GreenLite is transforming development in America by streamlining the collaboration between developers, builders, and local regulatory authorities. Pulse 2.0 interviewed GreenLite co-founder and CEO James Gallagher to learn more about the company.
James Gallagher’s Background
What is James Gallagher’s background? Gallagher said:
“I started my post-college career in Investment Banking before commissioning as an officer in the Marine Corps. Today, I’m the CEO and co-founder of GreenLite, a construction technology company making permitting faster and more predictable for builders, developers, and municipalities.”
“I’ve been an operator in the venture-backed startup ecosystem for over a decade since I left active duty. All of the startups I’ve joined either as an early employee or founder have required a physical real estate footprint, so I’ve found myself in the unique position of managing real estate development at venture speed. Examples include building ghost kitchen delivery on college campuses (Good Uncle, acquired by Aramark) or building prefabricated, modular restaurant retail (Bandit, acquired by Gopuff). At Gopuff, I met and hired Ben Allen, another Veteran of the military with high-volume retail growth expertise. Together, we built Gopuff Kitchen, Gopuff’s vertically integrated fresh food service division. There, we developed, launched, and scaled the Gopuff Kitchen concept to over 50 metros in under nine months.”
Formation Of GreenLite
How did the idea for GreenLite come together? Gallagher shared:
“Through my first-hand experiences in aggressively scaling brick-and-mortar locations for venture-backed or private equity-backed retailers, and spending a decade growing the physical footprint of real estate tech companies like Gopuff, I realized the true ‘black box’ and obstacle that developers faced was permitting. This is when I decided there had to be a faster, more transparent, and cost-effective solution for builders, developers, business owners, cities, and residents. Ben and I have lived this pain throughout our careers.”
“Today, traditional construction permitting processes are costing the economy tens of billions of dollars a year and entail unpredictable timelines. Why? Because the U.S. has nearly 20,000 different regulatory jurisdictions with unique permitting processes, though building codes are 95% the same across all of them. We built GreenLite to simplify this complexity by creating a Private Plan Review offering that acts as a ‘common application’ for construction permitting to streamline the process across multiple jurisdictions. As a Private Provider, GreenLite is able to consolidate these administrative differences and give developers the opportunity to work with one privatized regulatory agency to accelerate development timelines and reduce the time and labor required for plan review by 75% per project.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory at GreenLite so far? Gallagher reflected:
“I think the eureka moment was this: In the early days of GreenLite, we spent a lot of time shadowing local city agencies to better understand what made permitting go well vs. what significantly extended permitting timelines and made the process difficult for both cities and developers.”
“After one long day showing the development services department of one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the country our concept, the director of the agency turned to me and asked whether I would consider becoming the best, tech-enabled Private Plan Review provider.”
“The city had significantly expanded their Private Plan Review program to over 20% of all permits (almost 10,000 per year) processed by the city and was seeing a ton of success with it – customers (constituents) were happy, and so was her agency because they were carrying some of the load and relieving some of their pressure.”
“The private providers were still doing things the old-fashioned way, but she thought that if they applied some of the tools we had built to automate the process and provide transparency, it would be a big step forward in addressing the backlog.”
“So we did it and filled the gap- we took GreenLite to market as the only software-first private provider. That was almost two years ago, and now we are able to serve as a “full-stack” private provider in over 2,000 cities – including that one!”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Gallagher explained:
“GreenLite’s Private Plan Review standardizes and automates the entire permitting process – not just the permit application – for customers across all jurisdictions. As the only software-first Private Provider in the market, this full-stack approach ensures that experts in construction code compliance can move at the speed of business to bring unmatched transparency, predictability, and safety to the preconstruction process.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Gallagher and the team faced in building the company? Gallagher acknowledged:
“When the COVID pandemic struck, local government building departments were forced to scramble to work remotely and use digital rather than analog tools for plan review, significantly increasing the backlog of permit applications. That exacerbated the already long timelines for plan review and permit issuance. Digitalization and automation will be key if governments are to make progress on this front. GreenLite’s approach is to partner with local city agencies, both via Private Plan Review programs and directly via their software platform.”
“The permitting process for developers, builders, and governments is largely antiquated and manual. For example, some governing bodies only accept or review permit plans on a specific day of the week during specific hours. Without adopting a solution to streamline this process, many cities would be stuck in a time-consuming and costly cycle for current permit processes that won’t allow them to address the development needs of their community, including increasing the availability of affordable housing and bolstering the local economy through new business.”
Evolution Of GreenLite’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Gallagher noted:
“Our technology has evolved to become the only firm positioned to produce proprietary comparative compliance data at scale in order to quickly train reinforcement learning models to automate construction plan review.”
“GreenLite has the means to produce, warehouse, and utilize this very specific data (ie. data from evaluating architectural or engineering drawings against local building code) to harness the power of AI and machine learning to produce automation tools to support permitting and construction code compliance efforts.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Gallagher cited:
“After our founding in 2022, we emerged from stealth mode in October 2023 with a Seed funding round of $8 million.”
“In September 2024, we closed a $28.5 million Series A financing round from new and existing investors including Craft Ventures, 53 Stations, Trust Ventures, and LiveOak Ventures. The new funding is allowing GreenLite to enhance our technology platform and Private Plan Review offering and expand into new markets and customer segments.”
“We have signed major customers including Fortune 500 retailers, quick service restaurants, developers, and production home builders.”
“GreenLite has played a factor in the Private Provider industry growing upwards of 700% over the past five years.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Gallagher about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“GreenLite is working with dozens of the largest national retailers, developers, Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) chains, Real Estate Investments Trusts (REITs), production homebuilders, and clean technology infrastructure companies in the country.”
“We are a certified private provider in over 2,000 local and municipal jurisdictions.”
“Our customer-driven brands had great success using our Private Plan Review; This is what they had to say about us, “Timely delivery of new units across our family of brands is table stakes and permitting regularly presents huge challenges. GreenLite continuously helps us open new units ahead of schedule by delivering meaningful predictability and speed to a notoriously opaque and slow phase of real estate development.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Gallagher assessed:
“Deregulation has set conditions for a massive growth in the private plan review market in 2026. We are addressing a >$200 billion market in private plan review alone, and growing quickly.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Gallagher affirmed:
“GreenLite is the only company not building workflow software for one side or the other. We are a full-stack private provider and serve both sides – the builder and fulfill the code compliance responsibility of a city – and our team of private plan review experts are empowered by state or local jurisdictions to act with authority.”
“GreenLite’s platform is unique because it integrates construction drawings, zoning and use data, local building code, and expert compliance markup all in one database. The digital combination allows GreenLite to surface recurring local compliance patterns, saving time for reviewers and developers alike by catching non-compliance more efficiently and providing both sides with automated insights that feed earlier into the design process.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Gallagher pointed out:
“We are constantly enhancing our technology platform and Private Plan Review offering and are actively expanding into new markets and customer segments, as well as deepening our work with local government agencies. We plan to expand to new Private Provider markets across the U.S. as new states and regions embrace private plan review and inspections, and expand our work with new and existing customer segments including developers, lodging, industrial, office, production home builders, and clean/green infrastructure.”
Today, GreenLite is delivering both residential and commercial building permits to customers across the country. Faster commercial building permits in hand lead to faster groundbreaking on both new construction and renovation projects. Shortening the permitting and regulatory phases of projects delivers a measurable, positive impact on our communities, especially those affected by natural disasters. When project timelines are accelerated, new jobs are created sooner, and more dollars flow into local economies ahead of schedule. Faster permits in hand lead to faster approval to rebuild homes and businesses, and GreenLite is on a mission to excel at its part and assist in this way.
