Government websites aren't known for being cutting edge. Ben Cohen, co-founder and CTO of GovWell, noticed this while helping his father, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as a full-stack engineer at Uber by day and faxed building permit documents by night. The difference in technology was stark. A few years later, the experience inspired him to start GovWell.
New York-based GovWell is a workflow system for small and medium-sized governments that helps automate and streamline a variety of tasks, from building permits and regulations to zoning and fire safety inspections. GovWell co-founder and CEO Troy LeCaire told TechCrunch that the platform has enabled local governments to complete tasks in a fraction of the time it would have taken before.
LeCaire added that because each government runs these processes slightly differently, GovWell's platform is designed so that governments can customize it to their requirements without having to spend money on a bespoke platform.
“It's a single product that can be configured with no-code tools to perfectly adapt the software to the functionality you need,” says LeCaire. “A good example is Salesforce, which can be configured to adapt to different businesses, but under the hood it's the same process.”
Lucaire and Cohen were matched through a speed-dating activity by the founders of New York-based startup incubator Fractal Software. They realized they both had government experience — Cohen with his father, Lucaire with a college degree in political campaigns and politics — and initially set out to develop software to automate building permits, but soon realized the problem was bigger than that.
“We called hundreds of municipalities. [software] “We did some research to see what people were using and what they liked, and we found that people weren't loving it, even though they were paying thousands, even millions, of dollars for it,” LeCaire says. “We realized the government needed a more general workflow solution.”
GovWell landed five government clients before its founders had even written a line of code, and now, since launching in April 2023, GovWell is working with more than a dozen local governments, ranging from park departments to health departments in seven states.
GovWell raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Work-Bench, with participation from existing investor Bienville Capital. LeCaire said the company is on track to be cash flow positive without the need for further capital raises. The decision to raise capital was made due to increased investor interest and the ability to set unique terms to accelerate growth. GovWell plans to use the funding to triple its team over the next 18 months and invest in product development.
GovWell isn't the only company trying to bring government software into the 21st century. Startups like GovDash, Hazel and Odo are also trying to bring better software to the government contracting space. Others are focused on government workflows, including OpenGov, a digital cloud software provider for government that raised $178 million in venture funding before being acquired by Cox Enterprises earlier this year, and GovPilot.
LeCaire said there isn't the same competition in this space among other software companies as there is in AI and B2B SaaS.
“The scale of the problem is enormous,” Lucaire said. “Government spending is 36% of GDP. Local governments spend $1.8 trillion on managing services. It's a huge sector of the economy. The adoption of AI is a huge market that will impact everyone's lives, education systems, economic and community development.”
LeCaire said that while local governments aren't thought of as being aggressive in adopting new technology (which isn't entirely wrong), this field is different because these organizations have already committed significant funding, and GovWell hopes to be that go-to provider.
“Our goal is to be number one in workflow automation for small and mid-sized local governments within the next 18 months,” LeCaire says. “What we have here is a unifying idea that government should work better. We all pay taxes. We all want our government to be efficient and effective.”