Symbium Secures Oversubscribed Pre-Series A Funding to Propel Instant Permit Service Across California
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SAN FRANCISCO, CA — November 13, 2023 — Symbium is thrilled to announce the successful close of an oversubscribed pre-Series A round. The company, based out of San Francisco, launched a Citizen’s Dashboard platform earlier this year to automate tedious, error-prone, and highly-regulated citizen-to-government transactions, with an initial focus on permits and rebates. This funding milestone, coupled with California’s SB 379 climate mandate, ideally positions Symbium to aggressively capture the instant permitting market share in California and expand its services across the state.
This funding round was characterized by strong investor interest in Symbium’s unique ability to perform instantaneous compliance analyses on complex regulations at scale. BBG Ventures, a leading NYC seed stage VC firm, spearheaded the funding round as the largest investor. They were joined by Third Derivative, Catalyst Innovation Lab, Decarbon8, E8, RxR, and Urbanist Ventures, to name a few. All of these investors share a dedication to advancing sustainable solutions for the built environment and collectively view Symbium as the answer to ease the permitting bottlenecks.
Homeowners and contractors use Symbium’s Citizen’s Dashboard to instantly understand and visualize what’s possible on a property, then submit and manage permits and rebates, subject to service fees on a per-transaction basis. Permit applications submitted through Symbium are approved instantly for issuance. This is because the applicable compliance checks are performed in real time, ensuring that every permit application is correct and complete. Key to this advance is Symbium’s proprietary computational law (or Complaw®) tech, which enables a TurboTax-like mechanization of legal analyses through software in a swift and lean manner, initially developed by the founding team at Stanford’s AI Lab.
Five months ago, Symbium announced a permitting pilot that enabled California cities to process instant permits for electrification and other decarbonization projects such as installation and replacement of solar panels, EV chargers, heat pumps, re-roofs, and more. Since then, Symbium has secured partnerships with 20 California jurisdictions for the permitting pilot. This unprecedented surge of government partnerships affirms the demand for Symbium’s instant permit service by project owners as well as the government. This recent funding round will enable the company to hire key personnel to meet the growing demand within California and create a plan for national expansion.
“We are thrilled to be backing the Symbium team. Their unique solution to the often complex and time-consuming permitting process has been rapidly embraced by cities in California, helping to advance the state’s climate transformation while saving state employees the time and tedious work of manually addressing applications,” said Susan Lyne, BBG Ventures Managing Partner. “We believe this is just the beginning of the impact Symbium can have on citizen-government interactions and we look forward to supporting them to expand both their product offering and geographic footprint.“
“Lengthy delays in processing permit applications are deeply frustrating for everyone in the real estate industry, including Catalyst,” stated TC Ostrander, who leads investments at Catalyst Innovation Lab, the investment arm of sustainable housing solution, Catalyst Housing. “While efforts have been made to drive peripheral improvements in permit processing, Symbium is solving the core of the problem, which is excessive delays and increased costs to project owners due to ineffective workflows and regulatory red tape. The situation calls for a transformational, not incremental, solution, and Symbium has shown that it is uniquely capable of delivering that solution.”
Leila Banijamali, CEO of Symbium, expressed her enthusiasm for the funding round’s outcome, saying, “Disrupting the status quo is more than just thinking outside the box; it’s about garnering timely and crucial support. Tackling permitting challenges goes beyond mere workflow optimization — it’s fundamentally a regulatory puzzle. We’re thrilled by the incredible backing we’ve received from our investors, spearheaded by BBGV. Their commitment, combined with the expanding support from cities throughout California and the California Energy Commission (CEC), is a powerful endorsement of our mission to transform the regulatory landscape in permitting. This not only highlights the groundbreaking nature of our Complaw-driven technology but also reinforces the strength and resilience of our vision to revolutionize citizen-to-government interactions.”
Symbium’s expanded presence in California cities will play a pivotal role in accelerating the adoption and installation of residential solar and other decarbonization technologies. The company is committed to simplifying the permitting process and making sustainable living and project installations faster and more accessible to homeowners and contractors.
With the successful closure of this Pre-Series A funding round, Symbium is poised to make a profound impact on the clean energy and residential construction landscape and drive industry-wide change in the permitting and incentives sector.
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About Symbium
Symbium is a San Francisco-based company that is reinventing the citizen-to-government experience, with an initial focus on permitting and incentives for residential decarbonization projects (e.g., installation of solar panels, energy storage, heat pumps). Homeowners and contractors use Symbium to instantly understand and visualize what’s possible on a property, and then submit and manage permit and rebate applications. Key to this disruption is Symbium’s proprietary Complaw® technology, which enables a Turbotax-like mechanization of regulatory analysis and was initially developed by the founding team at Stanford AI Lab. Symbium is the winner of the 2023 Association for Corporate Growth Awards in San Francisco, was a finalist in the 2022 ALP Alain Colmerauer Prolog Heritage Prize, has been recognized as a GovTech 100 company in 2023, 2022, and 2021, is a 2021 American Bar Association Women of Legal Tech award recipient, and is a 2020 Ivory Prize awardee for innovations in regulation and policy to achieve housing affordability. Symbium is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
About BBGV
BBG Ventures is a seed and pre-seed venture fund leading investments in female & diverse founders who are uniquely qualified to build for our polycultural future. These founders are bringing new thinking to sectors where change is overdue, such as healthcare, future of work, climate, fintech and consumer, solving problems for millions of Americans via B2B and B2C business models. BBG Ventures was founded in 2014 by Susan Lyne and Nisha Dua and has invested in over 100 companies over three funds. 100% of Fund III companies have a female founder; and 70% have a founder of color.
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