How did Quae start?
Reflecting on where Quae came from, and what brought us to this point.
Startups
Going into college, I had hardly planned on starting my own company, but the possibility was always in the back of my mind. Getting into the Stevens startup accelerator Launchpad was really the catalyst for it all. It’s where I learned everything about starting a company: from having the right attitude and mindset to using specific methods and thinking.
From here, it was all about constantly pushing myself to learn everything I could inside and outside of the classroom about web development and the startup ecosystem.
Agile
The agile methodology took hold of the Quae Team at the very start. Where other Launchpad teams may have held loose plans and meetings, my co-founder, Brendan, and I were devoted to a strict type of structure to get the best work done in the time we had with each other.
While we may have just met, we both had the right outlook on Launchpad. We knew its potential and we took it very seriously. I remember speaking to my parents about it all, before we had anything developed, telling them something like this:
This is huge guys. This is where I can change the world. This is what I’m going to dedicate my life to.
The Launchpad Director Mukund had said to all of us students that we must seek out a problem that we will spend the next ten years of our life on, so naturally, I picked something I’m very passionate about: representation in large communities.
The Names
Naming Quae had to be one of the hardest things we had to do from the start.
Forum
The project began as Forum when it was just me, focusing on the problem statement of “politics sucks.” I called it this because I initially wanted to build a platform for political discussion, and what better name than that of a political forum being called Forum.
MyPolitics
We were actually kinda set on this name for a little while until we were told by many it sounded awful. It really did.
We even purchased a domain for this name! Our first web page was available at mypolitics.us and boy was it ugly.
Quae
Our final name came from the idea that we should name ourselves after something that isn’t in our common vocabulary. We turned to Latin and found the word Quae. I had taken a Latin class in high school and I knew using the dead language would have significant meaning to the company because it is the root of most modern languages today. What better way to name a company focused on uniting all of us in politics than to use a language that ties most of our society together throughout history.
Quae is an all-encompassing word. In a verb format, it means to seek, to search, or to demand. Hence the English words: inquire or question. The difficulty in seeking out political information is one of our biggest problem statements that we always turn to. So it made sense to pick this word as our company name.
We’re deadset on this name because in the summer of 2021 we incorporated ourselves as Quae, Inc.
The Ideas
Looking back on how Quae bounced from idea to idea brings a smile to my face because the iterations that we went through are just adorable. At the time I knew we weren’t working with anything concrete just yet, but the exercise of putting our hopes and dreams into our application design brought out skills that we both didn’t know we ever had.
Matchmaking
Fun-Fact: Arthur Atkins was our go-to default politician name. There is no specific reason why, but it just stuck and is still an inside joke in the Quae Team.
We knew that Quae needed to be completely new, so we needed to go from zero-to-one as Peter Theil describes it. This means we were brainstorming ideas that would initially sound impractical to others, but that’s only because the solution is a huge leap from the norm. Our first major iteration was a matchmaking app to connect to politicians who held the same stances as you. Our goals were to fight against the idea that two parties could encompass all political spectrums. So we figured that if you answered enough political questions, you could really understand that you aren’t a Democrat or a Republican but rather an individual who has to be represented by someone as close as you. We figured that everyone is unique and the matchmaking would bring you to a politician who represents you hopefully over 50% on all issues.
The Voting Platform
Connecting people with politicians who agreed with them does not solve the problem we were addressing. People would still have to wait 2–4 years to have an impact on their community during elections. We decided that the way to approach this was to rethink the way issues are handled by the government. The current solutions (attend a town hall meeting, make a phone call, or vote in an election) were slow, difficult, and outdated. There needed to be an easier way to create change in one’s community.
We wanted everyone to Be Heard and be represented, so it made sense to allow our members to post their own issues and concerns and hold a micro-election of their own. Everyone can vote on polls posted to their community which are visible to everyone. City officials will be able to see the polls with the highest turnout and consensus to make better decisions with this information. This was our product in its MVP state. A platform that allows anyone to be heard and bring change to their community.
The Bulky Version
When we were learning mobile application development over winter break 2020 with React Native, we were designing and developing Quae with a typical social media design in mind. We took inspiration from big apps like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook and built a large application with many tabs. This was a mistake.
We learned that our MVP (Minimum Value Product) should contain as few screens and features as possible. We don’t regret building the bulk, because it was a huge learning experience and brought us a lot of confidence in our developmental skills.
The Final Iteration
After learning a lot about development, we had a better idea of what was feasible and what wasn’t. We brainstormed to figure out what features were absolutely necessary for Quae to accomplish its mission.
We wanted everyone to Be Heard and feel represented, so it made sense to allow our members to post their own issues and concerns. We then figured that everyone should be able to uplift one another’s posts and the most supported polls, will be automatically visible to everyone, including the city’s officials. This was our product in its MVP state. A platform that allows anyone to be heard and bring change to their community.
Networking
After we had a serious product idea and felt confident enough that we’d be able to follow through with development, we began to consider networking opportunities.
Advisors
Professor Mukund is our first and most valued advisor to our team. His words and advice made all of this possible, and while he is humble when he speaks about his effect on Launchpad, everyone in the program can attest to the fact that he is a true changemaker, building people up to their best potential and catalyzing the growth of countless ideas and companies.
