In 2014, three former colleagues met in a cramped row house near Capitol Hill to launch a company that would eventually be worth over one billion dollars. Michael Ramlet, Kyle Dropp, and Alex Dulin did not start with a grand vision of dominating the global market for business intelligence. They began with a single, urgent question about whether young and uninsured Americans would sign up for the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges. This initial poll was published just before the exchanges went live in 2013, setting a precedent for speed and relevance that would define the firm's early identity. The trio operated with a lean team of 13 employees, a stark contrast to the 255 staff members they would employ by November 2020. Their approach relied on online survey research technology rather than traditional telephone interviews, allowing them to access tens of millions of Americans through multiple nationally recognized vendors. This nonprobability sampling process, weighted by age, race, gender, education, and region, became the backbone of their operations, distinguishing them from legacy polling firms that struggled to adapt to the digital age.
The Shy Trump and the 2016 Shock
The 2016 presidential election exposed the volatile nature of online polling when Morning Consult published a report on the Shy Trump voter in the Republican presidential primaries. This claim suggested that Donald Trump had a hidden base of support that traditional polling missed, a narrative that gained traction but has since been challenged by critics and other data analysts. During the general election, the company called the winner incorrectly, predicting that Hillary Clinton would win the national popular vote by 3 percent when she actually won by 2.1 percent. The margin of error in the 2018 and 2022 US midterm elections was even more pronounced, with Morning Consult performing well below average compared to most other pollsters. Despite these high-profile misses, the firm maintained a partnership with Politico, releasing weekly polling on political issues, personalities, and media aspects that affected the daily debate. This relationship continued after the election, appearing weekly in Politico Playbook, and demonstrated the company's ability to pivot from a startup to a key player in political journalism. The firm also conducted regular survey research with The New York Times, proving that even with methodological flaws, their data remained valuable to major media outlets.The Billion Dollar Valuation
By June 2021, Morning Consult had achieved a valuation of more than one billion dollars, a milestone that seemed impossible just seven years prior. The company raised a $60 million Series B funding round led by Advance Venture Partners, with additional investors including Susquehanna Growth Equity and Lupa Systems, which was owned by James Murdoch. This funding followed a $31 million Series A round completed in May 2020, which had valued the company at $306 million. The rapid growth from a row house near Capitol Hill to a global enterprise with offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco marked a significant shift in the business intelligence landscape. The company's ability to scale was driven by its specialized online survey research technology, which allowed it to provide global survey research tools, data services, and news to organizations in business, marketing, economics, and politics. The valuation surge reflected investor confidence in the firm's ability to navigate the complexities of modern data collection, even as the industry grappled with the decline of traditional polling methods.