Alex Wirth - CEO of Quorum - How AI is Disrupting Lawmaking

Alex Wirth is the cofounder and CEO of Quorum, a public affairs software platform. 

In this episode of World of DaaS, Alex and Auren discuss: 

• How AI is affecting lawmaking 
• The evolution of modern lobbying
• Predicting policy outcomes statistically 
• Building govtech companies

Looking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.  

You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Alex Wirth on X at @amaliowirth.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

Transcript

Auren Hoffman (00:01.294)
Hello, fellow data nerds. My guest today is Alex Wirth. Alex is the co -founder and CEO of Quorum, a public affairs software platform. Alex, welcome to World of DaaS.

Alex (00:12.149)
Wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Auren Hoffman (00:14.494)
I'm really excited. now, core maintains a database of legislation and public comments from lawmakers at the state and federal level. You just landed, you just launched like an AI co -pilot that can like analyze legislation and maybe even predict outcomes. What have you learned?

Alex (00:36.078)
So we've learned a ton. So first on background, what we've spent the last 10 years as a business doing is taking every piece of publicly available information we can get about the US Congress, all 50 state legislatures, state and local level and EU and getting into a database. And that's very much what we founded the company around and then adding a whole series of workflow tools on top. And so for listeners, one of the things that we've been calling is a way to think of us is the Google for Congress and that you can put in any search term, any topic, any company name,

And we can serve you every time that issue area or business or organization or policy idea has ever been mentioned by a legislator, federal, state, local level. So that's the power of it. But it works very much the way that Google does now, where it provides you just a series of answers. And so what we're really excited about as it comes to bringing AI tools and our new AI copilot on top.

is actually being able to give you a summary of the information that you're looking for. So if you say, what has the senator ever said about Russian sanctions related to the Ukraine war, we can give you a summary about that or any other statement that's out there.

Auren Hoffman (01:42.028)
you can ask questions like that, like not in a, you don't have to ask it in SQL, but you can ask it as a human, basically like those types of things.

Alex (01:50.392)
So that's what we're working on. a couple months away from being able to do that. Right now we can ask it about a given bill. And so we can take a piece of legislation and you could say, well, what does this bill do? Give me talking points for or against the bill. If I am X or Y organization using the publicly available information that's on whatever the nonprofit website is, would I support it or oppose it? Why should I support it or oppose it? And so you can take what used to be very complex policy analysis work and put it in the fingertips of any individual that is using

Auren Hoffman (01:52.12)
That's what you're working on. Yeah. Okay.

Alex (02:20.379)
it.

Auren Hoffman (02:21.216)
And let's say you're pitching a like something, would you have a sense of, okay, this is maybe how you pitch it to this congressperson as opposed to you may have to pitch it slightly different, maybe to one you're pitching as it's bringing jobs in your district, but to another one, they've got like a pet cause and you can kind of link it to that cause or something.

Alex (02:44.782)
So we're not there yet, but that's the eventual goal is to be able to get there. And very similarly to how you think about AI's impact on marketing and being able to personalize every pitch, that's the same thing that's gonna happen towards politics and advocacy, where for every of the 7 ,000 state legislators, if you want them to support something, it's gonna be able to tell you this is the thing the legislator cares about and this is how you connect your issue to them.

But to be able to do that, you have to start by having all their statements and all their data underneath it. And that's where we come in and why we're also very bullish about our future and being able to come and make that data and information smart to transform the political and government affairs space the same way many other industries are being transformed.

Auren Hoffman (03:28.066)
Got it. And like eventually, like, where do you see AI like changing the power dynamics in lobbying and avis advocacy? Like, is it because in some of these things, it's like the lobbyist has this like arcane knowledge. Now the obvious lobbyist has the relationship, but they also have this like deep knowledge. So it's like, are you are we replacing the knowledge and the lobbyist becomes less powerful there or or and vis a vis where they are today?

Or is that relationship still the core thing they're charging for? Like where's that, where are the things going in the lobbying world?

Alex (04:05.026)
Yeah, so I think the impact of the technology is it is leveling the playing field and opening up the playing field where before quorum even existed and before the invention of AI tools, you would have to have a team of people to sift through all the information on Capitol Hill, all the knowledge, what was happening and going on, what a legislator cared about, what was the best way to influence them. And that is where advocacy organizations were very actively involved. And now the impact of us being about

is that you can go in through database access, get access to all that information, and suddenly immediately find who talks about your issue the most, who cares about it when you were mentioned and referenced. And what AI is going to be able to do is come bring it so you provide that extra layer of analysis on top, getting in at some of that arcane knowledge of who are the key players on this, or how to pitch or frame an issue, or how to look at an issue more holistically. I think the thing that isn't going away, and you hit on it nail on the head, is the relationship.

And that's where when you have a relationship, not only can you help influence someone, but you also get access to private information that isn't yet publicly available. And that will be the hardest thing that we will never be able to fully replace. Is that private info of, I'm going to support that bill or I won't sign on to the bill because I really don't like so -and -so. You can't discern that from publicly available data. And so that's where this is a supplement to advocacy that will make it accessible to more people, but not a replacement to it.

Auren Hoffman (05:29.517)
It seems like the easiest thing to do, quote unquote easy would be to just like take this long bill or this long piece of legislation and kind of like summarize it into the most important things that are digestible for me, either as a, someone in the public who cares about it or a legislature or somebody else. So I could understand like what's in it, what's going on because these things are

They're just so voluminous. They're so hard to understand. And then I could just tease from that out. Okay. This is the areas I want to focus on a little bit more. Is that like kind of step one in AI world? Okay.

