YouSaid · the spoken record

Steve Spinner

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75
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2018-11-10
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2018-11-10
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  1. “At that time, I was helping, well, I helped with Obama with the re-elect and I was playing what to do next. Yeah, so I was helping Roe from a campaign perspective, but I was getting ready to either join a tech company out here or start my next thing. Got it. And so in that period of time of figuring out what I wanted to do next, I realized what we had done, what we had accomplished for Obama world had been really unique and really successful. And it was something unique that I had done and that there could be an opportunity to help many, many campaigns. And so that's what I wanted to do. And so we started doing that. Spoke to the lawyers, made sure that we could do the way we wanted to do it because it had never been done before, spoke to both sides of the aisle because the only way you could do what I wanted to do is if it was not a partisan play. And even though I'm a Democrat and I'm a well-known Democrat.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “So, one of my closest friends is Rokana, and he had been running for Congress. And obviously I wanted to help him. I was helping him on the fundraising side. And a lot of opportunity came up where, you know, people had been reaching out to me about what I'd been doing for Obama and would that be available? Would I help them individually for this race or that race, et cetera? And it's just one of those things where there's only one of me and as flattering as there is, I don't like to say no, but I just don't have enough time to say yes to everyone.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “But I wrote the business plan for tech for Obama, wrote the business plan for Obama victory trustees, wrote the business plan for South Asians for Obama because obviously the white Jew and me, that's obvious that I would write that business plan. But those efforts together raise many, many, many multiples of what I as an individual could, but you do it and so that everyone participates, everyone gets credit for it. It's the big 10 kind of thing. And that's where the real value of what I was able to do came in because my time, there's only a certain amount of time I can as a volunteer fundraiser. There's only so many people I know. But if you can build initiatives that take hold, that grow roots and that not just one or five or ten or 20 people, but 100 or 300 people can participate in and they can make it their own, then you can have this huge, huge, huge multiplier effect and raise.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “But also, and I appreciate that, and there is obviously a great amount of truth to that, but it's also to do it in a way that is putting the donor first, you know, being respectful. I mean, and I've said that a couple times, I say that a gazillion times, like respect in fundraising, I can't say that enough how important that is, not just for me, but for anyone who wants to do it, whether it be for politics or whether it be for nonprofits or academic fundraising, anything you do, if you can be respectful of the other person, you're more likely to have a positive outcome and they'll feel really good about it as well. And then the last thing is that you had mentioned the competitiveness of it. Yeah, absolutely. Historically, it had been terribly competitive. And in some cases, it still persists. What I've always enjoyed is working collaboratively, working in teams, sharing credit, that the whole is greater than the individual parts. And so it's not just the individual fundraising I did, but”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Do you ever kind of like just step back and reflect on how crazy the last, I'm sure, you were talking before about how you never really been, you didn't grow up kind of seeing yourself as some political animal, but you kind of made into the top tier of finance folks basically just through hard work and kind of an innovative idea that I'm going to be more strategic about how.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “That's not the world I live in. I like the hard money, the official, the FEC reported money where people are proud to make the contribution and there are limits, there are limits. I like a world of limits. And I would deal with everything from the max of, you know, not just the 2700s, but to the committees of the DNCs, the DSCCs, DCCCs, the victory funds, and so forth, which would be up to $75,000 in total, but not this stuff that you read about the hundreds of thousands, certainly millions or even tens of millions of dollars. That's a world that I have not played in for professional, political, and personal reasons.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Well, I mean, it wouldn't be a lot of names that people that follow here would necessarily recognize and so forth. But there were a lot of traditional fundraisers in there, and I was one of the few first time people in the top 30. And it was something I was exceedingly proud of. But what the campaign was really excited was the way that we did it. It was the first time that people had used quote-unquote data in a way that now would be defined as data analytics back then. It certainly wasn't that classification. And they liked that we got some great press around it and it continued the momentum. In 2012, I took that to a whole new level. In 2012, I was reported as being top three. Got it in the country.