Why We Invested in GreenLite
Accelerating America’s ability to build.
By Bryan Rosenblatt, Ryan Hrabak and Andrew Ziperski
We are excited to lead the $28.5 million Series A in GreenLite, the modern construction permitting and plan review platform. It’s hard enough to start and run a business today, and dealing with the bureaucracy of permitting just to get your doors open isn’t a good use of anyone’s time. The arduous permitting process costs the business money, eats up local government resources, and ultimately impacts consumers and the local economy. How many times have you walked past a new restaurant, bank, or store that had an “Opening Soon” sign in the window for far too long? Businesses want to open faster and start serving customers — and GreenLite’s mission is to make that happen.
We first met GreenLite’s CEO, James Gallagher, when he was running Bandit (acquired by GoPuff). There, he met his co-founder, Ben Allen, and the two of them experienced the challenges of permitting first-hand when opening up brick-and-mortar locations throughout the US across various lines of business. They’ve felt the pains of permitting and rather than accept the status quo, they saw an opportunity to solve the problem themselves and founded GreenLite.
Permitting is a costly and painfully convoluted reality in construction. The many involved parties have a wide-ranging list of responsibilities — and conflicting incentives. The developer wants speed, the general contractor wants revenue, the municipalities want safety, and the government worker wants a steady paycheck. These dynamics have contributed to large permitting backlogs throughout the US.
These backlogs are also driving an important legislative trend: private plan review. Municipal governments can’t handle the permit volumes they receive, and forward-thinking states are doing something about it — Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and Washington D.C. have legalized private plan review, which allows authorized private providers to act on behalf of the municipal government to review and issue construction permits. At least seven other states have similar legislation in the approval process, including Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
While technology focused on collaboration and workflow tools can help bring the involved parties together and improve communication, software alone does not solve the problem—what’s needed is a combination of both software and services.
Enter GreenLite: the industry’s only comprehensive solution for permitting and private plan review. Now commercial and residential real estate developers gain visibility into the status of all their active projects, collaborate in real-time to update construction and enhance the architectural plan review using AI-powered recommendations, and receive critical project support and private plan review services from a team of experienced architects and engineers. The proof is in some of the name-brand customers trusting GreenLite — companies like Chipotle, Chick-fil-A, and Driven Brands, along with residential home builders, bank branches, landlords, and real estate owners are all benefiting from streamlined permitting workflows which means their projects are completed on time and within budget. Other categories such as lodging, healthcare, data centers, EV charging infrastructure and more cleantech businesses can also benefit from GreenLite.
We look forward to partnering with James, Ben, and the GreenLite team to help remove the roadblocks to construction and development in America, brick by brick and permit by permit.
