The investment comes from Align Capital Partners (ACP), which is seeking to make more deals with companies serving government. This is the firm’s second gov tech portfolio company after it invested in the roadway tolling company Electronic Transaction Consultants Corporation (ETC) in 2020. It would go on to sell ETC to the holding company Quarterhill about a year later.
Schneider Geospatial itself is relatively new, having been spun out from the much older company The Schneider Corporation in 2018. Schneider Geospatial offers a number of government-oriented GIS products and services, including natural disaster response, computer-aided mass appraisal, permitting and app development.
“The company has a very strong value proposition of helping clients provide public access to digitized records as a replacement to a historically inefficient and labor-intensive experience,” said ACP Managing Partner Chris Jones in a press release. “Our enthusiasm for Schneider Geospatial plays on the attractive tailwinds of our firm’s gov tech thesis. The company is well positioned to help governments replace antiquated technology, increase access to important digitized information and enhance information-sharing capabilities to improve citizen engagement.”
Schneider Geospatial also has a large footprint; it counts some 23 million users. Esri — of which Schneider Geospatial is a silver partner — describes the company as serving about one-fifth of all U.S. counties.
ACP’s growing appetite for gov tech is reflective of a larger trend of more investors becoming interested in the space, especially since the beginning of the pandemic. The prevalence of remote work led to fast adoption of digital services in state and local government offices across the country, and many investors began looking to gov tech as not only a growth area but a comparatively safe bet in rocky economic times.
The move also hints at a possible acceleration of activity for Schneider Geospatial. Private equity investments often portend a flurry of mergers, acquisitions and product expansions. Schneider Geospatial has a history in that area; many of the products in its portfolio came from the company buying out smaller firms in the past two decades.
