Founded by a group of local entrepreneurs, Door2Door was born from a real life struggle experienced when one of the founders was running for a local office.
An app that wants to help those running for office find an efficient route to meet constituents door to door, it’s an idea that co-founder Tom has been considering since his own campaign experience. Door2Door was hatched (and won) at Lansing’s Startup Weekend and presented at November’s Hatching event.
Founded
Ryan Casler
Phil Prescher
Tom Stewart
The Problem Being Solved
The process for figuring out a route for door to door campaigning is currently time consuming and inefficient. Currently, campaigns buy spreadsheets with data about voters. They then go meet with the constituents they will need to sort that data and create walk routes for volunteers. The team at Door2Door believes that this is a problem that can, and should, be fixed with software.
Opportunities
Right now, Door2Door has very few competitors that are not widely used. “This shows us that there is a need for the product and with strong features we can win the market,” says Ryan.
They have also noticed there is a lot of money being spent in politics right now. “The tri-county region was at $5 million last year alone.”
[Tweet “There is a lot of money being spent in politics right now. -Door2Door via @StartupLansing”]
Where the Idea Came From
Co-founder Tom Stewart ran for political office a few years ago. His grassroots campaign was based on talking to constituents. Doing so required sorting data based on specific demographics and psychographics then planning walk routes for volunteers all manually. “The whole process was very time consuming,” says Ryan, “and Tom knew there was a better way.”
Target Customer
“Our target market, initially, is political campaigns in the tri-county region that do door to door canvassing. In the future our app will be targeted at anyone who goes door to door with a list.”
[Tweet “Our app will be targeted at anyone who goes door to door -Door2Door via @StartupLansing”]
Biggest Challenge
Door2Door has faced challenges when it comes to figuring out exactly what features are needed for the app, in addition to it’s core features.
To figure this out, they are talking with players in the local political system and getting feedback from potential customers on how they would use the app and what they want it to do.
Funding
Door2door is only a few weeks old and since two of its founders are developers, their plan is to bootstrap the app until they can make some revenue from it, then look for funding to expand the company.
The Future
Ryan says their goal is to have a fully-functional product in one year and ~2% of campaigns in the tri-county region using our app. From there they hope to expand to other markets around the country.
Advice
Door2Door would like to share two pieces of advice with entrepreneurs.
The first? “Just do it. If you sit around thinking about something you will never learn,” says Ryan. “Create a business model canvas and start talking to people that could help with your company.”
[Tweet “Just do it. If you sit around thinking you will never learn. -Door2Door via @StartupLansing”]
The second would be to “make sure the first thing you do is research your market and decide how you will build, sell and market your product. Without these you will waste a lot of time creating a product no one wants.”
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