Trace Anderson, the founder of Blue Utopia, brought seven years of enterprise software development with him when he started the company in 2004. After he sold his last startup, Anderson got into local politics, and as a volunteer for state campaigns he witnessed major problems in the campaigns' use of technology. "Coming from a large software company, I saw there was a better way," Anderson says. "Software developers aren't often good at campaigning, and campaigners aren't often good at software development," says Anderson, and so he found his niche. Blue Utopia doesn't build custom web sites or sell consulting services, but rather sells its standardized proprietary software to political campaigns, making it easier for smaller, local campaigns to build web sites for less money.