Alex (06:05.774)
Spot on. Step one, that's the functionality that we launched earlier this spring to be able to do. And it's been awesome to see the impact that that's had for our users of taking what used to be hours of time reviewing, researching, trying to figure out what it did and giving them just a straight bullet point answer of this is what's happening and going.

Auren Hoffman (06:23.042)
Now, if something like this becomes more commonplace, does that increase or decrease the speed of legislation?

Alex (06:33.55)
So state level, it's already roaring at a pretty fast pace. There's 120 ,000 bills introduced every single year at the state legislative level. And most state legislatures are only in session for anywhere from a month to three or four months a year. And so it just all happens at rapid flurry. I think the interesting part about it at the state level is it actually makes it smarter because you can empower state legislators with the AI tools. So they are sitting there and able to ask questions themselves.

Auren Hoffman (06:43.538)
wow.

Alex (07:03.916)
of knowing what you know about me, should I support this? If I'm a Republican and care about tax cuts, would I be in favor of this bill or not? Give me five talking points to oppose it. And so then you start to get this really robust debate that happens, and I think it actually strengthens the democratic process.

I don't think it will have as much of an impact on the federal level just because things move much more slowly. There's only 12 ,000 bills introduced every single year at the federal level and our research is showing that we're passing a way lower number of them than in years previous. And so in that case, there's plenty of time and I think due to some of the policy procedures, it's not going to speed it up at the federal.

Auren Hoffman (07:45.07)
Okay. What about like the money flows? It's like really hard to understand the money flows. What's happening there, where the dollars go, who's getting what, like, just understanding the budgeting and things like that. Like, is that something where we can use AI to uncover some of these things better?

Alex (08:03.33)
So I think there's really probably two worlds of that question. The first is campaign finance. And unfortunately, think the answer on the campaign finance side is no. And that that data is some of the messiest data that we have ever come across. And the core problem is that it's people information and people give different information about them. So I could be Alex Worth living in DC. I could be Alex Worth living in Arlington. I could give my home address that I grew up in in New Mexico. I could be Alexander Worth, my legal name, or Alex.

you try and match all this data, but when you do that with a more common name, then it gets very quickly messed up and you can't put, well, this person is that person and that person is this. Then you get even more complex, which is that the state level, there's actually different databases than what's reported into the FEC. And so tracking down the individual level information, the campaign finance side is really hard.

Auren Hoffman (08:52.184)
Well, that's just tracking the donors, but tracking the spend and some of these other things seems like more, or seems like something AI can do better, but do, or do you disagree?

Alex (09:05.762)
So I think there is potential where it starts is the actual data set that you are starting from is not incredible and fully built out. And there was an effort a couple of years back, I think, usaspending .gov to try and put all of the federal government spending in a machine readable form into one central database. And candidly, I've not kept up with that effort. But leading up to that, I couldn't believe that there wasn't one federal budget. Like you'd send someone, mean, obviously,

I don't think it would fit in Excel. But you couldn't send someone one file and be like, this is all the places the federal government spends money. No one was tracking that. But this goes to the work that a whole series of open government advocates have been doing, which is if you could do that, then suddenly you have all the government spending, and you can go put that into an AI engine and start to gain a whole series of insights from it. That right there is a business idea that we're not active or engaged in. But someone listening, if you're thinking of looking for a startup.

you should go explore that because the data has gotten more accessible and obviously the AI tools and functionality on top of it open up a whole new world of possibilities.

Auren Hoffman (10:08.878)
Yeah. And not only the legislation, but then the legislation will say, okay, we're going to earmark X dollars to this program. And then whatever agency, oversees those dollars, they go, they go get contracts and all those contracts are public too. Right. So, okay, now I'm going to give, you know, I'm going to award a $300 ,000 pod, contract to Orrin Hoffman, Inc for consulting services or something.

And then it would be great to know like, okay, well, is that, is why was that awarded? Does he have relationships there? is he doing good job? is he actually, or is he committing fraud? Like all those types of things would be great things for like the public to understand.

Alex (10:53.72)
Totally. Now, just for listening, you are mostly correct that it's all public, although there is some contracts that are not public because they are subcontracts off of a master contract. And that's where it gets really messy on the data underneath. But you can get, it is much more available now than it was six, seven years ago.

Auren Hoffman (11:02.72)
yeah, good point. Okay.

Auren Hoffman (11:11.682)
And why are the subcontracts, the sub, so the sub like subcontracts are just not public just because it gets too hard.

Alex (11:19.662)
There are some that are, there are some that don't have to be. So we're a little beyond my knowledge of government procurement at that. But I wish and would say it should be 100 % public. Unfortunately, it isn't.

Auren Hoffman (11:24.792)
Okay.

Auren Hoffman (11:31.246)
Right. Cause I could see in like DOD where like Booz Allen has like a $14 billion contract or some crazy thing. And then there's the C subs and subs and subs and subs and subs and subs and and subs all the way down. But you're saying really it's just that 13 number, which is by boot from Booz is what's known and not all the layers going down.

Alex (11:52.256)
Now, I don't know about that. And again, I'm a little over my skis and government contract knowledge. think there is, to give Boo's credit, there is more known about where Boo's is spending money, but there are ways that not all of those subcontracts all have to be disclosed.

Auren Hoffman (12:01.709)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (12:05.582)
Okay, okay, interesting. And then, do you think, okay, so there's a lot of stuff about AI being used to understand legislation. When do think we're going to get to a point where, or maybe we're already at the point where AI is being used to draft legislation?