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Oh, of course. Yeah, right. No, I mean, I knew some, but I didn't know him necessarily in this vein so much. And it's just when you take an email, you just customize the top line of it and you just recognize that, you know, Teddy, great seeing you the other day. I know you like to go to, I know you're particularly interested in climate change events. Here's a really good one for you. All of a sudden, you're going to read that email and you're going to recognize that that's a unique email that was sent to you. And there is a higher likelihood, a higher yield potential from that.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “About just understanding, and I'd have copious notes, copious pads of paper about who liked what, as I was mentioning earlier, who liked to go to big events or small events or who could write big checks or write only small checks, who could like to travel for events, who like to go to a climate change event or a women's only event at the time. And I was just always trying to be very, very careful to put the right ask in front of the right person at the right time. And if you do that, you do that well, then rather than this 0.0001 yield that online does is you get 40% yield, 50, 60, 70 percent yield.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Correct, correct. And that obviously could not be me. I mean, I was super, super excited about Senator Obama at the time. I was one of the first 50 people to get involved in the campaign months before it was officially announced in early February of 2007. And I just wanted help, couldn't do it full time, didn't want to do it full time. Wanted to still have a job, still have a career, but be able to help where I could, which was if I can't write a big check and even at the time they couldn't take him, it was 2,300 max you could individually write. But I could help by being a fundraiser. And by being a fundraiser, it meant not calling all these chits because I didn't have those. It was, as I had mentioned, just research and get to know my friends. And at the time, I had about 2,000 people that I knew, you know, broadly defined new through LinkedIn and Facebook. Again, it's so many years ago. This is the early stages of social media. And I would just be very, very careful.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “I mean, some of the big fundraisers are brand marquee names, the George Sorrises of the world, the Oprahs of the World. These are a lot of people are celebrities kind of asking other celebrities for money. Correct.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “A lot of times, the best quote unquote fundraisers at the time were Uber wealthy individuals who had for many, many years been extremely exceedingly generous with their own funds giving to their causes, more importantly giving to others causes as well so that when they got passionate about a candidate that they wanted to see be president and they wanted to open their home and be a fundraiser, that that's when they would start cashing in their chits and say, hey, remember when I helped you with your fundraising effort over there? Can I have you help me over here with mine? And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. That's the way any type of fundraising goes, whether it be philanthropic or political. That's the way it worked because those were big dollars being asked and given by big people. And you do it at law of big numbers and those were the biggest fundraisers at the time. And a lot of them got the perks of it, being the ambassadors and so on.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Yeah, I mean, again, you know, pre-rev up. Yeah, so, well, before Rev up and even before me, historically for fundraising at very high levels, let's just talk about the presidential level. Let's talk about Obama in 2007, since I just preempted it with my last comment about Oprah. Before 2007, what had happened in 2004, what happened in 2000, and even in the 90s”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “The extent of that. But let's just drill down a little bit more on kind of like how fundraising is done and what may what you were doing different. I mean, fundraising is not that different from kind of basic human relationships where you're thinking about people you know and you try and kind of bond with people that you're not right. You're not just going around and saying like, hello, these are the force 400. Let's ask each of them for $2,700. Basically, you're kind of using, I'm assuming it's shirt, first, a Silicon Valley, the people you know in town, and kind of describe the art of the ask. How's it done?”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “In the last decade, ever since Obama won. Yeah. But at the time, he had been Kerry's California chair. What I did for Obama in 2012, he did for Kerry in 2004. And so I just started helping him. And I just started realizing that there's a very high correlation to raising money for a candidate as there is raising money for a company. You have to be really passionate about what it is that you're trying to get people excited about and inspired so much that they're interested in giving in whatever appropriate amount it is for them And if you could just use certain skills that you would do in a business world, which is try to put the right ask in front of the right person at the right time and be respectful. And the keyword there is be respectful. Then people are more likely to be interested in participating.