Fast-growing Sacramento startup Streamline Software Inc. has raised $7.8 million in funding led by growth capital firm Arthur Ventures.
Streamline Software creates and supports software platforms for government and special districts across the country to help them comply with federally mandated communications requirements.
The new equity funding is a minority investment, so the company is still majority owned and managed by the founders, CEO Mac Clemmens told the Business Journal. Streamline's founders are Clemmens and D.J. Stephan, chairman of the board.
Clemmens said it's a tough environment to raise money as many investors are hunkered down in a nationwide chill in tech investing, but he said Streamline was able to raise the money in just over 30 days.
The lead investor, Minneapolis-based Arthur Ventures, invests early growth capital into business-to-business software and software-as-a-service companies, Clemmens said.
In the past year, Streamline has more than doubled its number of customer districts across the country, from 700 to 1,500.
Streamline has more than doubled its employees from 20 last November to 41 now, and it's moved from Midtown Sacramento to a larger office in East Sacramento. Clemmens said it may hire a few more people, but it has completed the mass hiring it needed to do to scale up its operation this year.
Streamline builds and maintains websites for special districts, like sewer districts, fire departments, utilities and other quasi-governmental agencies. It builds its sites in proprietary custom software, and charges special districts $1,000 a month for access to its software-as-a-service platform. The company has more than a 98% renewal rate from customers, which are located in 36 states. Streamline has added customers in 15 new states in the past four months.
Clemmens started Streamline in 2015 as a subsidiary of his Sacramento web design firm Digital Deployment, building its first website for special districts with the help of Sloane Dell'Orto, who worked at a rural fire department special district in the Mother Lode. The company built 20 sites by the end of 2016 and 400 by the end of 2019, as a part of Digital Deployment. Last year Clemmens split off Streamline and incorporated it as a new company following the sale of Digital Deployment to Planeteria Media of Santa Rosa.
When he spun the company out on its own last year, Clemmens was anticipating achieving positive cash flow early this year, but the growth in new customers was too strong. In the summer, Streamline raised $1.5 million for immediate growth led by BarronKent LLC, a private Sacramento family office investment group, and the Growth Factory, a business accelerator in Rocklin.
Clemmens said the new money will help fund the company’s national expansion to more districts.
Streamline sites offer special districts access to functionality like posting agendas, meetings and transparency documents for the public agencies, as well as for accepting payments, form submissions and online signatures.
A big part of Streamline’s offering is its Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant software engine. Just like buildings with stairs must have ramps or elevators to offer access to wheelchairs, it's required that websites need to be accessible to people with visual, audio or physical impairments. Streamline’s back-end for special districts has software that automatically checks a customer’s ADA compliance, and it coaches the operator on what things on the site need to be fixed to be compliant.
“The employees who work here are excited to help bring local governments the latest technologies and to make them accessible,” Clemmens said.