Alex (12:22.574)
I think we're already there. So there have been both bills introduced in Congress and in state legislatures that are 100 % drafted by AI. one of the primary use cases of first fundamental use cases of AI is content generation. There is a leading consulting firm in Washington that has told every single one of their analysts to start with JetGPT because you will do a faster, better, quicker job.

Auren Hoffman (12:31.138)
Whoa, okay.

Alex (12:48.27)
And it's pretty amazing when you even think about like chat GPT and be able to create your own GPTs. If you were a legislator or an advocacy shop or you were interested in doing them with government, you could take 10 different pieces of sample legislation, put it in your own GPT, tell the GPT who you were and what you care about, and then said, modeled after the legislation that I have given you, draft me legislation that would come and do X. And so then you can come and show up and you have got the text right there for the bill.

Now behind the scenes, both Congress and many legislatures actually have professional bill drafters whose job is to come and do this. And I don't actually know how much they're leveraging now currently AI, but it should be able to make their efforts much more efficient. And it actually I think will be a good thing because there's a lot of demands pressed on them and they're oftentimes working late at night because someone comes and says, I need an amendment at 9 p at night that I'm gonna drop at 930, write it as quick and as fast as you can.

And so there are big opportunities there, but this is part of also what's very interesting, the modernization that's going to have to go through a government of all of the private sector is going to be leaning in leveraging AI. And so then it's thinking about from a government perspective, how does government leverage AI in an accessible and fair way, but use it to both deliver services more efficiently and also improve the service offerings that they're

Auren Hoffman (14:04.628)
This is world of DAS. So we talk about data and data businesses and there are a lot of companies that sell data. And then there's a lot of companies who like build like, let's say different analysis on top of data. If you're advising a founder or a CEO, like how do you think about like the trade -offs of what they should be focusing on on those two?

Alex (14:28.566)
Yeah. So I'm a really big believer in the concept of innovation waves. And I think it's something I've really seen firsthand as we've entered our market and then also looked at who are the other players that happen in the space. And so just like highest level, you've got the innovation wave with the invention of the internet that happened. Then there was the innovation wave with the invention of mobile apps that gave us Instagram and Uber and Airbnb and Pinterest and that whole generation of tech. And then in the early 2010s is really when I think we saw AWS and Google cloud and

really become much more commercialized and accessible. And at least if I look back on Quorum's journey, I traced a lot of our success and a number of other key players in the market that started at that time on the ability to go and spin up servers in the cloud because we had to go collect all this information. And if we want to do that before, we would have to spend a million dollars, put a room full of servers, rent office space, it would have been super hard. But we literally could sit with a laptop and spin up servers on AWS that could come and put all this information in together.

And so for the past 10 years, we really haven't had another disruptive innovation wave. We've been operating our business in a time of stasis where that was the disruptive technology out there. And yeah, you can make an argument, maybe blockchain changed things, but they didn't really touch it for us at least. And so we're now at the start of a new innovation wave with generative AI.

and that there is new fundamental breakthrough technology that is coming online that changes the way that people operate the same way the internet did, the mobile app did, AWS, Google Cloud did. And so the advice that I've given to entrepreneurs is you need to think about what innovation wave you're part of. If you go back and leverage technology that's just AWS and Google Cloud and think about how do I go gather as much data as possible, like...

there's a fairly decent chance someone else out there has already gone and gathered that data at some point in the last 10 years. And so really where I think the future is, is how do you take all this data that's been gathered, all of the innovation wave that's happened over the last 10 years and actually start to make it smart on top of it? And that is where the next 10 years is going to be. And so you can go spend and focus your efforts on that. You'll do 10x farther, better, faster than going and trying to start where someone did 10 years ago and collect the data.

Alex (16:37.774)
But obviously, just given this is the world's data, if you've got a data set that you're 100 % sure no one else has out there, then it can be benefit of going to go and collect that. So don't feel too demoralized on that advice.

Auren Hoffman (16:49.324)
What's the, how would you give advice about like selling into government and into nonprofits? You know, for, some people it's kind of very different than kind of the traditional B2B. What's the, what are the big differences that somebody should be aware of beside the fact that things might be a little slower?

Alex (17:09.91)
Yeah, so we're fortunate that a smaller percentage of our business is actually selling to public sector. Most of what we sell into is nonprofits, trade associations, as well as corporates. But yeah.

Auren Hoffman (17:20.194)
Okay, well, let's just say nonprofits and trade associations, you would assume they move slower, but I could be wrong. Maybe they don't move slower than the average.

Alex (17:26.902)
No, let me actually take government first because government's the harder and more interesting one. And that is that there are a lot of very defined procurement rules, but also a tremendous amount of business that happens at a relationship to relationship level before an actual RFP comes out. And so you could think about it a little bit as like, you if you've ever had to go through corporate procurement where you have to go influence the person that they need it and want it and then get them to issue an RFP. And then there are very strict rules with the RFP.

Auren Hoffman (17:29.016)
Okay.

Alex (17:56.415)
and then that's how you go and win the business. And so it takes a lot longer to your point. The sales cycles are oftentimes, you know, six months is probably short, a year and a half is probably longer.

government has a lot of resources and so the contract values can be much more significant and what we've also found is a very highly retentive revenue and that's once the government decides they're doing something and the champion decides that they're doing, they're oftentimes sole sourcing. And so they'll say these are the core requirements that you need to have and if you can't meet those requirements, we're not gonna change and go switch another solution. So if you wanna compete, you have to have exactly the level of requirements to have a competitive offering there.

