GovWell is bringing automation and efficiency to local governments

Government websites aren’t known for cutting-edge tech. GovWell co-founder and CTO Ben Cohen discovered this while trying to help his dad, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as a full stack engineer at Uber during the day and faxed documents for building permits at night. The difference in tech was stark. Years later, this experience inspired him to launch GovWell.

New York-based GovWell is a workflow system for small and medium-sized governments that helps automate and streamline tasks ranging from building permits and code to zoning to fire safety inspections. GovWell co-founder and CEO Troy LeCaire told TechCrunch that the platform is helping local governments complete tasks in a fraction of the time it used to take.

LeCaire added that every government runs these processes a little differently, so GovWell’s platform was designed in a way that allows governments to customize it to their requirements without having to pay for a bespoke platform.

“It’s a single product that can be configured by no-code tools to make the software adapt perfectly to what it needs to do,” LeCaire said. “A good example is something like Salesforce – it can be configured to adapt to different businesses, but under the hood, it is the same process.”

LeCaire and Cohen were matched through a founder speed dating activity at Fractal Software, a New York-based startup incubator. They realized that they both had experience with government, Cohen’s with his dad, and LeCaire’s with political campaigns and a college degree in the subject. They first set out to build a software that automated building permits but quickly realized the problem was larger than that.

“We called hundreds of municipalities and asked them what [software] they were using and if they liked it, and we found that people didn’t like it despite paying thousands if not millions for it,” LeCaire said. “We realized that government needed a more general workflow solution.”

GovWell landed five government customers before the founders had written a line of code. Now, since its launch in April 2023, GovWell works with more than a dozen local governments ranging from parks departments to Health Departments across seven states.

GovWell raised a $4.5 million seed round led by Work-Bench with participation from existing investor Bienville Capital. LeCaire said that the company didn’t need to raise money, and is on a path toward positive cash flow. They decided to raise because there was inbound investor interest and the company had the ability to set its own terms to accelerate growth. GovWell will use the money to triple the team in the next 18 months and invest in product development.

GovWell isn’t the only company looking to bring government software into the 21st century. A handful of startups, like GovDash, Hazel and Odo are also looking to bring better software to the government contract space. There are some that focus on government workflow too. OpenGov is one. It’s a digital cloud software provider for governments that raised $178 million in venture funding before being acquired by Cox Enterprises earlier this year. GovPilot is another.

LeCaire said even with other software players there isn’t competition in this sector like there is in AI or B2B SaaS.

“The scale of the problem is enormous,” LeCaire said. “Government expenditures is 36% of GDP. Local governments spend $1.8 trillion administering services. It’s a huge sector of the economy. Their adoption of AI, it is a massive market that touches everyone’s lives, the education system, and economic and community development.”

LeCaire said that while people don’t think of local governments as being big adopters of new tech – which isn’t entirely wrong – this area is different because these organizations are already spending quite a bit of money on it. GovWell hopes it can become that go-to provider.

“Our goal is to become the number one workflow automation for smaller and medium-sized local governments over the next 18 months,” LeCaire said. “What we are doing here, it is a unifying idea that, hey, government should work better. We all pay taxes. We all want our government to be efficient and effective to use.”