Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business
Overview
EverCommerce is simplifying and empowering the lives of business owners whose services support us every day. We provide tailored, end-to-end Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) solutions that support the highly diverse workflows and customer interactions that professionals in home services, health services, and fitness & wellness services need to automate manual processes, generate new business, and create more loyal customers.
EverCommerce is a leading provider of integrated, vertically-tailored SaaS solutions for service-based small- and medium-sized businesses (“service SMBs”). Our platform spans across the full lifecycle of interactions between consumers and service professionals with vertical-specific applications. Today, we serve over 600,000 customers across three core verticals: Home Services; Health Services; and Fitness & Wellness Services. Within our core verticals, our customers operate within numerous micro-verticals, ranging from home service professionals, such as home improvement contractors and home maintenance technicians, to physician practices and therapists within Health Services, to personal trainers and salon owners within Fitness & Wellness. Our platform provides vertically-tailored SaaS solutions that address service SMBs’ increasingly specialized demands, as well as highly complementary solutions that complete end-to-end offerings, allowing service SMBs and EverCommerce to succeed in the market, and provide end consumers more convenient service experiences. For the year ended December 31, 2021, we estimate that approximately 98% of our customers had less than $2,000 in billings and less than 1% had more than $5,000 in billings.
Small- and medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”) are an important engine for economic growth. Collectively, in 2021 SMBs represent the single largest employer and employee category in the U.S. economy, accounting for 99.9% of businesses in the United States, 47% of the U.S. private workforce and over 40% of U.S. GDP. The services sector is the backbone of the U.S. economy, representing approximately 77% of U.S. GDP and 85% of U.S. employment. Service businesses are the largest segment of the SMB market, employing approximately 50 million people in the U.S. alone.
Today, service SMBs are accelerating their adoption of digital technologies to increase growth, drive efficiencies and enhance customer engagement. At the same time, their technology needs are becoming increasingly specialized as they adapt their businesses to better compete and align with evolving consumer preferences. However, service SMBs typically lack available resources to invest in and support expensive enterprise technology solutions and often rely on little-to-no technology. When technology is used, it is often a fragmented set of point solutions with insufficient integrated capabilities to support the complete service lifecycle.
Since inception, we have taken a differentiated approach from other software providers. We recognize that all service SMBs require solutions that enable them to perform three key functions: (i) acquire new customers and generate new business opportunities; (ii) manage and scale business operations; and (iii) improve and expand on customer relationships. However, services SMBs require functionality specific to their vertical market because the workflows vary by vertical. For example, the business management requirements of Home Services contractors are different than the business management requirements of small physician practices or boutique gyms. As a result we have built a comprehensive platform designed specifically to meet the unique end-to-end workflow needs of service SMBs. Our integrated solutions include Business Management Software (such as route-based dispatching, medical practice management and gym member management), Billing & Payment Solutions (such as e-invoicing, mobile payments and integrated payment processing), Customer Engagement Applications (such as reputation management and messaging solutions) and Marketing Technology Solutions (such as websites, hosting and digital lead generation). These solutions help our customers address the challenges posed by legacy solutions by providing software that addresses the complete customer engagement workflow, streamlining front- and back-office processes, driving new sales and retention, enabling deeper performance insights and improving customer experiences with digital, mobile-friendly engagement.
We go to market with suites of solutions that are aligned to our three core verticals: (1) the EverPro suite of solutions in Home Services; (2) the EverHealth suite of solutions within Health Services; and (3) the EverWell suite
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of solutions in Fitness & Wellness Services. Within each suite, our Business Management Software – the system of action at the center of a service business’ operation –is typically the first solution adopted by a customer. This vertically-tailored point-of-entry provides us with an opportunity to cross-sell adjacent products, previously offered as fragmented and disjointed point solutions by other software providers. This “land and expand” strategy allows us to acquire customers with key foundational solutions, expand into offerings via product development (“build”) and acquisitions (“buy”) that integrate their workflows, fill gaps in the solutions value chain and power the full scope of our customers’ businesses. This results in a self-reinforcing flywheel, enabling us to drive more value for our customers and, in turn, fuel our growth by increasing Average Revenue per Unit (“ARPU”), improving customer stickiness and increasing our market share.
