Alex Wirth and the art of finding the next yes

In the fall of 2013, Alex Wirth had a proposal and a practical difficulty. He was campaigning for a presidential youth council, which would give young people a voice in federal decision-making. To build support, he needed to find members of Congress willing to join the effort. Having a sympathetic lawmaker was useful. Knowing who that lawmaker regularly worked with would be more useful still.

Back at Harvard, Wirth brought the problem to his roommate, Jonathan Marks. Marks was training in computational biochemistry, a field accustomed to finding relationships inside complicated systems. Congress offered a different sort of organism. The question was whether its patterns of collaboration could be mapped well enough to help someone decide whom to approach next.

The resulting company, Quorum, began with a wonderfully Washington predicament: even when you know what you want, you still have to work out whose office to visit. Wirth would spend the following years turning that predicament into software, then discovering that building a company requires a few coalitions of its own.

Before the dorm room, a seat at the meeting

Wirth came from Santa Fe, New Mexico. His interest in public participation was already visible before college. In March 2011, he chaired a meeting of the city’s Mayor’s Youth Advisory Board at the Monica Roybal Center. The agenda included the board’s role in the community, recommendations for new members, and teen center funding. Civic engagement arrived with motions, minutes, and a scheduled adjournment.

His early experience also included serving as a U.S. Senate page and interning in Senator Jeff Bingaman’s office and the White House chief of staff’s office. In March 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed him to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. Helena’s biography identifies him as its youngest-ever member.

Those experiences put him close to government’s daily machinery. A page sees a legislature working; an advocate has to persuade it to do something. The youth council campaign moved Wirth toward that second task. He encountered the problem of finding allies in a place where relationships matter, information sits in many places, and a list of names only gets you so far.

The proposal also gave his future business an unusually concrete starting point. He had something he was trying to accomplish. A better way to understand congressional relationships could help him take the next step. The customer problem preceded the sales pitch.

One roommate brought the question. The other brought the code.

Wirth and Marks had met before freshman year on a Harvard First-Year Outdoor Program trip. They later became blockmates and developed their idea in Mather House. Their partnership began with a shared college life before it acquired a company name and a division of responsibilities.

They worked on Quorum in ES95r, Startup R & D, with lecturer Paul Bottino. Harvard’s innovation resources helped them move beyond a dorm-room discussion: a McKinley Family Grant and an Institute of Politics Gov 2.0 grant supported hiring four additional full-time employees for summer 2014. A question about Congress was becoming a product people had to build.

Wirth handled the conversations around Washington while Marks developed the early software. Their roles were complementary. The programmer could test whether the relationships were visible in data. The advocate could test whether that visibility would help someone doing the job. Each needed the other’s answer.

By their 2015 interview together, Wirth oversaw business development and customer success; Marks focused on product design and development. Years later, Wirth would describe their founding partnership through the familiar “Hacker and Hustler” model. In this case, the shorthand had a fairly literal origin: one roommate was building, while the other was asking Washington what it would use.

Washington was the classroom

Quorum was founded in 2014 and publicly launched in January 2015. Before that launch, the founders held more than 30 conversations across Washington during fall 2014. They used those discussions to collect feedback and feature ideas, and waited until they had paying clients before coming out of stealth.

That sequence says something about Wirth’s approach. Talking to users was part of making the thing. Business plan competitions also forced the founders to explain their market and identify their customers. An idea that sounded plausible between roommates had to survive questions from people with budgets and working habits.

The early product gathered material from congressional websites, floor statements, committee websites, social posts, and other public records. It could show collaboration between legislators, compare bill text, and map census information onto districts. The appeal lay in putting scattered information somewhere people could work with it.

After graduation in 2015, the founders moved to Washington. Quorum won a Live Free in D.C. contest that provided accommodation and workspace. Its early team worked across several locations, including a Foxhall house and offices near Farragut Square. The business of explaining Congress had itself acquired an address book.

The map gets bigger

Once a customer could follow legislation, other tasks came into view: keep track of a meeting, find a staff contact, mobilize supporters, send an update. Quorum expanded around that connected work. In May 2017, it introduced Quorum EU and opened its first office outside the United States, in Brussels.

