is a clear case of conflict of interest.
• jadell 7y ago
  Did they make the text-banking app for Buttigieg, or merely sell them SaaS? Biden, Clinton, other Dem campaigns, and the DNC have all used Shadow's software.
• akhilcacharya 7y ago
  This is both true and why Mike Bloomberg is building one in-house.
• birdyrooster 7y ago
  Curiously... Any take on Michael Slaby, Timshel (defunct), The Groundwork (defunct), the dozens (up to 70 at one point, many from SV/NYC) of engineers that worked on it for roughly two years in close contact with HFA 2016 (The Groundwork was right down the street from HFA 2016 HQ), and the $700,000 that HFA 2016 paid for that work? More generally, do you think there is a problem with for-profits which focus on political organizations under the guise of "focusing on non-profit"? How often do you think illegal in-kind contributions take place through these companies to political campaigns?
  • Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    I worked with Michael Slaby in 2008 and 2012. He's an incredible technology manager. He's great at punching up and fighting for his engineer's perspectives and helping upper management understand limitations and then getting out of the way. Since that time he's probably had his own epiphanies from working in industry but one of mine was that we did shockingly little QA and everything was built as fast as humanly possible. Everything was building the airplane in the air and it was largely due to constraints of the political or legal kind. Timeline management and allocating resources to testing was always an afterthought. Testing usually comes from a feedback loop of launching broken features, incident response, manager gets in hot water, engineer gets in hot water, engineer proposes testing plan, manager uses incident as primary source reference to secure additional budget, testing implemented. In politics no service, company, initiative, or team lasts long enough to complete the cycle.
    • birdyrooster 7y ago
      "In politics no service, company, initiative, or team lasts long enough to complete the cycle." This is systemic corruption. A billionaire can dump as much money into a for-profit company to build a platform for a specific campaign and then when the campaign is over then can claim that there isn't enough business to keep the platform solvent for the next 2 to 4 years and do it all again with the benefit of the previous code base. It's better than a Super PAC because the for-profit company can work directly with the campaign and no one will bat an eye. The company can even have foreign financing. All the while, their losses amount to a huge tax write-off and the public pays the bill. In the case of The Groundwork, it likely cost upwards of $10 million for the people, building lease, AWS costs, etc. But where did all of the money come from? Certainly Hillary didn't pay for this. I'd love to see Eric Schmidt's 2016 Tax Returns.
• BLanen 7y ago
  The only thing you're doing is normalizing nepotism and excusing incompetence.