And, wow, it was really life-changing. Nathan: One thing I noticed is you guys produce a lot of content, too. Ben: Yeah. And the domain that wasn’t available, but the site wasn’t currently actively live. And one is, you know, we see this quite dramatic rise in civic engagement and participation really around the world right now through our platform. I love what you’re up to, man. You know, you don’t get that racehorse racing every single week, it has to spend some [00:02:00] time in the paddocks, so I’m gonna have some time in the paddock every six months. Like, I don’t really sign petitions or anything like that. And I came back to Washington, DC, learned a lot about power and politics, what was wrong with political system in the United States. That is both immensely promising and something we’re hugely excited about and was a painful transition to make.”. We turned down…Again, I don’t think I have mentioned this, maybe publicly, but without calling out the name of the person, we turned down an offer about million and a half investments on terms that I still think weren’t great, but had only had friends and family money directly before launching. I’m not as active a producer of content as I am a consumer of content, but I will respond as much as possible there. It’s just simply world-changing what Ben’s building, and you really get to understand really what it takes to be a true visionary. “It’s been a beautiful experience,” he says. That’s a strong domain starting out. Before launching the company, Rattray received an investment offer of about $1.5 million, but declined it because the terms weren’t ideal—a move he calls “one of the big mistakes that we made.”, “We thought, of course, that we’d go viral immediately and have huge traction, and the reality is getting millions of people to come to a website is enormously difficult. “We’re a social enterprise,” Rattray explains. Rattray goes into detail about how to find the right name for your company, How to take advantage of upsells and cross-sells to increase your bottom line, Pivoting and changing your business model, The how-to guide for mobilizing your community using content. When you see, sort of, you know, a competitor on the horizon, that in a way it seems odd to think of Facebook as a competitor to us, they aren’t really in a direct sense. FB Twitter Linkedin Google+ Youtube Instagram … The board of SIS student leaders is pleased to welcome Ben Rattray, Founder and CEO of Change.org as the event's morning keynote speaker. Because I know you do have investors, but, you know, we kinda covered that piece where they’re not necessarily looking for a return. An aspiring banker who was trained all his life to go where the money is. This petition had 396 supporters. As a business, Change.org is unique in many ways: It operates in the social good space, supporting NGOs and grassroots campaigns, yet it is a for-profit corporation that has raised capital. We’ve all seen petitions. In our case, it was obviously signing petitions and could be liking the page, but some sort of lightweight action that is short of what is a pretty high bar of asking people to become a paying member. “The ultimate vision that we have is if you have a critical mass of not just 5 or 10% but 20 or 30% of the voting public actively engaged, using their phones to communicate with their elected officials… If you’re an elected official, you’re a candidate for office considering how you want to engage with your constituents, and 30% of them are using Change.org, to communicate with you, you don’t really have a choice.”, If the platform were to grow that large, Rattray says, elected officials would be forced to heed what their constituents request and authentically engage with them. And so is the combination of those two factors that gave us the confidence, both, that we needed to get out of the ads business and not be in, you know, competing with Facebook or Google on ads, and that we had a real promising business empowering our own users to become not just actively engaged in the platform, but also contributing to the sustainability of the platform. Users are funding the platform, that is but the immensely promising and something we’re hugely excited about and was a painful transition to make. So the path might look something like this: Someone visits the site and signs a petition. I would just say, it is one of the most important marketing pieces and branding pieces you will ever develop, if not the single most important one, and is worthy of, not just deep deliberation about, you know, range of options you might consider, but aggressive pursuit of the domain. I’m not kidding, it’s awful practice called “corrective rape” and happened in Cape Town. Rattray says Change.org is not yet profitable but has “a pretty clear path to profitability.” Over the past year, they’ve been testing two other revenue products. And then it really was friends and family and just early angel investors for several years that sustained the organization before we raised a real proper round of investment. So what have you guys finding that is working? But we just see remarkable people who look like everyday citizens but are doing extraordinary things, ending acid attacks in India, sort of, addressing, you know, Down’s syndrome the United States, and really big campaigns that are winning. Like, that was the backup, but I was just adamant about it and confident that we’d be able to get this. Though the petition garnered nearly 5 million supporters, Trump went on to be sworn in as the 45th U.S. president in January 2017. Nathan: Yeah, wow, that is so cool. Years later, the site posted revenue of over $40 million. Before I jump into the show, I just want to say, if you are enjoying these episodes, please do take the time to leave us a review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you are listening, it helps us more than you can imagine. So one of the challenges for traditional media properties is that, you know, if you get your traffic from, you know, SEO or from just a regular social traffic, and people are coming and reading a single article or, you know, a second article, or looking at a single petition and not really engaging, it’s hard to have a natural ask, right, an upsell that really convinces people to become a subscriber. Change.org Photos + Add Photo. You really can’t go in between.”