Facebook vs TikTok: Will Every Tech Company Become a Political Campaign?

Long before tech, I cut my teeth working on political campaigns fresh out of college. I was a field staffer on Obama’s first presidential campaign, during a time when smartphones were novel, Twitter didn’t exist, Facebook grew mostly just on college campuses, and doing email marketing was considered “tech savvy”.

I went on to join a few other campaigns – some for candidates, some for issues (climate change). Doing opposition research was the norm and drafting op-eds and letters to the editors for local newspapers to tell my side’s position, or undermine our opponent’s position, were table stakes tactics. In fact, there is a job on most political campaigns, called a “tracker”, whose sole responsibility was to travel to the opposing candidate’s campaign events, film them, and hoping to catch a gaffe or awkward moment that can then be turned into a political ad against that candidate – the ultimate form of opposition research in real time.

When I read the big Washington Post story from a couple of weeks ago, on how Facebook paid a political consulting firm to undermine TikTok, I felt both shocked and nostalgic. Nostalgic because I saw familiar phrases like “placing op-eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets” and “use opposition-research tactics” in the article. Shocked because I never thought these phrases would appear in an article about two rival tech companies.

Will every tech company need to become a political campaign to win? Are there things from a political campaign that tech companies can and should learn from?

CEO as a Product

Having spent time in both worlds, I find many similarities between political campaigns and tech startups. There is a lot the two worlds can and should learn from each other. One dimension that startups can learn from successful political campaigns is what I call “CEO as a product”.

When you see a candidate run for president on TV (or social media), you would rightfully assume that the candidate runs the show and is the “CEO” of that campaign. Technically that’s true; the candidate can make the final decision on everything, from campaign messaging and strategy, to scheduling logistics and hiring/firing staff. But the candidate is also the “product” that the campaign is selling to the voters. Candidates who don’t understand that they are the “product” often fail. Candidates who do understand that, and thus stay away from micromanaging and hire a competent campaign manager to be the real “CEO” running the campaign operation, often succeed.

In 2008, Barack Obama was the “product” and his campaign manager David Plouff was the “CEO” of the campaign. On the Republican side that year, John McCain was the “product” and his campaign manager Steve Schmidt was the “CEO” of that campaign. Both campaigns beat many other candidates during the party primary elections. Many of those losing candidates did not understand their proper role as the “product” or were just bad products (e.g. Rudy Giuliani).

Most founders/CEOs of tech startups don’t see themselves as the “product”. The ones who do often achieve much bigger successes than the ones who don’t. That’s because as a company gets bigger and its customers also become bigger and more sophisticated, the CEO’s credibility and charisma is also a “product” that’s being sold, regardless of whether your actual product is a super fast database, an easy to use SaaS solution, or a viral short video app. The choice to buy a technology product or vote for someone is ultimately an emotional choice, not a logical one. Candidates who can build that emotional connection reach the highest offices. Thus, a CEO’s ability to build that emotional connection by evolving into a “product” can often determine how high the ceiling is for a company’s growth, especially one that aspires to become a public company.

This evolution can take two paths. Path 1 is remaking yourself. Path 2 is hiring someone who is already “camera ready” and “product ready”.

Google took Path 2, first hiring Eric Schmidt before its IPO, then later elevating Sundar Pichai as its current CEO, with Larry Page the cofounder serving only a brief stint as CEO in between.

Meta took Path 1, with Mark Zuckerberg constantly remaking himself and doing things that political candidates do, like touring different states in America in 2017 and delivering a policy speech at Georgetown in 2019.

While the Meta stock price has taken a beating recently, it’s safe to assume that if Zuckerberg did not try to evolve himself beyond his nerdy engineer origin in the last few years, things would have been much worse.

There are examples in the enterprise software industry too. Marc Benioff of Salesforce is the quintessential Path 1, so much so that rumors of him actually running for public office are always swirling around. Hashicorp’s co-founders took Path 2, by hiring David McJannet as CEO, who steered the company towards its IPO last year.

There are more examples I can cite, but these are not the only paths for startup CEOs to choose from. Another more self-aware example is Frank Bien, CEO of Looker (a data analytics tool). He decided to sell his company to Google Cloud for $2.6 billion partially because, as a former punk rocker, he did not want to evolve to become a public company CEO (Path 1) nor wanted to hire one just so his company could go public (Path 2).

When your company goes public, you as the CEO, by definition, become a public figure, just like any political candidate, president, senator, congressperson, etc. In fact, every public company CEO should at least have the political instinct necessary to win a congressional seat or the mayorship of a city the size of San Francisco. And an important factor that all tech investors should develop a sense for is whether the founding CEOs in their portfolio have that capacity to evolve “as a product” or the humility to hire someone who is “camera ready” and “product ready”. After all, every investor dreams about his investment going public.

Develop Political Intuitions Early

Most founding CEOs of tech startups develop a strong financial instinct early, because they have to raise money, calculate burn rates, price their products, and do the financial basics of running a company. As technology products become increasingly politicized all around the world, it would pay long-term dividends for the new generation of founding CEOs to develop some political intuitions early and think of themselves as “products” akin to political candidates. As Peter Thiel pointed out in his recent Bitcoin 2022 Conference speech, the choice of technology is becoming a political decision.

Additionally, it would be useful to add elements of a successful political campaign into building a startup as well. I’m not suggesting that a startup CEO should hire a “tracker” as one of the first 50 employees. I’m not suggesting that the daily machinations of Washington DC should occupy the CEO’s weekly leadership meetings. But if you already read the Wall Street Journal once a week (if not, you should), you may want to read the politics section of the New York Times or Washington Post at least once a month, just to start developing some political intuitions. And learning how to frame competing products as your opponents in the same way political campaigns do, and how to punch up or down look-alike products strategically, can be crucial in elevating your startup from the crowd.

Facebook understood this early when Sheryl Sandberg joined as COO in 2008. Although Sandberg is widely known as a high-powered tech exec, she also cut her teeth in politics first, as then Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’s chief of staff during the Clinton administration.

TikTok is playing catch up in developing its political intuitions and paying a hefty price for it. To be fair, Zhang Yiming likely saw this deficit looming and chose Path 2 by hiring Kevin Mayer in 2020, who was very much “camera ready” and “product ready”. But the 2020 election season got too messy, and Mayer did not stick around, because he was ultimately a mercenary not a loyalist.

Being one of the most self aware tech CEOs in recent memory, evident in his departure speech, Zhang did not later choose Path 1 to evolve himself, but decided instead to resign and chose his co-founder and BFF (a loyalist), Liang Rubo, as his replacement. If this video of Zhang and Liang reminiscing about their startup journey is any indication, Liang has a long way to go to evolve into a “camera ready” and “product ready” CEO, though he now has the opportunity to try.

Encouragingly, many new founding CEOs I talk to regularly are asking more questions about the geopolitical dynamics, big nation relationships, and the latest developments in Washington DC. These tend to be immigrant founders from China, India, and increasingly from Latin America as well. Their curiosity and willingness to develop political intuitions early is healthy, and I always encourage them to read up on the journeys of successful and failed political campaigns, in the same way that they would study the experiences of Airbnb and WeWork.

Whether you like it or not, having some political intuition is now an essential element of startup building, just like running an engineering department or ramping up a sales team.