According to a news release, the undisclosed sum came from BV Investment Partners, a middle-market private equity firm in Boston focused on the business services, software and IT services sectors. BV made the investment in partnership with CivicPlus founder Ward Morgan, who is still the majority owner, and the existing CivicPlus management team.
CivicPlus CEO Brian Rempe said the strategic partnership with BV is the result of a careful vetting process to find a minority investor to take the company to its next level of growth, which will involve more acquisitions.
“Financially, we’d like to be over $100 million in [annual recurring revenue] within the next five years, but more specifically, in terms of getting there, we just want to be a significant partner for our clients,” he said. “There’s a significant change going on in technology and government, and we want to make sure that we’re set up to help them through that process.”
Counting more than 3,500 local governments as customers, CivicPlus has added several functions to its digital-services platform in the past few years by acquiring other companies. These include Rec1, which CivicPlus acquired in January 2017 and used its software to launch a parks and recreation product; BoardSync in October 2017, for agenda and meeting management software; and Virtual Towns & Schools in July 2018, for its CivicCMS.
Rempe said this expansion will continue, focused mostly on the U.S. market, with BV’s investment affording the potential for larger acquisitions and more research and development on new products.
“There are a number of point solutions that our customers are utilizing today that don’t integrate with each other,” Rempe said. “So as we continue to work with our clients determining what opportunities are out there that they would like to see us add to our platform, we’re going to continue to make acquisitions that would then integrate into our platform to create that seamless experience.”