He taught the entire Launchpad program how to think like a founder. We learned how to pitch and consider all of the branches of the startup ecosystem. Without his help, we would have no foundation for building Quae.
We spoke with Professor Lindsey McCormack because of her experience in local and national politics. She had advised a New York city council candidate as well as actively spoken on politics in the past. She also started the website DCInbox which is a highly commendable platform that accomplishes in its own words: Official e-newsletters from every member of Congress. In one place. In real-time.
When we met with her, we wanted to learn as much as we could about reaching out and connecting with local politicians. We didn’t have any experience in speaking with these figures and we wanted to make sure we came across as professional and eager to help in creating change in their communities. She gave us the outlook necessary to feel comfortable in reaching out to Hoboken city council members, and that’s when everything started to feel real.
City Council
In the summer of 2021, we met with multiple city council members asking them about the problems they experienced when reaching out to their constituents. Their responses included not being able to effectively hear the members’ concerns that were most verifiable and important. The Hoboken city council members were very kind and very open to the idea of Quae being integrated into the city, however, we knew it would be a long time before anything like that could happen.
We hadn’t yet built Quae to scale and we hadn’t built around the feedback we were currently receiving. These months were integral to our understanding of the customer. We continued to receive feedback, understand what was needed, and build our app. We did this for the whole summer so that by the time fall came around we would be able to launch to Hoboken using address verification to ensure voter security.
Launching
Our initial launch could have been considered a failure, but it was mostly a soft launch where we intended to learn as much as we could so that our true launch would be even more successful.
Pivoting to Stevens
Launching in Hoboken was a marketing nightmare. We planned around gaining the ability to advertise on Facebook, as the demographic data of Hoboken showed us that platform would be the best space to get more signups. However, Facebook continued to deny us access to their advertising platform due to our product involving keywords such as politics and voting. We continued trying to get ourselves on the platform going to the lengths of getting a form notarized to verify our personal identities, but Facebook never budged and we were forced to slow down our plan.
Not only was marketing an issue, but the return to our in-person classes would inhibit our ability to dedicate 100% of our time to Quae. We knew we were running out of time to capture the Hoboken market, so we started to brainstorm what would be the best next step for the company.
We always toyed with the idea of launching in the Stevens student body, but we wanted to focus on government institutions first as that was our true problem statement. But then we made a huge realization. Every single organization needs representation. People who are a part of a school are experiencing the same problems as citizens of a governing body when it comes to being heard. This is what inspired us to branch out to organizations outside of governments and we’ve since fully adopted this as our new mission: to bring democracy to every community using modern tools and solutions.
Facing Stevens
Students are much easier to market to than citizens. Their problems are more focused and niche, so we were able to have more specific conversations with them. We are also students, so we experience the same exact problems as most of our members.
We were able to make connections with the Student Government Association (SGA) and presented them with what Quae offered, and they weren’t immediately eager to use the platform. After a couple of weeks, a student’s proposal got a lot of support. It had to do with the campus library closing times being too early.
Simultaneous to our connection with the SGA, we connected with the campus newspaper, The Stute. The student’s proposal was featured in an issue and the SGA had intended to take action on the problem. In a few short weeks, the library’s hours were extended and we, at Team Quae, were ecstatic.
This was Proof of Concept. Our platform actually worked. We were able to crowdsource issues and solutions and use our data to create real change on our campus. This motivated us to fully commit ourselves even further to the work we're doing. And with our exponential growth in technical knowledge, we were able to build out more complex features for our members’ needs.
The Web Application
The biggest task was building an entirely new interface on the web so that our administrators could have a bigger picture of their community’s needs. This took us many months to finish but it was absolutely necessary to move forward. We aspire to become a common application among large communities and to become synonymous with group voting solutions.
Development
In the 2021 winter break, we finished our web application as well as built our platform with its new unique appearance. The modular glass-morphic design allowed us to simplify our interface without sacrificing voting complexity. We want to satisfy every one of our group’s voting needs, and we are still doing this today.
Future Opportunities
Not only does our web application give us access to a larger screen, but it also gives us the real estate to get into Web 3.0.
To use Web 3.0 to its fullest potential, a web application is required. We have plans to develop decentralized blockchain technology around Quae as an alternative to our centralized data model. For those who are excited by what Web 3.0 has to offer, we want to give them a chance to democratize their organization using smart contracts and our interface.
Today
Time is flying by and it’s one of our most precious resources. We’re only students for so long and need to have a plan for Quae to survive by the time we graduate. We want with all of our hearts to work on Quae for the rest of our lives, but in order to do this, we must gain stable financial support.
As we grow on the Stevens campus, we hope to gain our first customer. Utilizing the enterprise model, the campus administration would pay a price to use our service. We could then replicate this process for other universities in the area and continue our exponential growth.
When we grow large enough, we will reach out to other startup accelerators for funding or skip ahead to Venture Capital. This would give us the foundation to make Quae a huge platform that could bring representation to every organization in the world. We can bring democracy to the 21st century.
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed the summary of Quae’s progress throughout the last two years. This history brought us to this point and we’re extremely proud of the progress we’ve been able to make. There’s a lot of work to do and we spend 40+ hours a week on the platform.
If you have any questions or if you’d like to speak with us, please send us a note at: info@quae.app
We’d love to hear from you.