I think to the first part of question, think nonprofits and trade associations actually end up being a lot more similar to the work of a corporation. It's just a different pitch. And so one of the things, depending on your size and scale that I would encourage about is how you structure your sales team to reflect and shift those pitches based on the organization. Because if you start talking about profit margins in the bottom line to a nonprofit, they're going to be like, WTF? Why aren't you talking about the mission? We're changing the world. We're raising money.

And so that's the part that you have to be more thoughtful of. And that's actually why at Quorum we've got different teams to sell to nonprofits, sell to corporates, and sell to government.

Auren Hoffman (19:09.76)
And when you're selling into like Europe as opposed to the U S how do you think about like the different regulatory environment there?

Alex (19:19.106)
So you definitely have to be thoughtful about it because there are different rules at play and different cultural standards, even as it pertains to how data and information is transferred between the two countries of RU -US, EU Privacy Shield certified. The other question that we also get in the EU is, where are your servers based? And where is my information going? And in the EU...

has even across 20 member countries, there's also sensitivity within the member countries. So, well, wait a minute, I'm French, why is the server in Germany? Like, you know, I'm not, am I comfortable with that? And am I not comfortable with that? But also the big advice that I would give is that the EU operates in places much differently than US culture or the way that the US does, at least what we've seen on an advocacy and public affairs basis.

And so when you look at product market fit, your product market fit in the EU may not be same as your product market fit in the US. And you really have to spend time there with the users, with the customers, making sure it's going to work. And I would not underestimate how hard that is, just given both time zones and the geography, where our Brussels and EU team is phenomenal. But when I log in the morning at 9 a Eastern, it's 4 p their time. And so the overlap time that you have is just

even super, super hard. And then to get on a plane, it's a day long, nine hour journey to get there. And so that's where, unless you are certain you have the product market fit and it's a very important market, I would think very thoughtfully before trying to expand over into Europe versus making sure that you own your core ICP and that you're the number one player in your market.

Auren Hoffman (20:54.668)
Now, if you think of like a public affairs professional on the one hand, you know, they are younger on average, it seems like. So maybe they'd adopt technology faster. On the other hand, I don't know, you would just think of public affairs professional might not be the most tech savvy person. Like how are they on just like adopting AI? Where are they on the curve?

Alex (21:16.43)
So public affairs in general has been later on the curve of technology adoption. And that's when it's interesting when you look at quorum and our peer companies, we came into a market to bring digital technology and infrastructure and really SaaS software in 2013 and 2014. Whereas when you look back at many of the companies and marketing and sales, they have brought it in in the late 2000s, even early in 2010s. And so us coming in was later in.

I think AI, because of CHAT GPT and everyone knowing about it, having access to it, being able to use it, is leading to it being much more accessible to more people. The technology and innovation wave is happening. technology adoption curve is happening much faster than, as it came to say, SaaS software. But I don't necessarily see public affairs as leading that curve. Now, some of the reasons why is that often a lot of our corporate clients have a lot of regulations and guidance put around how they can use AI.

And some companies say, yes, you can use a chat GPT or Google Gemini. And others say, no, you can't. And then similar, like government also has rules around what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do. And there's even differences of whether or not you have the paid version of them, what features you have access to. And so those barriers start to hold back versus organizations like you and me where we can go and put in a credit card and get access to the functionality. So there's definitely room to go, which also then creates an opportunity. And I would advise, like there are entrepreneurs out there that listening into this.

is to think about who might be slower on the technology adoption. Because there's a lot of very niche industries out there that may not either have the innovation, have the entrepreneurship, be there as quickly, but there then be an opportunity to go and do something really disruptive. And even if you feel like, I'm already late behind the curve on AI, there are 100 % markets and opportunities that you could go and bring AI and analysis, find an incredible set of data, and do something transformational.

Auren Hoffman (23:07.256)
Now part of what you do, you do a lot of like analysis of data and like I liked when you did on the, you analyze the average age of Congress. And one thing I saw there and I would love their thoughts is like, why are the youngest people in the Senate were almost all Republican, but the youngest people in the house were almost all Democrat. Any crazy theories as to why that was by that would be the case.

Alex (23:34.647)
I don't. We don't have an answer on that, so I don't know, I'll give you that one. You've stopped me there, but we'll take a note and look into it.

Auren Hoffman (23:42.006)
And I saw you had one where like you the most active legislatures. The most active one was actually George Santos, which I thought was kind of funny. What are some other like legislative stats that people would be surprised by?

Alex (23:54.222)
I think the big one is just how few bills are actually passing Congress. And you have to make sure you're comparing the data right because we're in the second year of a legislative session. But going back, looking at this second year of a legislative session versus any of the previous 10 plus second years, so over the last 20 years, this is the least bills that have ever passed to Congress at this given period of time. And so we talk about the political dis...

Auren Hoffman (24:18.978)
How many bills, how many bills pass a year roughly?

Alex (24:22.222)
So it depends overall, but it's in the hundreds. So 12 ,000 bills introduced every year. It's in the hundreds. You do have to discern a little bit between resolutions naming post offices versus like actual pieces of legislation that change policy.

Auren Hoffman (24:35.711)
Yeah, that's what I was asking. So if I just want to like if we want to say, recognize Alex Worth as a good person or something like that and have a little thing like that doesn't count as a bill.

