Over the last several years, a growing cluster of promising, industry specific tech companies have established themselves throughout the D.C. area. Montgomery County in Maryland, for example, is understood to be a vibrant biotech hub — lifted by a proximity to the National Institute of Health, among other things. And in northern Virginia, just a stone's throw from the Pentagon, you can find a highly competitive cybersecurity business corridor that spans Herndon, McLean, Rosslyn, Arlington and Alexandria. But in D.C., because of a connection to the federal government, Congress and the judicial system, the city offers a different sort of business ecosystem.
The District is home to a cohort of promising civic tech startups that have proven their potential in recent year.
In short, civic technology or tech has the ability to improve the engagement and/or participation of the public in various different social campaigns. What this amounts to is innovative technology which can foster stronger community development, enhanced citizen communications and an improvement in both government infrastructure and rule.
Here are 6 D.C.-based civic tech startups to watch in 2016
Phone2Action (Washington, D.C.)
- Summary: D.C.-based Phone2Action has developed a unique and interactive, user-facing platform by which people can directly interact with lawmakers in order to express their opinion on a specific issue or initiative. Think of it as an advocacy engagement tool, enabled by cloud software, which is used by various non-governmental organizations to catalyze grassroots support and action. Users of Phone2Action's system can send an email, tweet or place a direct call to a member of Congress with the touch of a button from their smartphone. On the flip side, the company produces detailed data analytics regarding how people prefer to engage with elected officials and also what sort of activity can spur a grassroots cause.
- 2016 outlook: Heading into this new year, Phone2Action is poised to increase business and gain new clients as a number of important policy decisions are on the horizon, including potential ride-sharing and daily fantasy sports legislation.
FiscalNote (Washington, D.C.)
- Summary: FiscalNote is a quickly growing legislative and regulatory tracking and analytics startup led by CEO Tim Hwang. Hwang was recently recognized by Forbes in the publication's annual 30 under 30 list. This company, which has raised more than $20 million to date from notable investors like Mark Cuban and Chinese social media giant RenRen, has built a predictive, legislative engine that can determine the chances of a specific bill passing a vote in Congress.
- 2016 outlook: In February, FiscalNote raised $10 million and Hwang told DC Inno that he planned to double the company's workforce with talent-driven technical staff while bolstering operations in Washington, D.C, and in New York. At the time, Hwang said that the startup was "experiencing a 20-35 percent growth of revenue per month.” Last year, FiscalNote also expanded their software to cover state-level politics, effectively growing their potential clientele base. It will be interesting to watch as FiscalNote continues to evolve as both a company and brand in 2016.
Quorum Analytics (Washington, D.C.)
- Summary: In mid-2015, Quorum Analytics moved from the campus of Harvard University to the District to grow their business. Led by a group of young, recent graduates, this startup has developed an online legislative data analysis and aggregation platform that provides quantitative insight for qualitative policy questions. Their product is used by a number of lobbying and legal firms in addition to several non-profit organizations and Congressional offices. As a system, the Quorum 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.
- 2016 outlook: With momentum and local investors interested, could Quorum Analytics raise a round of venture capital to accelerate their growth?
Polis Politics (Washington, D.C.)
- Summary: This startup has produced an innovative mobile app that is used by various political campaigns to organize volunteers in the best way to reach voters. More specifically, they simplify the process of "cutting turf," which involves campaign managers dividing sections of a turf/region for people to canvass on (knock on doors, ask for votes).
- 2016 outlook: The less than 1-year-old D.C.-based company is currently raising a seed round of investment and plans to make several key hires across sales and engineering in the coming months, heading into a busy campaign season, said co-founder/CEO Kendall Tucker, formerly a campaign manager with the Mara Dolan Massachusetts state senate campaign team.
ZeroCycle (Washington, D.C.)
- Summary: ZeroCycle has created a cloud-based software system for local governments that's fused with data and behavioral science inspired technology to help encourage recycling in communities. The company's software absorbs, organizes and disseminates information from data streams already managed by city municipalities to give a comprehensive view of how specific neighborhoods are performing when it comes to recycling. ZeroCycle then compiles, organizes and disseminates detailed reports in the mail to homeowners to let them know how their specific neighborhood is performing in relation to others in the city. The idea is to encourage recycling through comparative data and friendly competition.
- 2016 outlook: D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser has spoken at length about the work and mission to make D.C. a smart city in the future. Could we see the District become a customer of ZeroCycle or perhaps another software company that hopes to make waste management more efficient?
LawIQ (Washington, D.C)
- Summary: A startup that has developed a predictive modeling engine for litigation and regulatory proceedings. This platform is sold to financiers, executives and attorneys, as it provides them with insight into how a certain case will pan out by using big data analytics. LawIQ’s platform is able to collect, organize and aggregate public data from numerous litigation and regulatory proceedings, thereby creating predictive models with actionable insight.
- 2016 outlook: Interestingly, LawIQ is led by CEO Chip Moldenhauer, a former attorney with D.C. giant Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP. Also, former longtime Rosetta Stone CEO Tom Adams is an advisor. Adam's launched a bootstrap-funded edtech startup called Smart.ly in the summer of 2015, however, so it's unclear what his level of involvement will be like moving forwards.
