On PoliSci degrees & GovWell
One of the unexpected fun facts that I share with people is that I studied Swahili in college 🙃
But really - I studied Government (political science) with a minor in African Studies and had a brief transformative stint in international development before pivoting into enterprise software investing (as one does haha).
It's these unexpected twists and turns in life that only when you look back do you fully appreciate, even 15 years later.
I got re-introduced to Troy LeCaire, who I knew from his prior role as Chief of Staff at RippleMatch, a Work-Bench portfolio company, this past spring.
I had been following that he was building in the govtech space with GovWell - but it wasn't until Troy shared some of his customer calls with us that I could *physically see* the tremendous impact that GovWell is making with their software and their users.
While we all complain sometimes when the apps we use at work glitch out or are a bit buggy - much of the software that government employees use for their day to day work in departments like Building and Planning, Fire, Public Works, Health, and Parks and Rec (!) is truly decades-old, on-premise, and physically painful to watch them use.
I could not be more excited for GovWell's massive vision and mission: to help governments serve communities better with modern software, starting with their cloud-native, multi-tenant, no-code solution that automates core workflows for local government agencies.
One of my favorite lines from a GovWell customer call: "What we can do now is…unlimited." I cannot think of anything more powerful to unleash in a customer 👏 💪
Coupled with Troy and his co-founder Ben Cohen's personal experiences, authentic passion for government, their relentless hustle and energy with an extremely mission-oriented team - they are an absolute force, already serving more than a dozen government agencies in 7 states representing 200,000+ citizens...and they are just getting started 🏛️ 🚀
We at Work-Bench are pumped to have led their $4.5M Seed, with the cherry on top: GovWell is building right here in NYC, and we could not be more excited to help them scale their team here!
Hat tip to my Government/Political Science degree 🎓 🙂
TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/29/govwell-is-bringing-automation-and-efficiency-to-local-governments/
Work-Bench blog post: https://www.work-bench.com/post/announcing-our-investment-in-govwell
GovWell blog post: https://www.govwelltech.com/post/announcing-govwells-4-5m-seed-round-to-modernize-government-services