While we offer multiple products and address several verticals and micro-verticals, we manage our business with a singular, centralized approach to strategy and operations. We centralize key functions including marketing, business operations, cybersecurity and general and administrative functions, ensuring consistency in execution across each of our verticals, and ultimately stimulating a culture of operational excellence.
Our financial results have reflected our rapid growth. Our revenue has grown at a compound annual growth rate (“CAGR”) of 55.8% from 2018 to 2021, and reached $490.1 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, up from $337.5 million for the year ended December 31, 2020, which represents revenue growth of 45.2% from 2020 to 2021. Our net loss was $82.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, compared to a net loss of $60.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2020. Our Adjusted EBITDA reached $107.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2021, up from $78.8 million for the year ended December 31, 2020. Moreover, our business benefits from attractive unit economics; we estimate the lifetime value of our customers to be approximately eight times the cost of acquiring them. For a reconciliation of Adjusted EBITDA to the most directly comparable Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”) financial measure, information about why we consider Adjusted EBITDA useful and a discussion of the material risks and limitations of this measure, please see Part II. Item 7, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Key Business and Financial Metrics—Non-GAAP Financial Measures.”
Key trends impacting our industry
Service SMBs are still in the early innings of transforming their businesses for the digital age. We estimate that only 9% of the service SMB market has been penetrated with full end-to-end software solutions. However, we believe that small businesses now generally view digitization as critical to long-term success. Similar to other industries that are going through major digital transformations – including education, life sciences, public sector, real estate and banking – we believe a number of trends are contributing to the adoption of modern, vertically-tailored software solutions for service SMBs. EverCommerce is operating at the center of many of these trends, including:
• Accelerating adoption of digital technologies. Consumers’ preferences for digital experiences have accelerated in recent years. At the same time, new digital solutions are emerging to enable businesses to increase growth, drive efficiencies and enhance customer engagement. Together, these trends are contributing to the accelerating adoption of digital technologies.
• Mobile enablement. Due in large part to consumer demand and purchasing habits, a substantial amount of commerce is now conducted via a mobile device, whether through a standalone mobile application or as an integrated, companion application to a broader web-based software. Mobile commerce is estimated to represent just over $4.00 of every $10.00 spent online, with growth rapidly outpacing other forms of eCommerce. Within the service economy in particular, home service, wellness and other professionals are often on-the-go, making mobile functionality of paramount importance.
• Customer experience. With the confluence of changing consumer preferences towards digital and a younger, more tech-savvy generation of business owners taking seat, businesses are increasingly looking to upgrade and streamline how they engage with their customers. According to a recent Zendesk poll, more than half of businesses surveyed (56%) said they are making customer experience a top priority in the coming year.
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• Digital marketing. Digital channels are allowing businesses to reach their existing and potential end consumers in more innovative, effective and efficient ways than ever before. Research from WebFX shows that 80% of SMB end consumers conduct online product research in 2021, highlighting the importance of having a digital presence. We estimate that approximately 65% of U.S. SMBs have currently adopted digital marketing tools, of which approximately 60% are expected to increase their spending on such tools, recognizing the power and importance of these digital channels. These trends continue to give rise to evolving and new digital marketing solutions aimed at helping businesses target end consumers, lower acquisition costs and increase lifetime value.
• Digital payments. As of just three years ago, we estimate that less than 50% of SMBs in the United States had adopted digital payment processing solutions, and instead relied on paper invoices for payment. Today, we estimate that approximately 68% of SMBs in the United States have adopted digital payment processing solutions, up more than 20% over the last three years, a trend that we expect to continue in the future. Integrated payments (e.g., digital payment acceptance that is embedded into the software that companies use to manage their businesses) have driven operating efficiencies for businesses and have improved payment security and tracking as compared to traditional paper methods.
• Increasingly vertical- and micro vertical-specific software needs. SMBs across verticals are specializing in order to better compete and align with end-customer preferences, which has resulted in a greater need for vertically-tailored software solutions to address micro-vertical specific workflows. For example, software for instructional dance and martial arts centers has emerged within the Fitness & Wellness industry in recent years to better service the specialized educational training needs of these end-customers.