By August 2020, the company had more than 100 team members and seven products. It announced a minority growth equity investment from Serent Capital to support its next phase. The founders had built the early business without outside investment; they now chose a partner to help them expand. Bootstrapping was a chapter with dates, rather than a permanent identity.

In December 2021, Quorum acquired CisionPAC, adding a team with expertise in political action committee software. The acquisition helped underpin the later launch of Quorum PAC, a product covering fundraising, reporting, and compliance workflows. Listening to customers had led Wirth into a specialized corner of political administration.

Then came Capitol Canary in September 2022. The combined company announced more than 2,000 clients and 336 team members. Capitol Canary’s cofounder Jeb Ory joined Quorum’s board. A company that had begun by showing relationships between lawmakers was combining with a business built around helping people contact them.

Even an acquisition needs explaining

The Capitol Canary deal carried a detail that suits Wirth’s career. He had known Ory and fellow cofounder Ximena Hartsock for years. Their longstanding relationship helped open the door to a transaction. The founder selling software for navigating professional relationships was doing some consequential relationship work himself.

There was also a less ceremonial challenge: telling customers what had happened. After the acquisition, Wirth described running into people in Washington who still had not heard about Quorum’s earlier purchase of CisionPAC. An agreement can be signed in a room. Understanding travels at its own pace.

That is an excellent inconvenience for a communications-minded founder to encounter. The larger Quorum became, the more its leader had to explain the same business to different audiences: employees joining through acquisitions, customers using individual tools, and organizations considering a broader relationship. A larger catalogue creates more things to say. It does not guarantee that anyone has heard them.

His advice to other founders puts weight on experienced company-builders. “Surround yourself with people who have scaled businesses before.” He has recommended learning from colleagues, board members, advisers, and fellow founders who have already faced similar problems. For someone whose first cofounder was a college roommate, it is an acknowledgment that the circle has to widen.

Trading the cape for a team

By his November 2025 Chief Influencer conversation, Wirth was describing leadership through comic-book characters. The early founder plays Superman, personally rushing into problems. A growing organization needs Captain America: someone able to bring other capable leaders together. The costume budget is mercifully optional.

The analogy captures a real change in the job. A founder who can answer every question may be useful in a small room. With hundreds of colleagues, the work includes helping other people make decisions, repeating priorities, and maintaining clarity across teams. Wirth calls attention to the leader’s role as a “Chief Reminding Officer.”

He also argues for speaking during uncertainty. “Communicate when it’s most difficult to communicate,” he says, because “that’s when people need it most.” The advice belongs beside the acquisition anecdote. People cannot act on a plan they have not heard, and silence leaves them to supply their own explanation.

His public commitments extend beyond the company. He serves on the Public Affairs Council’s board and is listed as an ex-officio board member of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. His path has kept him in the overlapping worlds of business and civic participation. The youth advocate has become someone other organizations ask to help steer.

“Surround yourself with people who have scaled businesses before.”

Alex Wirth · Advice to founders, 2023

The next yes still needs a person

In July 2026, Enlightenment Capital announced a strategic investment in Quorum. The stated aim included accelerating its product roadmap and expanding its AI capabilities. By then, the platform served more than 2,000 organizations, including over half the Fortune 100. The work had traveled a long way from a student’s search for cosponsors.

In September, Quorum launched Quincy Hub, bringing five AI agents into one place. Their jobs included bill tracking, campaign building, meeting preparation, stakeholder record-keeping, and policy communications. Users could review, edit, approve, or dismiss the work. The launch specified that material would not be automatically submitted or sent without user action.

For Wirth, this is another attempt to reduce the distance between gathering information and doing something with it. The original problem was choosing an office to approach. The newer tools prepare more of the work around that approach. Responsibility for the next move remains with the person using them.

There is a recognizable thread through the youth board agenda, the conversation in Mather House, and the expanding software business. Wirth keeps returning to the practical arrangements that let people participate: know the issue, understand the relationships, prepare the request, bring someone else along. His career began with the difficulty of finding support for an idea. He has made a business of helping others work out where to ask next.