Alex (24:47.992)
Correct. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (24:50.008)
Okay. and, and then, and then of course, within a bill, there could be like thousands of little earmarks and little gloss and little other things that happen within that.

Alex (25:01.154)
Well, in two spot on, so this is a really interesting trend that's come up in the last probably five years, which is more of the legislation is happening in these large omnibus packages. So the National Defense Authorization Act has to pass every year, every other year. And so when everyone knows that's going through, you have all these bills that were teed up, introduced separately, the people mostly agreed on got out of committee, and then the House and the Senate go, we're not actually going to do the work to pass all these individual pieces of legislation. So they go, we'll just plumb that onto the NDAA. And so that's where

Auren Hoffman (25:27.086)
So they just stuff them in there. So I guess that's my question. So is it that less legislation is being happened or is it just fewer bills and those bills are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger?

Alex (25:41.416)
It's hard to say because the language from the individual bill gets modified before it gets incorporated in the big bill. And so one of the challenges that people would love to solve is knowing, who actually wrote what parts of the big bill and what are the parts of the big bill used to be fewer bills. And so that's a great example of like where even AI and the best data analysis hasn't fully been able to solve that challenge yet to get those insights.

Auren Hoffman (25:55.885)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (26:07.126)
And where else do you think the data on legislation might depart from the typical media narrative?

Alex (26:17.326)
I mean, look, think state legislative level gets underreported on. And when you look at, you know, with a focus on what's going on Capitol Hill because of the national media, because of the number of reporters here, there is so much focus on that. But at the state legislative levels we talked about earlier, there's 120 ,000 bills. You then take that to the local level.

and municipalities are incredibly active at moving legislation. But when you look at the reporting resources that actually go, that are focused on what's happening at your city council chamber or what's happening at your state legislative chamber, arguably, I think it is way less of a focus than what's going on nationally. You think about what impacts a person day to day, it's the rules that your city council makes, the rules that your state legislature makes. Yet there's this big gap in that the reporting there is not as strong as it used to be because we see much fewer independent local state -based newspapers

And so I think that there's a really significant opportunity there to improve the reporting, improve the transparency, and then also give people content about what's actually impacting them at the local level versus just the big picture national level where there may not be as much going on.

Auren Hoffman (27:24.834)
You and I are both in Arlington, Virginia. and maybe there's, you know, it's it's a kind of big place, but maybe it's not big enough to have like a whole bunch of reporters covering it and stuff like that. Could we see a rise of like the AI reporter talking about, okay, here are the bills that passed. Here's what happened. Cause the bill itself is public. Here's a kind of a core analysis on it. So you can understand it.

And, and maybe, maybe every once in like a real human reporter goes deeper and does that kind of like core investigative piece that only human could do. But could we start to see much more like AI reporting summaries for the average person?

Alex (28:08.878)
100%. So one of the really interesting things is that the speech to text on hearings and video have gotten much stronger. And this is interesting for anyone where there's something recorded out there, maybe a university lecture session, maybe a school board meeting, maybe a city council meeting. You know, obviously we're doing this with committee hearings on Capitol Hill.

But when you suddenly have the speech to text, you have a transcript of the entire event. So right now with Quorum's Copilot tools, we can take a transcript of a congressional hearing and say, give me a summary on this. And then you can obviously customize that over time, change the prompt, improve the prompt to be able to write, here are the key pieces of it. And if you give it whole series of training data of this is what we want the statement, the article, the summary to look like, it can provide that level of insight and information. And so I know currently of a company that's thinking about doing that for property development.

where they are looking at, can I come and take what's going on in a given city council committee hearing, and then the individual agendas and votes that are happening out there, and be able to go and share that with the developer locally so that they know the summary of here's what happened, and be able to inform them at that given time. That thing, possibility is now possible with AI and with also speech detects and data. But if you go back like five years,

it would have been much more difficult. Like we really struggled five years ago to get speech to text right so that you could get the information from a committee hearing or what someone was saying. And that technology has improved so much that that unlocks potential. But then the next innovation wave on top of that is being able to feed that into a generative AI engine and be able to share that more broadly and much more further.

Auren Hoffman (29:49.134)
There is a sense of like that people are less knowledgeable about local things that are going on than they were before. Maybe they're not watching like the local news. Maybe they're not getting like the local newspaper. So they're probably much more knowledgeable about federal things that are happening than they were 40 years ago and much less knowledgeable about local. A lot of people don't even know who their local.

You mayor is, or something like that, unless they live in like New York city or something where they have like a national kind of person. Why do you think that trend is happening? Or do you agree? And then why do think that trend is happening?

Alex (30:26.88)
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that's where we've seen a decline in local newspapers. So many local newspapers have gone out of business because they haven't had a sustainable model to be able to go and fund the journalism on. And so as a result, yeah.

Auren Hoffman (30:41.88)
But sorry, but do you think the newspapers went out of business because of like the, of like the fact that, you know, they weren't getting classified ads and therefore people are less interested in local news, or do you think people were less interested in local news? So therefore the newspapers went out of business.

Alex (31:01.12)
It's hard to say. I have not studied it in depth. And so I will probably venture from where are

two of those, but I think what is really interesting to look at is where you have local news that is succeeding significantly. And one of those, think the biggest play out there is Axios and Axios Local, where they are opening up newsrooms in 30 plus cities across the country to put local journalists there to write content information that people find interesting and useful. And in many ways, I think that that is going to be the test of can you do something totally different and reinvent how local media is. But I find it hard to say that if someone's going to

write something about what's going on in your backyard about what's happening on a daily basis. You're gonna say, no, I'm not interested in that, but you're way more interested in following the ins and outs of what's happening on Congress. Now, on other side, there's a lot of political junkies in the US and like it can be fun and really interesting to look at and monitor that. But I think there's opportunity there for.

