Harvard Startup Analyzes Congress

Quorum, a startup founded by Harvard undergraduates Alexander A. Wirth ’15 and Jonathan A. Marks ’15, has gained national attention for combining a congressional database with a set of analytical tools in order to evaluate actions of individual members of Congress.

According to Marks, Quorum is built to answer one main question. “Can we algorithmically or computationally identify the ways that people are working together in Congress and use this information to design better legislative strategies?” he said.

Quorum’s name comes from the word for the minimum number of legislators required to be present before business can legally be conducted, Marks said.

Jonathan A. Marks '15 is one of the cofounders of Quorum, which uses quantitative data to evaluate members of the United States Congress. By Savannah I. Whaley

Wirth and Marks first met during a Harvard First-Year Outdoor Program trip prior to their freshman year and eventually became blockmates. They came up with the idea for a tool that would allow those involved in formulating policy to easily track the actions and relationships among members of Congress in their dorm room in Mather House.

Wirth and Marks further developed their start-up in ES95r: “Startup R & D,” taught by lecturer Paul B. Bottino, who is also the executive director of Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. According to Marks, Bottino’s guidance in the class and his continued mentorship has been extremely important to the growth of Quorum.

In addition to support from Harvard faculty, Quorum has received financial support from other Harvard resources as well. The cofounders were able to hire four additional full-time employees for the duration of the summer of 2014 after winning the McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Leadership in Social Enterprise of the 2014 Harvard Innovation Challenge and receiving the Institute of Politics’ Gov 2.0 grant.

Quorum officially launched last month to the public. Wirth and Marks continue to work with the Harvard Innovation Lab to develop media contacts and relationships with future clients, Marks said.

Steven M. Kekacs ’16 joined the Quorum staff as a full-time employee over the summer and said that the season was a critical period of time for the company’s development. “We had nothing at the beginning of the summer, and then we just built these features, built this product from the ground up,” he said.