The government affairs market is attracting a lot of investment at the moment, as major changes to the current global political landscape is increasing the need for insight and analysis about legislation, government contracts, and regulation. All companies need to know what is coming down the road before it is too late to communicate to law makers how this might impact their business. However, hiring lobbyists to monitor and lobby government is generally the preserve of well funded corporations and organized industries.

I interviewed Alex Wirth, one of the co-founders and CEO of Quorum Analytics, an integrated public affairs platform. They’ve supported companies including Wal-Mart, GM, Lyft, and over 1000 public affairs professionals across the fortune 500, trade associations, nonprofits, advocacy firms, so on and so forth.

Quorum is seizing on the current trend to improve and automate some of the tasks carried out by white-collar workers by using data analytics. Outsell is witnessing this across industry sectors, from lawyers to scientific researchers. Quorum has the potential to enable ordinary company executives to carry out professional DIY lobbying by providing them with all the data, information and workflows tools at their fingertips. This could potentially help to democratize the lobbying industry, which has acquired a negative public image.

In the U.S. alone, $3.15 Billion was spent on lobbying government in 2016, presenting Quorum with a large addressable market to grow its business. Quorum opening an office in Brussels is also a timely move. New EU laws, plus recent regulatory actions from the European Commission, is making many US tech companies realise that their global business can be damaged by the regulatory framework in Brussels. For example, the GDPR is likely to influence privacy regulations and practices around the world, not just within the EU.

Quorum has bootstrapped its business and funded growth from subscription revenue. This has allowed the company to test the market, and avoid over spending on unnecessary things. It is now in a better position to know exactly where it needs to invest, and has a stronger negotiating hand to raise funds to achieve its ambition to become the Bloomberg terminal for government affairs within five years.