• Decreasing barriers to software adoption. Given their size and resource capabilities, SMBs generally require lower priced and easier-to-implement technology solutions than larger-scale enterprise businesses. As a result of the innovations in cloud technology and the proliferation of SaaS, today’s solutions are more affordable and easier for SMBs to implement than ever before. According to Cisco, cloud solutions are one of the top three areas for near-term technology investment for small businesses.
• COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating pre-existing trends. We believe the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated demand for digital solutions, especially in areas like customer engagement, resulting in SMBs increasing investment in technology to modernize and drive growth and operational efficiencies. According to Forrester, it saw significant gains in its Customer Experience Index in 2020 due to accelerated implementation and leverage of Voice of Customer (“VoC”) measurement tools like Net Promoter Score (“NPS”). We believe the effects of COVID-19 on businesses have advanced the shift to modern, cloud-based software solutions.
Limitations of existing approaches
Historically, service SMBs have not heavily relied on technology to manage key workflows, but they are increasingly turning to software solutions to streamline operations and boost efficiency. However, the offerings available in the market often fail to meet the needs of today’s service SMBs, and have some or all of the following limitations:
• Lacking vertical-specific functionality. Traditional technology companies offer broad, horizontal solutions that apply a “one-size-fits-all” approach and aim to solve functional challenges across different verticals. For service SMBs, these solutions have an excess of broad functionality but lack the vertical specialization required in specific verticals.
• Sold as point solutions. Existing solutions typically address a single application, use case or stage of a broader customer engagement workflow. These solutions lack the necessary integration of business data and operational workflows that service SMBs need to execute end-to-end processes. Moreover, they limit visibility into business performance and businesses’ ability to optimize data gathered across various processes.
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• Built on inflexible, legacy technology infrastructure. Existing solutions are often built on legacy, on-premise infrastructure. These technologies lack the flexibility and scalability required by today’s service SMBs, and are not customizable to meet individual customers’ needs.
• Cost and resource-intensive. Service SMBs are generally price-sensitive and have limited resources. Existing software solutions often require significant capital, time and technical resources to implement, inhibiting faster adoption. Moreover, it is difficult for service SMBs to maintain these solutions and roll out new versions and add-on features without significant time and resources.
Our market opportunity
We believe our solutions address a massive market opportunity today. We estimate the total number of service SMBs, which represent service-based businesses with 500 or fewer employees, was approximately 400 million globally in 2020, of which 31 million were in North America.
We estimate the total addressable market (“TAM”) for our current solutions was approximately $1.3 trillion globally in 2020, of which approximately $520 billion was in North America, which refers to the United States and Canada. Of the $520 billion, we estimate a $59 billion opportunity in Home Services, a $84 billion opportunity in Health Services, a $21 billion opportunity in Fitness & Wellness Services and a $356 billion opportunity in other services categories. We believe there is considerable runway for long-term growth given the vast majority of our market opportunity is untapped; we estimate that only 9% of the North America service SMB market has been penetrated with full end-to-end software solutions today, and estimate this number to increase to over 13% by 2025.
We arrive at the TAM by estimating the number of service SMBs, multiplying by the list price of the solutions we provide, and making regional adjustments for the number of firms that could pay the listed price.
Our TAM also includes our payments opportunity, which we arrive at by estimating total revenue across our vertical segments and multiplying by both pricing and penetration estimates.
We believe there are multiple sources of upside to our current TAM. As the number of service SMBs grow, as we develop or acquire complementary solutions, and as we enter new geographies, our market opportunity will expand.
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Our solutions
We offer several vertically-tailored suites of solutions, each of which follows a similar and repeatable go-to-market playbook: offer a “system of action” Business Management Software that streamlines daily business workflows, integrate highly complementary, value-add adjacent solutions and complete gaps in the value chain to create end-to-end solutions. These solutions provide value to service SMBs by improving their ability to market their services, streamline operations and retain and engage their customers.
• Business Management Software : Our vertically-tailored Business Management Software is the system of action at the center of a service business’ operation, and is typically the point-of-entry and first solution adopted by a customer. Our software, designed to meet the day-to-day workflow needs of businesses in specific vertical end markets, streamlines front and back-office processes and provides polished customer-facing experiences. Using these offerings, service SMBs can streamline their operations and focus on growing their customers and improving their services.
