Texas is big, but not big enough, perhaps, for one of the newest players in the changing procurement space.
Civic Marketplace, founded in 2023, has raised $3 million in a seed round.
Led by Kindred Capital, the round also included angel investors such as Andy Phillipps, one-time CEO of Priceline International, and Sophie Adelman, co-founder of apprentice matching software firm Multiverse, along with Avalanche VC and others.
Part of the capital will go toward helping the company expand from his home state of Texas, CEO Al Hleileh told Government Technology.*
“We are expanding across the U.S.,” he said.
Product development also will benefit from the new funding, he said, as the company works to bring more artificial intelligence into its procurement search features.
The company says its mission is to streamline and accelerate the procurement process for local and smaller agencies and encourage more participation in government contracting from minority suppliers.
Civic Marketplace offers access to its network of “reliable, pre-approved vendors,” according to a statement, and helps with compliance and quality assurance issues.
In October, the company made a splash in heavily populated and economically strong North Texas when it announced a deal with the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) to offer a procurement platform for the group’s members.
That group has more than 200 members spread across 16 counties, an area that includes Dallas and Fort Worth.
Along with the new funding, Civic Marketplace also announced a partnership with NIGP Code and Consulting, an operation described in the statement as “the gold standard in public-sector procurement.” The deal involves platform access, best-practice advising and integration with NIGP’s “standardized commodity coding system to enable more precise category navigation.”
As Civic Marketplace tries to spread its wings, procurement is set to go through some significant changes thanks to technology.
A recent report, for instance, highlighted the role that AI could play in procurement, including automation that would alleviate the pain of low staffing, chatbots for inquiries to suppliers and other tools.
As that happens, the procurement space is suffering from a crisis of confidence among professionals worried about their ability to keep up with increasing numbers of projects, at least according to another report, this one from a company that is trying to grow its own procurement capabilities.
*This story first appeared in Government Technology, sister publication to Industry Insider — Texas.
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