Announcing our investment in OpenLattice

Don’t ever invest in a company that sells to the government!

This is one of the all-time great consensus VC tropes, and in part illustrates why we were so excited to invest in OpenLattice, where we closed an oversubscribed $5 million post-seed round this quarter. OpenLattice was started by Matthew Tamayo-Rios, a former Palantir engineer who saw first-hand how a huge business could be built selling to some of the most technology-hungry customers of all: local government agencies.

But how? The sales cycle! Procurement! Integration! All the old reasons to avoid this segment were in Matthew’s mind and the minds of his team as they thought through how to create the defining company that would bring modern technology to these critical customers while at the same time bringing the benefits of that technology to segments of society that, too often, are served by experiences like the DMV.

Using a combination of modern software techniques, machine learning and an understanding of how government agencies buy technology, OpenLattice went to market in 2018 with a series of applications for criminal justice administration, behavioral health, pretrial incarceration and others that solve specific, critical needs for local government. By selling an initial deployment that is small enough to fall below the requirement for an RFP, OpenLattice avoids many of the delays and costs associated with selling to the public sector.

What made this a Bullpen investment was a combination of multiple early and enthusiastic customer wins, a different approach to a large market and a strong syndicate around our lead that included multiple specialist funds that support this kind of company.

Written by Eric Wiesen