How can I show traction for my idea before raising money to make a product?

Using low-to-no cost tools to build functioning minimum viable products (MVPs).

If you have an idea for a new product or service, the first step is to look for traction, i.e. people who want it right now. (More on this is here.) If at all possible, this should come before fundraising, because signs of demand will make fundraising much easier.

Thanks to new no-code tools, even with no funding it’s possible to make “minimum viable products,” i.e. limited-but-sorta-working versions of your idea. Here are some examples of how political innovators did that:

Build a Fully Functional Fundraising CRM Using Airtable

Kalani, a fundraising staffer turned consultant, has used NGP for his entire political fundraising career, and wasn’t content with it given its cost, usability, and responsiveness to customer needs.

So, he used Airtable to build a fully functioning fundraising CRM. Airtable is a relational database that allows users to link records (rows) together. The whole software platform is customizable, and users can create custom databases for just about anything, including political fundraising. It’s also two simple clicks to clone this CRM and start setting up a new candidate with ease.

Check out a full article on how this fundraising CRM works here!

Providing Scalable Early Stage Candidate Support Using Glide

In late-2021, 314 Action was scoping out scalable methods for guiding candidates as they take the first steps for running for office. While researching current solutions to that challenge, two main candidate journeys became clear. In the first, candidates received an overwhelming amount of (good!) information from national and state partner groups and had to parse out, a) what to do next and b) determine whether they completed a step properly. In the second, candidates received guidance from local party activists, which varied in quality depending on the activist providing advice.

The organization used Glide to build a third type of journey, one where all content takes less than 5 minutes to consume, content is broken down to answer the question, “what do I do next?”, and collected metrics to give feedback after each step to answer the question, “did I do it right?” Glide allows users to create custom mobile and web apps powered by Google Sheets for free.

After seeing candidates respond positively to this type of support, 314 Action was then able to invest in a long-term early-stage candidate support solution, launching in Q1 this year. Here are screenshots of the 314 Action Candidate Support tool built with Glide!

Zapier

Zapier connects 5,000 web apps, including databases (like Google Sheets and AirTable) and ways to interact with those databases (like emails and texts in and out). It also connects to NGP.

It’s pretty amazing what can be created with Zapier; check out their web page for examples.