Phone2Action Inc., a digital platform for political advocacy, has bought its second company in as many months with its purchase of KnowWho, a Lorton firm that has created databases of elected officials for the past 15 years.
The parties didn't disclose terms of the deal.
The move comes weeks after Phone2Action, based in Rosslyn and led by co-founders Ximena Hartsock and Jeb Ory, acquired GovPredict, a D.C. software company that helped customers monitor legislative and regulatory issues and held backing from West Coast funder Y Combinator.
The two buys have ballooned Phone2Action's head count from about 60 to more than 200 and its client list from 800 to more than 10,000. KnowWho said its service — outlining local, state and federal elected officials by address or congressional district — was in use by law firms, government contractors, retail and digital services corporations, media outlets and third-party developers, among others.
Its president and CEO, Bruce Brownson, will join Phone2Action's management team as KnowWho's general manager. Brownson — whose father, Congressman Charles Brownson, R-Ind., was editor and publisher of the Congressional Staff Directory — ran his father's print business and later sold it to CQ before helping found KnowWho for the digital world.
Phone2Action itself was a customer of KnowWho and Brownson was a longtime mentor, Ory wrote in a blog post about the deal. After its GovPredict acquisition, Phone2Action projected 50% growth in the subsequent 12 months, but Ory said Monday that's difficult to calculate now.
"We see a massive opportunity ahead in 2021," said Ory, CEO of Phone2Action. "We just can’t put a number on it yet."
Phone2Action, which has been sharing its return to the office with the Washington Business Journal, established its Rosslyn headquarters in 2016.
"We are happy to have a great space that can scale with us," Ory said in an email to the Washington Business Journal. "When everything is back to normal, the KnowWho and GovPredict teams will be able to work from our headquarters or their current spaces as they choose, and they like having the increase in choices."
