Lewandowski Is Out as Trump's Campaign Flails Like a Desperate Startup
Fired founders. Desperate fundraising pleas. A dwindling user base. Trump the startup would not go far in the Silicon Valley.
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager for 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, waits for a foreign policy address by Trump at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, April 27, 2016. Despite the criticism, Trump routinely outshines his Republican competitors among voters in the primary on questions of trust in handling terrorism and national security, indicating that his brash rhetoric and hawkish isolationism has caught on with the party base. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesAndrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Silicon Valley's inventions have benefitted Donald Trump more than any candidate ever. But if the Trump campaign were a startup in the land of Facebook and Twitter, well, it's unlikely venture capitalists would be looking to invest. The presumptive Republican nominee's New York-based operation looks like a once high-flying startup now on its way down—witness this morning's latest upheaval, the ousting of Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The turmoil, the drama, the desperate search for money: the Trump campaign is looking like so many startups that have caught fire before flaming out.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images01A Key Founder Exits
Founders rarely leave or get fired from a startup when everything's going smoothly. Case in point: Andrew Mason's zany antics were a harmless sideshow during Groupon's ascent, but once the public started clicking unsubscribe en masse, the daily deal site's board decided it needed a grownup to help run things. And so it goes in Trumpland. During primary season, it seemed Lewandowski was invincible, even as he was accused of [battering](http://www.wired.com/2016/03/trump-campaign-boss-video-internet-sees-wants/) a member of the press. But the general election cycle has so far been much tougher on Trump, and it seems the campaign is doing what so many other struggling companies before it have done. By replacing Lewandowski with a campaign veteran---in this case Paul Manafort---it's trying to bring in a grownup.
Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg/Getty Images02The Hunt for Money Becomes Desperate
Startup founders never want to give away more equity in their companies than they need to early on. But often, those who forgo venture funding find themselves scaling faster than they can manage on a bootstrapped budget. That's what's happening in Trump's campaign. The self-proclaimed billionaire self-funded his primary run, perhaps never expecting to become the Republican party's presumptive nominee. Now, he's tasked with funding a general election bid, with no donor network to count on. Commence panic. This week, after the Clinton campaign launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign, Trump sent out an email that didn't exactly inspire confidence: "Right now we're facing an emergency goal of $100,000 to help get our ads on the air."
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images03User Numbers Dwindle
In startup world, companies measure their health in downloads, page views, and monthly active users. In politics, it's polls. Throughout primary season, Trump [crowed about](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/702608081314816000) his polling numbers, and understandably: compared to other Republican candidates, he dominated nearly every one. Not so in the general. In poll after recent [poll](http://www.monmouth.edu/assets/0/32212254770/32212254991/32212254992/32212254994/32212254995/30064771087/568faad2-81ab-4bd0-b373-8577326e76bd.pdf), Trump has lost ground to Clinton. Recently, even Trump [tweeted](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/743852552257626112) a poll result that showed Clinton ahead by 3 percent.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images04The Press Turns on You
The tech press plays as important a role in driving "the narrative" around a startup as the political press has in driving Trump's campaign. As one communications executive at Square recently [noted](https://backchannel.com/how-the-tech-press-forces-a-narrative-on-companies-it-covers-5f89fdb7793e#.uv6uiosy1), startups that begin as media's shiny new toy soon graduate, narrative-wise, to heavy duty disrupter before reports of turmoil inside the company eclipse any ostensible triumphs. That's where the Trump campaign seems stuck today. What initially began as a novelty for some reporters quickly became a serious campaign that they had to treat as such. Now, Trump and the press have become so estranged that the candidate has [banned](http://www.wired.com/2016/06/trump-bans-washington-post-latest-assault-press/) *The Washington Post* from covering any of his events.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images05Your Attempts to Pivot Fail
It's hard to count how many times the e-commerce site Fab.com tried to pivot. What started as a gay social network soon became a wildly successful flash-sale site. But its eye-popping [burn rate](https://techcrunch.com/2014/10/20/fab-hem/) forced Fab to pivot once more, diving into home furnishings before another company acquired it in a [fire sale](http://www.recode.net/2015/3/3/11559670/fab-coms-fire-sale-is-official). Trump, too, has similarly sought to remake himself with intermittent stabs at becoming more "presidential" as he reads haltingly from a Teleprompter. But like most startups that attempt to change direction mid-flight, all Trump supporters seem to really want is the original. And the candidate himself seems to have little interest in adopting a new brand identity.
Ralph Freso/Getty Images06Your Product Malfunctions
If the Trump campaign were a startup, its product would be Trump. And sometimes that product doesn't work like it's supposed to. As a presidential candidate, Trump often says and does things that even his team, much less his fellow Republicans, wish he wouldn't. When he said, for instance, that women who get abortions should be punished, Trump's team quickly walked the comment back. It did the same more recently when Trump insinuated that US [troops](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-us-troop-stole-millions-and-millions-in-iraq-224352) in Iraq stole government funds. (Trump's campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks later told reporters he was referring to Iraqi troops.) Faced with a buggy product, people often choose to use the alternative. Come Election Day, we'll see if the same is true of Trump.
Issie Lapowsky is a journalist covering technology and national affairs. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, The Atlantic, and more. She was previously a senior writer at WIRED. ... Read More
