I want you all to know one thing: Shovels is going great.
I wrote my monthly investor update last night. Looking back on the last six months, I’m proud. We doubled revenue again, and during that time, we expanded but we didn’t double our team. We took our new permit data collection infrastructure live. We made geospatial analysis of building permits a lot easier. And for those who care: we launched our SOC 2 compliance.
Geospatial, such a cool word. It’s even fun to type. (If there was ever any doubt about whether ChatGPT writes my newsletters, this paragraph should be Exhibit A.)
This month’s newsletter will be about all of the above and our new Q2 permit index, in case you missed it.
P.S. Find me in the hallways at Blueprint this week! I’ll be the guy wearing the Shovels shirt.
Let’s start with geospatial
This newsletter has not been shy about touting the power of maps. I probably mention this every other newsletter. I’m mentioning it again because a lot of the growth I described earlier comes from big (BIG!) companies using us to put permits on maps.
What’s so great about permits on maps? Let’s use an example.
You’re a large furniture manufacturer and distributor. You’re constantly scouting locations for new warehouses and retail stores. You have a few criteria:
- Proximity to partners (suppliers and other retail)
- Distance from your warehouses
- Presence of new residential developments and commercial remodels
We can’t help you with the first two bullets (Esri can!) but we’re certainly a great source for the last one. The presence of new developments and large remodels tells you where future demand is going to be. Building permits are a signal for what’s coming in the future.
That’s why we put this on our flyers when we went to the Esri user conference in July:
Geospatial permits are a prediction tool. When you see them on a map, you think about them differently. You get more context.
Historically, it has been hard to put 170M+ permits into a geodatabase and onto a map. It takes a bit of compute to make it work. Lucky for you, Shovels has already done this for you. Check out our public feature layer of permits since June 2025.
We’re working with Esri now to add it into their free Living Atlas.
Marketing and Storm
For a long time, Betty and I did all things revenue. We were sales, and marketing, and sales and marketing operations. Luka and Petra did the data and engineering. Over time, we grew the team in order to help ourselves do fewer things, better.
That’s the theory once again with our recent expansion in sales, marketing, and operations.
Morgan Friberg heads up our new marketing department. Like I said, this department didn’t exist before. To the extent we had a concerted marketing effort, it was Betty making suggestions (and doing some writing of her own) and me trying to keep up with the publishing calendar. In between everything else, obviously.
Morgan is so productive, it feels like he has a team, but it’s just him right now. We’ll see how long that lasts.
This is a good thing because we also hired two more account executives, Blaine Comeione and Frank Yoder. If you ping us on any of the sales channels, chances are you’ll reach one of them. Morgan is supplying them with all the sales collateral they need to keep up our pipeline expansion.
Finally, Chloe Harris and Tori Reyes joined us from the California Homebuilding Foundation. We are super lucky to have them fully operationalize and scale our offline data collection. (Offline means they don’t have a publicly accessible database.)
They are already incredibly productive, activating 20 new offline jurisdictions in their first two weeks.
And we’re still looking for more engineers — starting in Europe!
SOC 2
It’s the final stretch before the audit, which will run for most of Q4. I expect to have our official SOC 2 verification certificate in Q1 2026. I hope you’re excited, because most of my team is not! SOC 2, as it turns out, is hard work.
We’re doing it, though, and it’ll pay dividends. I believe we’ll be the first permit data provider to be SOC 2 compliant.
If you’ve been waiting to find a SOC 2 compliant data vendor… you’ll have to wait another few months, but let’s start talking now!
Things to do with permits: make another quarterly index
I wrote the first one. Morgan wrote the second one. I don’t even need to tell you which one’s better.
If you haven’t checked out the Q2 index yet, take a peak!
Morgan analyzed over 712,000 permits issued between April and June 2025. Here’s a few bullet points:
- Electrical permits lead the way at 21% of all permits issued in Q2
- Florida, Texas, and California account for nearly half of all nationwide permits
- West Virginia surprisingly leads in new construction permits (34.7% of its total)
- Basic permits (plumbing, HVAC) typically approved in just 1 day
- Complex projects like ADUs and new construction take 18-19 days median turnaround
- Lennar Homes dominated with 2,390 permits pulled in Q2
- Florida accounts for 43% of all roofing permits nationwide
There’s more. You’ll just have to read it.
We do this type of work because it’s interesting to us, and we suspect it’s interesting to most of you. As we grow into more new territories and start collecting more types of data, these insights will get even deeper and more fascinating.
We’ll get there!