Auren Hoffman (31:54.295)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (31:58.348)
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Like I don't even know where I would go to get some local things today. So yeah, it's really, it's really interesting. now technology has, you know, it's, it's in so many aspects of our work life. Where is technology or where do you see technology most impacting government going forward?

Alex (32:21.048)
So I think it's in the ability to take massive amounts of information and distill insight from that information. And so you even look at like, you any government agency, any elected official representative is constantly getting constituent input. And honestly, they're going to get more constituent input because any constituent can go and say, ChatGBT, write me a letter to my member of Congress in support of this or against that, or write me a comment on this piece of legislation. And then you're also going to have AI that's going to make that

individual message is much more persuasive of exactly why they should care and what should happen.

And so what I government is going to have to figure out how to do is how to use their own AI to take all the AI that is out there and summarize it into a consolidated view and summary. So of saying, hey, here's what really matters and here's the interesting in and outs and be able to bring those two together. And then you'll give an actual overview and summary of, well, this is what your constituents think, or this is the feedback that you get. But you have to manage the massive amount of data and information that is both being sent to government, collected by a government, produced by government,

every single day.

Auren Hoffman (33:28.942)
Okay. Random question that I, I, I, you may or may not know, but why is it that, the, legislators, like, they're like, they go like crazy. They get really upset about spammers, but like literally the number one spammer in the world right now are politicians. I'd say they're responsible for 98 % of, of, of your SMS spam, you know,

somewhere between 50 and 60 % of your email spam. like why, you know, and again, I understand like everyone's a little bit of a hypocrite, but why is the hypocrisy so high on that, on that world?

Alex (34:12.462)
Well, I don't know why I'd say the hypocrisy is so high because legislators and elected officials oftentimes have whole teams whose sole job is to take all the incoming messages, sort through it, and then go and write thoughtful statements in return. I think the challenge is that us as humans don't have full teams behind to reply, stop to every SMS that comes in, or unsubscribe from every email that your email list gets added into. And so it is something that I definitely have heard rumblings in different places around further regulation around SMS and standards because people are getting

very frustrated about the amount of SMS. And that is also one of the new interesting innovations is even in the last five years is much more SMS communication, especially in political campaigns. And at some point, you know, we're going to go so far over that, you know, we're going to put the needle that breaks the hay on the camel's back. And that's going to come and get us in a place where it's going to get pulled back.

Auren Hoffman (35:03.906)
Honestly, I feel like all you have to do to win as a politician is just say like, I am going to reduce the SMS spam. My opponent is sending you all these SMS. I feel like that just one issue alone will get you elected from either party. Like it's a bipartisan message that's out there, but this is my random advice. Any, any literally, you could like that'd be the easiest way to win today. It's like, it's the thing people hate more than anything.

Alex (35:20.942)
Orrin Hoffman for president in 2028. Here we go.

Auren Hoffman (35:32.632)
That's out there and it just seems like it's so easy to stop. now the couple of business questions. So do you start the business without venture capital bootstrapped it to over a hundred employees before you're taking outside capital? How should like another founder be thinking about that on the one side, like that gives you all this optionality. It gives you a lot more control of your destiny. It gives you a lot of opportunities to do things on the other side, like

I imagine it's also a lot harder to do that. how, how, how should like another founder be thinking about that?

Alex (36:09.386)
Yeah, so, you know, we had a really unique experience and that we did it coming out of undergrad. And so we were, you know, at a stage of our lives that, you know, we all and everyone at Quorum could take lower salaries in exchange for higher equity. And the fun story about

starting is we actually had a series of group houses up in Northwest DC and the entire development team worked out of the houses and most of the entire company lived in the houses and then we'd go down to DC and go and do meetings and so it was kind of described as living with your co -workers or working with your friends depending on what side of the bed you got up on a given day and so we were able to do something really exceptional there and having this incredible group of talent and focus super hard in the business and build it into what it is today. You know I think now if we were to go back

and had to do it again from where we stay, you'd have to go and raise at least a seed round and some initial bit of capital to get started. But I think what the kind of broader...

Auren Hoffman (37:04.354)
Why would you have to do that today as opposed to when you started?

Alex (37:07.916)
Because you would just need more dollars to go and pay folks and I think it would be hard to take someone today and say hey you're gonna move out of your house come move in with us into this group house and by the way we'll give you a lot of you know equity in exchange for a high salary and we'll make all the meals like little Yeah, a little little harder there, but I think you know there's definitely some of I mean they got swept up and well how much money did you raise it was all about the next raise and the next you know piece of that

Auren Hoffman (37:16.706)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (37:21.73)
We're paying you in Doritos.

Alex (37:34.87)
versus being like, how much money do I actually need to get up and ground and start it and give yourself enough runway? But then how do I build a profitable, sustainable, enduring business?

And it's really interesting because we have since taken some money to help facilitate some of the &A that we did from Serent Capital, which is a growth equity, private equity firm that focuses entirely on investing in bootstrap businesses. And it amazes me because they find so many businesses that have never taken primary capital, but just been thoughtful about growing, done that a sustainable way and invested and leaned in. And there are so many of them out there, but they oftentimes don't get all the attention and they're not written about in text.

and they don't get coverage for their latest raise. And I think it proves that there's a lot more possibility. The other interesting point is, you everyone last couple...