• Billing & Payment Solutions: Our Billing & Payment Solutions provide integrated payments, billing and invoicing automation and business intelligence and analytics. Our omni-channel payments capabilities include point-of-sale (“POS”), eCommerce, online bill payments, recurring billing, electronic invoicing and mobile payments. Supported payment types include credit card, debit card and Automated Clearing House (“ACH”) processing. Based on the monthly average processing volume for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, we estimate that we process annualized total volume of $9.1 billion. We further estimate that, based on our current customers and payment volumes, we have an aggregate annualized payment processing opportunity of approximately $83 billion. Our payments platform also provides a full suite of service commerce features, including customer management as well as cash flow reporting and analytics. These value-add features help SMBs to ensure more timely billing and payments collection and provide improved cash flow visibility.
• Customer Engagement Applications: Our Customer Engagement Applications modernize how businesses engage and interact with customers by leveraging innovative, bespoke customer listening and communication solutions to improve the customer experience and increase retention. Our software provides customer listening capabilities with real-time customer surveying and analysis to allow standalone businesses and multi-location brands to receive VoC insights and manage the customer experience lifecycle. These applications include: customer health scoring, customer support systems, real-time alerts, NPS-based customer feedback collection, review generation and automation, reputation management, customer satisfaction surveying and a digital communication suite, among others. These tools help our customers gain actionable insights, increase customer loyalty and repeat purchases and improve customer experiences.
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• Marketing Technology Solutions: Our Marketing Technology Solutions work alongside our Customer Engagement Applications to help customers holistically grow their businesses through new business generation and improved engagement and marketing throughout the customer lifecycle. These solutions help businesses to manage campaigns, generate quality leads, increase conversion and repeat sales, improve customer loyalty and provide a polished brand experience. Our solutions include: custom website design, development and hosting, responsive web design, marketing campaign design and management, search engine optimization (“SEO”), paid search and display advertising, social media and blog automation, call tracking, review monitoring and marketplace lead generation, among others. Our solutions can be purchased and integrated with EverCommerce business management solutions, as well as sold and integrated into 3rd party solutions via the EverConnect brand and solutions suite.
Our verticals
Our solutions, many of which we believe are the market leaders in their industries, are deployed in verticals that are comprised of numerous micro-verticals, which through product development and new solution acquisition, offer natural growth opportunities for EverCommerce. We currently go to market with three distinct, vertically-tailored, integrated SaaS solution suites:
• EverPro – Home Services: Our EverPro solutions are purpose-built for home service professionals, with varying specialized functionality for micro-verticals. For home improvement and field service professionals, project management and field service management applications serve as their business systems of action, respectively. Professionals in this market rely significantly on driving business from residential homeowners, and thus value tailored solutions which capture and manage lead generation from those end consumers. Ranging from professionals across residential home improvement and remodeling, and field services, to security and alarm professionals across residential installation and monitoring, central stations, corporate and campus planning and government, our EverPro solutions are designed to serve the specific needs of the professionals in these home improvement and field services sub-markets.
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• EverHealth – Health Services: Our EverHealth solutions are purpose-built for health service professionals. The Health Services market is rooted in a group of core solutions, including practice management and electronic health record (“EHR”) / electronic medical record (“EMR”) software. We offer different types and scales of solutions for micro-verticals, including small group and specialty practices, behavioral health professionals, specialty branches of hospital systems, ambulatory services, urgent care and EMT and physical, occupational and speech therapists, among others. We believe that our patient and provider engagement solutions position us well to benefit from major industry trends such as the digitalization of front-office operations and patient engagement. As with EverPro, we believe we are well positioned to continue to take market-share in current- and future-focus specialty micro-verticals, such as urology, audiology, chronic care management, otolaryngology and nephrology.
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• EverWell – Fitness & Wellness: Our EverWell solutions are purpose-built for Fitness & Wellness service professionals. The Fitness & Wellness market includes tech-savvy businesses which generally require integrated solutions that provide modern, convenient experiences for end consumers. Member management and consumer-facing scheduling and facility access solutions are “must-have” software capabilities for modern gyms, spas and salons. In addition, adjacent solutions in relationship management, inventory management, personal training scheduling and fitness tracking are increasingly needed to support a seamless, value-add consumer experience. Our EverWell solutions are built specifically for fitness professionals, which include gyms, studios, health clubs, specialized instructors (e.g., educational dance, gymnastics and cheer) and personal trainers and for wellness professionals, which include salons, spas and massage therapists.
