20th
Congrats on the Primary Win!
I spent a good portion of last night hitting the refresh button on the Wyoming Secretary of State’s website. The reason is because Annaliese has been working tremendously hard on the Cynthia Lummis campaign, and last night they won the GOP primary.
She began working on the campaign over 7 months ago, while I was still working on CHALQ. We’d talk a lot about how similar it is starting a campaign and starting a business: finding good people to work with, creating a fun and productive culture, raising money, and building a reliable infrastructure early.
Annaliese had a lot to do with building out the infrastructure starting out. Within a few days of her mom announcing that she’d be running, Annaliese had the campaign email system, calendars, and website running. Just a few weeks after she’d started working on the campaign, the volunteer network was being filled out online and money was being raised on the website. They offset the cost of building the website in the first week or two fundraising online.
All of this hard work is difficult to rationalize sometimes when your goal is so far away or seems unattainable. The uncertainty of a campaign or start up is the most exciting, nerve wracking, frustrating, and fun characteristic simultaneously. And just like a start up co-founder who gets people around him tied up in his success and failure, I couldn’t stop refreshing the Wyoming Secretary of State’s website last night.
I really enjoyed my first start up experience, and I’ll be at it again soon. Just like Annaliese. Good luck in the general election!