Our mission is personal for us. Ben Cohen, Co-Founder and CTO, grew up helping his father — a general contractor — to apply for hundreds of construction permits. Ben’s frustrating experiences navigating clunky portals inspired him to build better solutions for the millions of tradespeople whose livelihoods depend on getting permits fast. Prior to founding GovWell, Ben worked for Uber and Amazon as a Software Engineer, and earned his AB in Computer Science summa cum laude from Princeton.

Troy LeCaire, Co-Founder and CEO, was previously the first employee and Chief of Staff at RippleMatch, a software startup, helping it grow to 120 employees and a $200 million valuation. Prior to that, he worked for two U.S. senators from his home state of Wisconsin. He believes passionately that taxpayers deserve effective, transparent government and that technology is critical to achieving this goal. Troy earned his BA in Government magna cum laude from Cornell and studied political philosophy in graduate school before dropping out to start GovWell.

After launching in 2023, the GovWell team has quickly grown to 18 people proudly serving government agencies in 12 states with 400K+ residents. More than 60% of our team has experience working in or with government. GovWell has raised a total of $5.5 million in funding from Work-Bench and Bienville Capital. We are headquartered in New York City.