Founded by a pair of 22-year-old Harvard University undergraduates, Cambridge, Mass.-based Quorum Analytics is an online legislative data analysis and aggregation platform that provides quantitative insight for qualitative policy questions. The early-stage startup has gained interest from clients from the policy, media and campaign communities. In May, Quorum will be moving its headquarters to Washington, DC, co-founder Alex Wirth tells DC Inno. With current operations in Cambridge and DC, the budding startup team will focus operations and join the DC tech community heading into a busy 2015-2016.
“Starting Quorum has been an incredible experience for Alex and me. Perusing a full course load and writing [code/programming] certainly has its challenges but it has also allowed us to take advantage of the incredible resources, talent, and connections that a school like Harvard can provide,” said co-founder Jonathan Marks.
On Jan. 26, Wirth and Marks publicly launched Quorum Analytics Inc. As a system, the platform creates interactive visualizations, auto-updating statistics, and organizes comprehensive congressional data to equip users with the tools to navigate the legislative process in a sortable and searchable format. Its algorithms process more than 800 million data points to calculate different statistics about representative's legislative history, specifically; top issues, cross aisle and native party influence, ideology directive, voting history and whip percentages.
Initial clients include: The Glover Park Group, The United Nations Foundation’s Better World Campaign, The First Focus Campaign for Children, and The Navajo Nation. Currently, Quorum is in its bootstrapped stage but may be transitioning into a seed round in the coming month.
“Quorum is Washington’s next-generation legislative strategy platform. Our website is easier to search and use, has unique information like census bureau data, tweets, and press releases, and most importantly, our algorithms help users find new insights from our data that have traditionally been too time-consuming to obtain,” said Wirth.
Among its accolades, the Quorum team has won The Harvard Innovation Challenge, The Harvard Ventures Pitch Competition, The George Washington University Pitch Competition and The Harvard Hackfest. They were also semi-finalists in the MIT 100k competition and winners of the Queen's Entrepreneur’s Competition — collecting a $25,000 grand prize.
Regarding a potential 2015 funding round, Wirth told DC Inno “although we are not actively raising at this moment, it is an option that we will consider as our needs change and we are talking with a variety of investors.”
“Quorum is an emerging game changer for Washington,” said Gerry Sikorski, Government Section Leader at Holland & Knight. “It has provided Holland and Knight with unique quantitative insights that have informed our decisions and strengthened our clients.”
With graduation around the corner, a 2016 presidential race on the horizon and the media hailstorm that follows it, Wirth and Mark’s summer will be a little less than ordinary compared to the average 22-year old.
“We have been appreciative of the reception we have already received from the DC tech community and frequently seek advice from leaders like Allen Gannet of Track Maven, James Li of Encore Alert, and Marci Harris of Popvox among others,” Wirth said.