Auren Hoffman (38:11.938)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (38:18.552)
Probably a lot of them not in San Francisco and New York.

Alex (38:23.094)
Yes, also very true. And there's a lot of interesting discussion about I think this latest Cardiff survey that shows is fewer companies are raising beyond series A. And so the question is like, are startups in trouble because they're not raising? Or is it because that founders have found a way to come build profitable, sustainable businesses? And that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch play out over the next couple of years.

Auren Hoffman (38:46.19)
Yeah, it's really, I invested in a company a couple of years ago. There is a small round million dollars kind of seed ground. And I checked in with them about a month ago, this is two years later and they have like 1 .1 million in the bank. Like they never even like spent the money. They, you know, they just grew slowly as, as like you would as a, as a normal business would, you know, sometimes you don't need that startup capital to really get it going and get profitable pretty quickly nowadays.

Now, you mentioned

Alex (39:16.3)
Totally. Now, I will say just one thought on that before we go on. It is worth making sure that if you're running a profitable, sustainable business, that you also investing in you back in your business for growth. And so we early on would both get a lot of overtures from VCs and they'd say, could we write you a million dollar seed check? And we would go sit and be like, all right, well, if we spent a million dollars.

Auren Hoffman (39:37.474)
What would we do with it? Yeah. Yeah.

Alex (39:39.128)
Well, what would we do with it? And we actually came up with thoughtful answers. Well, we would hire more BDRs. We do a little more marketing. We go to this conference. And then we would sit there and be like, well, wait a minute. We have capital to do that. Let's go do that. I mean, if we're confident enough to take VC money, let's go put it in. And we actually saw a similar thing happen when we took an investment from Sarant where

we had their help and financial expertise and they were able to come in like a business and say, look, you can spend a little more, you'll be fine. And you'll have enough money. And I think it all comes down to like how much cash do you wanna have on hand at the end of the day? And being in a solo or being in...

to John and I being first time founders and kind of solo founders and entrepreneurs, you're like, well, we don't want to run out of cash. But then it's like, well, wait a minute, we don't actually need this amount of cash on hand. You you could have a lower amount and still have a sustainable business, but be investing more in growth. And so that's a really important thing, I think, to get right when you're doing it completely bootstrapped or even with a limited raise.

Auren Hoffman (40:31.554)
Now, besides the bootstrap, the other kind of like odd thing about you is you've done quite a few acquisitions along the way. Like what advice would you have for other people, other founders kind of like thinking through this acquisition strategy?

Alex (40:47.414)
Yeah, so to your point, we have done two acquisitions on Quorum's journey. One was a spin out from Sision of their pack management software business that was a smaller business but had a really key product add on that let us provide a one stop shop across four critical product lines. We had three of them that brought in the fourth and that was really significant. And then the second one was Capital Canary, which was its own roll up and combination of a business called Nohoo

that did the data gathering and contact information for legislators and elected officials and their staff. So pretty wild DAS business where it was entirely collecting contact information of elected officials and was a key data provider to us and many in the industry and continues to be. And then a business doing legislative tracking and a business doing grassroots advocacy. And so really both of those have been accelerators for us that have completely transformed our business and also enabled us to continue

compete with very big players.

Auren Hoffman (41:48.376)
Now were they in those two cases was like, were they like running a process and then you're kind of one of the bidders or were you like going in there and being like, Hey, you like, why don't you just, you know, you're create or we creating the opportunity instead.

Alex (42:03.95)
So both of them were more creating the opportunity. I got to know the head of the business unit at Sision who ran the PAC management and we had stayed in touch. And when we raised some money from Serent, the actually funny story was the announcement went out and he replied to my email and said, hey, do you want to use any of that new money to acquire a PAC business unit? I was like, well, yeah, it just so happens I would. And so we got on the phone with Sision. Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (42:26.454)
that's hilarious. Okay. Good.

Alex (42:28.182)
And so it was something we thought about doing for a while, it in our broader business plan, but it didn't realize that it was gonna be as actionable. And then we got on the phone with the CFO and was like, we wanna buy it, so we'll do it quick, we'll make it easy. Like, know, you're gonna have to avoid.

Auren Hoffman (42:39.916)
Okay. So they were a willing seller, for that, that, that, business unit wasn't strategic to them, but it was strategic to you. Okay.

Alex (42:47.35)
Yeah, so it was a very, very small part of their broader media business, strategic to us, not to them. And so there was ability for us to spin it out from that. And then with Capital Canary, we kept in touch with both their founders and investors being in the market. And so came a moment where we said, hey, what do you think about joining forces and coming together? And what we were able to do with that is double our R &D efforts because we could double the size of our development teams. And instead of building functionality that would compete against each other, build functionality that would advance the entire industry and market.

And so that was really exciting. And then also their phone to action platform, which we now own, leads the market in terms of the tools and technology that's able to do from a grassroots advocacy perspective. And so for us, that was a really key part of making sure that we had the best software platform offering in each of these distinct areas that was the most tech with the most technology and the most features and can provide that in a single integrated platform.

Auren Hoffman (43:43.64)
Okay. A few personal questions first. What's the story between your, behind your Twitter handle Amalia worth? Like what is that? Is that your actual first name?

Alex (43:51.559)
There we go. That's, no, that's my middle name, Alexander Amalia Worth. I'm a sixth generation New Mexican. And so that was my great grandfather, the middle name of Jose Amalia Gander, who grew up in New Mexico.