. Ben: So we’re not profitable right now. So how do you work out what, yeah, what to do or where the focus is? For example, the White House has a policy in which it is obliged to review and formally respond to submitted petitions that reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days. And I then go through a process of, for three months, aggressively pursuing the person who owns the domain. Join Facebook to connect with Ben Rattray and others you may know. Perhaps the answer is sometimes, but not always, and maybe not in the way supporters had hoped. So I’m really curious, you mentioned offline that some of your investors have been, you know, featured on “Foundr” and on the covers of our magazine or a podcast, etc., etc. So tell me, how did you launch? The reason for this, Rattray says, is that the more people they can get, the more impact they can have. Well, look, thank you so much for your time, Ben. Like, did you raise capital beforehand, before you launched Change.org? I didn’t really know that much about Change.org until we started, you know, interviewing and as I started to prepare for this interview, but, wow, you guys have gotta go and check Change.org out. I think that, you know, one of the things that, I think, has been striking especially in Silicon Valley to see, to witness both people I know personally or just people in the broader startup ecosystem, is there is this natural inclination to wanna build a company that goes public. Claim to fame: Ben and college pal Adam Rich created the go-to guide for sophisticated men. An expert at entrepreneurship, he started Foundr -- a global media and education company that reaches out to millions of people across the world. Because we do have a lot of people that want to do social enterprise and, you know, produce for-profits that are effectively, you know, making the world a better place. This article was adapted from Academy website content reviewed by the following experts: Professor Ross Cunnington Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland; Professor Damian Farrow Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living, Victoria University; Dr Ben Rattray Research Institute for Sport and Exercise, University of Canberra And then we think, “Well, how do we build on top of that?” One would be, how do you help your own users to make that content stronger? And so, what’s most notable is not just the big outlier campaigns, but there’s just, you know, every year, hundreds of thousands that are getting, you know, thousands of signatures, sometimes in small local communities around the saving local parks or, you know, better access to school for kids, things that really impact people’s lives in their communities, but you’ll never know it at kind of a national or global scale. And one of my younger brothers, when I came back home for a break, he came out as gay. I originally wanted to be an investment banker, which couldn’t be further from what I now do. And so because we are mission-focused and because our goal is to build infrastructure for better civil participation, democracy, accountability in business, over the real, you know, next few decades, we think the best structure of Change.org is to become just an independent, indefinite company. 34 Followers, 56 Following, 3 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Ben Rattray (@benrattray43) We were about to launch for a few months before…this is in 2006, and, I think, people radically undervalue the importance of their name, of the domain, of the, sort of, iconic name of their company. I really appreciate it. GCS finally let Henry go to school in January!! You have a choice, either you can pivot out of the business or you double down. “The only reason why companies and countries, the members of Parliament or Congress or mayors or heads of state care about Change.org is because… we represent about 10% of the voting public of many of the world’s biggest democracies.”. “But right now the way I think the financial markets are structured is that the best long-term orientation for us is to be an independent company.”. What’s in a name? Ben: Well, I should say…and one thing is the investors we have, you know…Reid has recently announced that he’s gonna donate the profits from an investment from Change.org into the Change.org Foundation, we have an Associated NGO or another charity. It’s not just that it is problematic for the mission of a company, which I think it is, it is also problematic for long-term thinking and really building something that lasts. But right now, the way, I think, the financial markets are structured is that the best long-term orientation for us is to be an independent company. And if you’re new to the show, we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation, and we really just try to find out how they’ve done it, and really just draw from their lessons and experiences. “I sent him pitch emails. Nathan: Yeah, I know. I told him I was going to be in town, without having set up the meeting, hoping we could meet in person.”. I’ve just come back from a massive holiday. And how did that come about? We’re a B Corp, so, you know, a for-profit company dedicated to social good. I think we have a pretty clear path of profitability, but it’s been a work in progress. The rise of social networking and viral technologies inspired Ben Rattray of Change.org hired me remotely before that was common and helped me transition from a Change.org contractor to being 100 percent self-employed. It gathered more than 2.5 million signatures and ignited international outrage, eventually leading to charges being brought against Zimmerman, who was eventually acquitted by a jury. Several petitions that originated on Change.org have generated awareness, mobilized protests, and even changed legislation. That’s it from me, guys. Nathan: Yeah, I agree. For Rattray, 50 hours of brainstorming and three months of a wild goose chase. Nathan: Yeah, wow. Kamayani Bali-Mahabal a besoin de votre aide pour sa pétition “Ben Rattray: Come out CLEAN”. He says if the landscape were to change and, let’s say, B Corps suddenly start going public at a rapid rate and there are a plethora of mission-aligned investors, he’d be willing to reconsider. According to Rattray: “If we had done this three or four years ago, we’d be profitable now.”. And so I spent a couple weeks thinking through all the different incarnations of what we might be called, and it seems obvious in retrospect, but Change.org at the time, I was like, “Well, this actually…it sounds brilliant.” Took me about a week to think about it, I literally, I probably spent 50 hours that week thinking of names. It wasn’t being used. Now, today’s guest, his name is Ben Rattray, and he’s the founder of Change.org, an absolutely incredible business, incredible organization. But to the Change.org founder, the pursuit of profit and the commitment to social good are not mutually exclusive. Nathan: Yeah. So what I had done is I had bought the domain “hange,” so [00:08:00] hange.org. Ben Rattray, who speaks at 500 words a minute, and John Feal, who swears at roughly the same clip, are unlikely collaborators. Although this idea still exists at the core function of the site, the creators of Change.org found it necessary to So I had worked in a couple startups at that point, and then, you know, saw everything implode. Nathan: Yeah, I agree. One of the most notable petitions on Change.org was one launched right after the November 2016 election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. "Everyday people can do extraordinary things," he said in a recent video interview. And then we do, ourselves, cover, almost as if we’re media ourselves, the most compelling stories on Change.org. Facebook gives people the power to share and makes the world more open and connected. We started out building a social network for social change, and what we found was the oldest tool in politics, the simple petition, if you have a very clear objective, not, “I wanna stop global warming,” but, “I want to get a tax on plastic bags in my town,” you know. Actionable Strategies for Starting & Growing Any Business. I sent him pitch emails, I got on the phone with him, I flew down to LA, he missed the first meeting. Calls me out as his own brother.
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