#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Lee Lance, Co-Founder & CEO, Ecobot
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Digitalizing the Fieldwork Industry for More Efficient Team and Data Management
Ecobot is a mobile and cloud platform optimizing fieldwork by speeding along regulatory approval and lowering costs. We had a conversation with Co-Founder and CEO Lee Lance about Ecobot’s impact on environmental permitting fieldwork, his experience raising capital as an Asheville-based founder, and how the potential expansion of broadband impacts Ecobot’s work.
Tell us about your background. What led you to create Ecobot?
My background is in enterprise software, specifically in the branding and communications space. My co-founder, who I met years ago through a mutual friend, has 20 years of experience in pre-construction environmental permitting work. Together, we found there was an opportunity to digitize a massive segment of the construction workflow.
What is the work you all are doing at Ecobot?
Our goal is to make fieldwork progressive and economical in a way that protects natural resources and ensures that we have the data we need to create a more resiliently-built environment. We’re fostering a clearer understanding of the environment where construction happens, and can help create a better standard of protecting the natural resources in a construction area before building starts. Our customers are private consultants, typically in the civil engineering sector, that are doing work for the regulated community, and are providing reports to federal and state regulators to ensure that any economic development or construction is compliant with federal and state environmental policies.
By leveraging collected data into improvements throughout the rest of the construction life cycle, we've digitized a formerly paper-driven process that originally began 50 years ago with the establishment of the Clean Water Act. Over the years, there’s been partisan pushback against good environmental policy with the argument that it harms economic growth. From our perspective, technology is what will save the world and bolster the economy—not cutting back environmental policy. Additionally, more advanced technology will help us reach another one of our goals—getting construction started more efficiently and at a lower cost.
What was your experience raising capital for Ecobot in the Asheville ecosystem?
Our initial seed money actually came from a venture capital (VC) firm in Cary, North Carolina, in the Raleigh Triangle area—if we had tried to raise strictly in Asheville, we wouldn't have been able to get off the ground. Throughout the years, we’ve been able to raise venture capital from firms in St Louis, DC, Miami, Atlanta, Denver and NYC, along with money from Charlotte Angel Fund. Right now, there are a lot of VCs that have made it their mission to not invest solely in Silicon Valley and New York City-based startups. And we’ve found success in raising with these firms given our location.
How do current policy conversations around making broadband Internet more accessible impact your platform and work? Have you faced any challenges in this area?
In order to navigate this challenge, we’ve built our field tool to work at 100 percent functionality with no Internet connection. When our customers do reestablish a connection, they’ll need to sync with our cloud services that run on Amazon Web Services (AWS). We've structured our platform in such a way that data transfers do not require a continuous or high quality Internet connection. Very often, there is no data coverage in areas of new development. So if our customer is working on a month-long pipeline project in southern Alabama, for example, even when they get back to their hotel, they're likely still lacking good coverage. We know that widespread broadband needs to catch up with innovation, but until it does, we’ve built a system that doesn’t rely on quality Internet connection.
What are some local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
Current sales tax policy enables us to deliver our product without having to pay or charge state taxes to our customers. If that were to change, it would be an administrative burden and possibly have a small negative impact on our revenue, as it would drive up costs. That’s damaging to us as a tech startup, and could affect other founders’ work as well.
Additionally, the original driver of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was to rebuild America's infrastructure. Ultimately, it's rare that a bill like that has components around actual planning. That’s where startups like Ecobot that value data and have a vision for the future can have real contribution. Startups that get access to the funds from this law can put that money to work by growing our engineering teams and widening our sales efforts. This would allow us to better serve the regulated community. And instead of having a typical trickle down bill that goes from the federal government to states, if startups can get access to that capital faster and be higher up in the food chain, all of these projects can move faster.
What are your goals for Ecobot moving forward?
We’re focusing on improving and expanding our products while streamlining permit and analysis work that happens before you can move dirt for construction. Ultimately, we want to use data to help our customers make better informed, more efficient decisions throughout the construction life cycle.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
