Asheville-based Ecobot went into the pandemic with three employees. But as those in the environmental regulatory industry looked for better digital collaboration tools, business boomed.
The platform is now used by 1,2000 consultants doing regulatory fieldwork and has helped those users file just under 50,000 reports. Now the team boasts eleven employees.
Ecobot is designed to help engineers and those in the construction industry collect data and streamline the mandatory pre-construction environmental permitting process.
“There’s a clear difference in receptivity to our digitization of a traditionally manual workflow compared now to pre-pandemic times,” co-founder and CEO Lee Lance told Hypepotamus. “Our commitment to building technology from the inside out has been bolstered by our deep engagement with our customers to better understand the intricacies of how they work. In turn, we’ve made our software better, helping them spend a greater percentage of their working day creating value for their clients.”
The platform has also caught the eye of investors. The Ecobot team is starting out 2022 with a new $2.8 million round. A high concentration of investors are from across the Southeast.
The round was led by Cultivation Capital (St. Louis, MO, and Greenville, SC) in partnership with Cofounders Capital (Cary, NC) and Runway Venture Partners (NYC), with participation from Charlotte Angel Fund (Charlotte, NC), SaaS Venture Capital (D.C. and Miami, FL), Shadow Ventures (Atlanta, GA), and Stout Street Capital (Denver, CO).
The team initially grew out of the Venture Asheville Elevate program, which Lance credits for helping Ecobot get ready for raising capital and getting in front of VCs.
“The support from organizations like these are precisely what our startup community needs to help entrepreneurs go from ideas to rapidly scaling businesses. Asheville is such an amazing place to live — so much to do both in town and in the mountains — it makes it easier to attract great talent. And there’s more talent than you’d expect already living here, working remotely. We’re really excited to put this investment round to work and grow this team in this fantastic place,” he added.
Ecobot raised two previous seed rounds in 2021 and 2018, which were both led by Cofounder Capital.
“This capital will allow Ecobot to continue to execute on its plan while adding new talent to this already amazing team,” said Tim McLoughlin, Ecobot board member and partner at Cofounders Capital, in a press statement.