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “And that's it. I tried to treat it like business and say, okay, if I'm going to do this, what are the right ways to do it? What are the best practices that you can share? And I was very quickly disappointed when they said there aren't no best practices. It's fundraising. You get an invitation, you get an email, you get a link, and you send it out or you talk to people. And after many times, many failed attempts to try to get the best practices of what other dues, the don'ts, I just kind of, everyone threw up their arms and just started doing it myself. And I'm sure for the first, you know, six, nine months, I made every possible mistake you can, every amateur thing you could do.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Well, the first one was a guy named Donnie Fowler, who was running for a DNC chair. And the second one a few weeks later was for Senator Ted Kennedy. And after those two checks, the third one that I get asked for, and I'm like, whoa, you haven't met my wife. These checks are coming too fast and they're too big. I can't afford to do all this writing. So if you can't write all these things, what else can you do? And that's when they introduced me to raising. The artifund raising. Which is different.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “Yeah, so the first moment was a perfect example of Silicon Valley leadership slash potential naivete. And I was the poster child for that, where a little old me after the law said, you know what, maybe if I had been involved, maybe I could have had a small difference in the outcome. And many of us felt the same way. And so very simple, I just called up a couple of friends of mine who had been very engaged in politics and had done it at a senior level were at the time known as very, very strong fundraisers. And I just said, hey, look, I can't work in politics. I don't want to work. I like being a tech person. But I want to get involved. I want to help try to see if I can make a difference, albeit, you know, a small one in the aggregated adds up to a lot if a lot of people do. And so they said, that's great. Come to an event, you know, come contribute. That's great. I went to it in February of 2005.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “So in 2004, John Kerry loses. You said that was kind of after that, that was kind of the moment where you started getting involved. What was kind of the first moment? What was the first time you kind of got involved in campaign finance?”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “Know the exact opposite. I am the problem with the 20 something. So I am the epitome of that. I was very, very focused on my career learning skills that I thought I would need for the rest of my life professionally. And I was not at all at all engaged, even though I went to Wesley University for undergrad and I'm a proud Wesleyan graduate. I was not politically engaged in my 20s and to my early 30s. And I've regretted it ever since having not been involved earlier in my life. But I made up for it more than made up for it in the years since.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Yeah, NBC initially was there for another couple years, had a wonderful ride there, and had been doing business development, turned me into a general manager, turned me into an executive, and really informative years professionally for me in my late 20s, early 30s. And I've been here ever since. So I've been here for 20 years, and I've done a number of startups out here, have done things on the investment side. But yes, did definitely get involved in politics for the first time in 2005 right after the carry loss where I first started getting involved in fundraising.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “Yeah, I'm not very good on skates. But I love the office. And then the opportunity came up and then had me come out to California. And I've never, you know, looked back. So I came out here in 98.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “Business development, corporate development. So it was there when MSNBC was formed and was involved in all the internet activities that they did, had a fantastic time there and did that for a couple years in New York City, and then an opportunity came up that if the deal happened, I knew it was, they were going to ask me to leave the bosom of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, a wonderful, wonderful building to work in, overlooking the Christmas tree. Sure. Even though I'm a proud Jew. And I loved it.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Like so many people from California, they come from elsewhere originally. Sure. I am definitely like that. I was born and bred in Long Island, New York to a doctor's family Long Island, or if I'm supposed to correctly pronounce it, Long Island. But it'sland a while since I've had that accent. And I broke my dad's heart in college when I took economics and fell in love with that and told him I wasn't pre-med. And ever since then, I worked on the East Coast and worked a lot internationally in my 20s. So worked in Europe and then in Asia and then worked in Atlanta for the Olympics and then went to business school up in Boston and then worked at NBC in New York at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and did that in the late 90s when it was owned by General Electric for a number of years.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Thanks, Kara. I'm here with Steve Spinner, the founder and CEO of RevUP Software. He's the campaign chair for Congressman Roe Khanna, and he previously worked as the California Finance Chair for the Obama-Biden 2012 campaign, Steve, welcome to Rico Decode.”

    2018-11-10 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: RevUp CEO Steve Spinner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT