Camino, a company that develops software that helps citizens though the state government permitting process, has collared $5.9 million in two seed funding rounds. The lead investor was 8VC, which was joined by Storm Ventures, GovTech Fund, iNovia, Fathom Capital, and Sway Ventures.
Andrew Westrope tells us more about Camino in this article in Government Technology:
“We’re looking to expand the team pretty aggressively over this year, probably doubling in size from where we are currently, and that’s largely so we can take on the number of partnership opportunities we have to work on a fairly large permit system,” Levine said.
Camino sells two products: the Permit Guide, which is an informational resource for anyone trying to get a government permit for business, construction or anything else; and a workflow system that connects the guide to a government’s actual permitting or licensing process. In Levine’s own words, it’s like TurboTax for permits.
Levine said Camino’s Permit Guide offers more sophisticated intelligence and thorough information than any analogs he’s seen, but if the company’s investors saw promise in permitting software, they weren’t the only ones. Civic-tech startup CityLife tried to develop an app to fast-track consumer permits last year. Gov tech regulars like Tyler Technologies, CentralSquare Technologies and Accela offer permitting solutions already, although Camino’s works alongside these instead of replacing them.
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Camino’s products have been available for about 10 months now, and in an email, Levine offered two examples of use cases: In Santa Clarita, Calif., users have used the guide 1,186 times since August 2018, which suggests dozens of hours of staff time not spent addressing questions over the phone; and in San Rafael, Camino deployed a customized online cannabis-permitting system in less than three weeks. Levine said Santa Clarita reported a “significant reduction in the volume of calls” related to residential construction projects, and the average at-the-counter conversation decreased from 30 minutes to 10. He said San Rafael estimated Camino’s system saved at least 60 hours of staff time in the first month, and many citizens were able to complete the entire application process from home.