Auren Hoffman (44:06.706)
okay. I love it. Okay. Awesome. Okay. what do you think? Do you think a Harvard degree is now overvalued undervalued? There's a lot of people talking about that. Where do you, where do you kind of come down on that now?

Alex (44:21.464)
So I am a Harvard alumni, so there's a little bit of bias here. I had an incredible experience. And I think it is properly valued. I would not undervalue it based on the people that you meet, the connections that you make. I think not every Harvard program and every Harvard degree is. Yes.

Auren Hoffman (44:39.746)
You met your co -founder there.

Alex (44:42.726)
met my co -founder there. also, the special part for me is I was involved in the Harvard Institute of Politics. And so that brought up a whole series of leaders from the DC political scene, many of whom are still mentors and advisors to us today. And they came and spent a semester or spent a week or spent a day at Harvard. And you would get to spend time and interact with them. And that's where we got a lot of the ideas for quorum, some of the initial meetings, customer feedback, engagement. And that helps a lot. And then look, I think the other piece, and I'm going to lie, is that

Early on when we were starting out, when we reached out, people would be like, well, who are you and why should I take a meeting? And they're like, well, these are the smart Harvard guys that are working on congressional data. And everyone goes, OK, you went to Harvard. Probably should take that meeting. And so that certainly does help. now I never lead with that because it's like, we'll go talk to Quorum. yeah, you know Quorum. But when you don't know the name, that calling card helps. So I'm a pro Harvard person, but a little biased.

Auren Hoffman (45:24.366)
It's like a brand, there's a brand piece of it, right, or something.

Auren Hoffman (45:31.565)
Yeah.

Auren Hoffman (45:38.08)
Okay, that's fair. What is a conspiracy theory that you believe?

Alex (45:45.267)
That's a hard one. I don't know if I'm gonna have an answer on this. I think I'm gonna have get back to you.

Auren Hoffman (45:49.004)
Yeah, you don't seem like a conspiracy theory guy.

Alex (45:52.746)
I'm not a big conspiracy person.

Auren Hoffman (45:57.442)
What makes you a non -conspiracy theory person?

Alex (46:01.14)
I just, I feel very confident in like view of the world, answers. I don't necessarily sit there and doubt things very.

Auren Hoffman (46:08.866)
Well, quite a few, mean, if you think of like anyone who comes from public affairs, often you'll hear like, okay, you know, there's, there's like a weird public affairs or there's a lot of ways to like pay to get something, a bill passed, or, know, when you see an article plan, a negative article about a company, it's often that their competitor company, what I guess is there, are a lot of conspiracies in public affairs that I'm sure you see every day.

So I would assume you would have some that are good ones, right? Yeah.

Alex (46:38.69)
Well, so I'll give you the best one, but this credit's gotta go to my wife. And that is, does the US government have secret giant pandas somewhere? Did we really give them all back to China? Or somewhere, somewhere in the US, is there some lab that is either cloned or one of the cubs got siphoned off and they're somewhere just to make sure that we had some of the species. But I don't know.

Auren Hoffman (46:50.228)
okay.

Auren Hoffman (47:01.622)
I like it like in the White House basement. There's like a panda eating honey right now or something.

Alex (47:07.15)
I mean, they're so adorable. The fact we had to give them all back is heartbreaking and so thrilled that they're coming back to DC and they just got to San Diego. But we smiled at that one, for sure.

Auren Hoffman (47:08.845)
Right.

Auren Hoffman (47:17.103)
I like that one. All right. Last question. We ask all of our guests, what conventional wisdom or advice do you think is generally bad advice?

Alex (47:25.704)
it's generally bad advice. Don't start a company. I mean, there's so many people out there that are like, my God, you're crazy. A lot of people at Harvard. Yeah, Harvard.

Auren Hoffman (47:33.336)
Who gives that advice?

Really? I would say that the conventional wisdom now is almost the opposite now.

Alex (47:41.13)
Well, look, I think, I mean, here's the hard thing. You're jumping off a cliff. And so no matter where you are, when you're starting a company, you're looking at the safe opportunities that pay you a salary, give you health insurance and benefits, and have a lot of different pathways to success. And so when you go and tell anyone, whether it be your parents or friends or coworkers or your significant other, I'm going to go start a company. They're going be like,

Auren Hoffman (47:45.517)
Yeah.

Alex (48:05.154)
But how are you going to make any money? What are you going to do? What's going to happen? And what I often tell want to be entrepreneurs is like, look, the hardest part is getting started and jump off the cliff. Once you learn how to fly, once you get some revenue, once you get going, it's an incredibly fulfilling job and you get to control your own destiny in terms of what you want to make happen. And then you can have a really big impact on the world. And so it's one of the best things that I ever did. I will admit, and I give my mom a lot of trouble for this. When I told her I was going to start a company, she goes, that sounds like a nice thing to do between

in college and graduate school. And alas to this day, I've never gone to graduate school, but like that is the kind of world that I still think we live in. And so if you're listening to this and thinking about business ideas are already out there, keep on flying and jump off the cliff because it's a really amazing journey that I've loved being.

Auren Hoffman (48:37.154)
Yeah

Auren Hoffman (48:53.334)
All right. This is great. Thank you Alex Worth for joining us. world of death. By the way, as I mentioned, I follow you at a Amalia worth on X or Twitter, whatever it's called. I definitely encourage our listeners to engage you there. This has been a ton of fun.

Alex (49:06.966)
Awesome, thanks for having me on.