ClearGov, a rising star in the govtech space, announced this week that it closed on a $20 million strategic growth investment round led by Frontier Growth, capping off a year of big growth.
Launched in 2015, ClearGov helps local governments and their departments automate and streamline their annual budgeting processes — a notoriously tedious aspect of government work that is often riddled with jargon, lengthy footnotes and confusing tables. Using artificial intelligence, ClearGov pares down all of this information into digestible infographics that government workers and average citizens alike can use to better understand their community’s spending.
The startup posts these graphics on profile pages for each city it works with, where they explain relevant information like revenue, debt and demographics in a more accessible way. The graphics can also be used to compare the spending habits of other cities that have similar populations or income levels.
ClearGov says demand for services like this has been growing rapidly, so over the last year the startup launched two new budgeting tools to round out its “budget cycle management suite.” ClearGov was also ranked among Massachusetts’ fastest growing companies in 2021 according to Inc., reporting 744 percent revenue growth over the last three years.
Looking ahead, the startup will be use this fresh funding to grow its team to better support its fast-growing customer base, listing a dozen open tech positions at its Maynard headquarters. All of this is in an effort to “fortify” ClearGov’s position as a leader in the “local government budgeting and communications space,” CEO and co-founder Chris Bullock said in a statement, calling Frontier Growth a “perfect fit” to lead this round.
Indeed, Frontier Growth has backed many other startups across the govtech industry — the most recent of which was GovQA, a SaaS platform for city, county and state governments. Michael Ramich, a partner at Frontier, says the growth equity firm was attracted to ClearGov’s “proven track record and potential for growth,” as well as its overall “commitment to modernizing the local government process.”
“When we’re evaluating growing software companies to invest in, strong financials are only the beginning,” Ramich said in a statement. “A more efficient budget process saves governments time and money, promotes transparency, and makes critical financial data more accessible to its citizens. That’s the kind of company worth investing in.”
