In March, 2022 TDV acquired HubDialer.
HubDialer is the leading provider of telephonic voter outreach software for political and social action organizations. These customers typically equip their volunteers or campaign staff with HubDialer to call whose votes are strategically critical to the success of a given campaign. Whether it’s engaging voters on key issues, doing basic party building or working to drive turnout in key swing districts, HubDialer is an essential utility for these organizations. Founded circa 2010 by a team of political operatives, the product is offered as a SaaS.
Our rationale for acquiring HubDialer was multi-fold.
Here are some of the main drivers:
At a macro-level, we see huge growth opportunities in the “politics” vertical (if you can call it that). While the drivers of this growth – a fractured political environment awash with money – are sad for our country, there is nevertheless an opportunity for businesses that service this sector. Democracy relies on voter participation; we see any tool that encourages this behavior as a net positive.
HubDialer’s technology is awesome. It is battle-tested, market-proven, and engineered with an extreme emphasis on stability and performance. This matters more to campaigns than it might to other customers for a very simple reason: there are no second chances. Elections happen only every 2 or 4 years. If campaign tech fails, there is little or no time to take corrective action. Contrast this with typical marketing software where a service outage could be problematic but usually isn’t fatal to a business. That HubDialer is highly stable and has never been compromised is a huge differentiator in this market space.
Perhaps because HubDialer was founded by political operatives and technologists, the company historically underinvested in go-to-market. This is common in a lot of the businesses we acquire. We believe that by investing in sales and marketing, the company can grow faster. With a great product in a large, dynamic market, there is a real opportunity to step up sales and marketing with near immediate impact.
On a financial level, HubDialer’s highly-cyclical business presents challenges for conventional buyers and therefore an opportunity for TDV. Most PE buyers would shy away from a business that had a “busy season” every other year. Not us. Our capital sources are sufficiently flexible that we can make a very seasonal business work in our favor. We see this as an opportunity to focus our solution so it works for the highly fluid election space. We think our customers, and the company, can benefit by optimizing for the unique attributes of this vertical rather than trying to, say, force a campaign - which is by definition a temporary organization - to commit to long term contracts.
Close to one year on, the acquisition of HubDialer is already proving out. We are incredibly gratified by the loyalty existing customers have shown to the business. And we are further excited to welcome a number of new partners into the fold.