We offer select solutions to customers in other services verticals, including education, non-profit, pet care and automotive repair, among many other. While these offerings are not a part of our core suites, they are managed as part of our centralized approach to strategy and operations.
Why we win
We believe that our offerings deliver tremendous value to our customers and are differentiated by the following qualities:
• Tailored, vertical-specific approach. We are exclusively focused on providing service SMBs with tailored solutions to help meet their specific needs. Our vertical and micro-vertical approach enables us to provide tailored solutions featuring critical vertical-specific functionality that better serves our customers when compared to industry-agnostic solutions offered by other businesses.
• Integrated solutions for end-to-end workflow. Our end-to-end suites integrate solutions across the full range of our customers’ workflows (including internal and back-office functions and customer-facing services), simplifying their operations and providing a frictionless experience when compared to disjointed point solutions offered by other software businesses.
• SaaS-based solutions. Our scalable and flexible SaaS solutions alleviate resource needs associated with implementing and managing costly on-premise infrastructure, which simplifies the management of distributed workforces, enhances operational simplicity, and provides continuous delivery of updates and upgrades to our solutions.
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• Mobile capabilities. Our SaaS, web-based and mobile solutions enable business owners, administrators and in-the-field service professionals to access schedules, customer accounts and business performance analytics, among other critical features, wherever they are. In addition, our native mobile applications provide in-depth service delivery functionality for technicians and service professionals in-the-field, even out of cellular or wireless network areas.
• Exceptional digital experiences. Our customers’ use of our offerings allows them to deliver exceptional digital experiences to consumers across multiple channels, enhancing engagement, retention and loyalty. For example, our customers can use our technology to develop modern touchpoints for consumers such as online scheduling, appointment reminders, online customer portals, online and mobile payments, SMS text updates, email updates and consumer-facing mobile applications.
• Cost- and resource-efficient. SMBs are generally price-sensitive and resource-constrained, however legacy software solutions are often too expensive to adopt. Our solutions are affordable and easy to implement, and our customers benefit from our strong customer service capabilities, enabling them to optimize their use of digital solutions without significant financial or resource burden.
• Customer-driven innovation. The insight we gain into our over 600,000 customers’ use of our offerings informs our product pipeline, allowing us to constantly refine existing solutions and deliver new solutions that are most valuable to them.
Our growth strategies
We are focused on growing and scaling our business in a rapid, yet sustainable and disciplined fashion. We intend to drive significant growth by executing the following key strategies:
• Attract new customers: We believe that there is a significant opportunity to attract new customers with our current offerings and within the market segments in which we currently operate. We estimate that there are over 31 million service SMBs in North America alone, and 400 million globally. Our current verticals and adjacent markets in the service economy are highly fragmented. By improving the awareness of our brands and solutions, we believe that we can increase penetration and sell our complete value chain of solutions to service SMB customers. Through acquisitions and organic growth of our business, the number of customers on our platform increased from approximately 110,000 at the end of 2018 to over 600,000 at the end of 2021.
• Expand into new products and verticals: Given our position in the service SMB ecosystem, as well as our relationships and level of entrenchment with our customers, we use insights gained through our customer lifecycle to identify additional solutions that are value-additive for our customers. These insights allow us to continually assess opportunities to develop or acquire solutions to further expand market share, drive customer stickiness and fuel growth for our business.
• Expand ARPU and grow wallet share: Today, we serve over 600,000 service SMBs, which represent a significant opportunity for growth. As we become more embedded in our customers’ daily business operations, we are better positioned to add value by cross-selling and up-selling adjacent solutions. We believe we had an addressable annualized revenue opportunity with our existing customers of greater than $5 billion as of December 31, 2021, as our integrated vertical SaaS solutions allow us to offer customers additional capabilities across their entire customer engagement lifecycle. As we continue to develop, acquire and transform our solutions, we aim to continue adding value to our customers by displacing point-solution competitors and legacy, manual methods with our integrated digital offerings, increasing our ARPU and improving customer experience and retention.
In conjunction with the strategies cited above, we also acquire solutions to accelerate our position as a market leader, fill gaps within our vertically tailored solutions, deepen our competitive moats in existing verticals and enter new verticals and geographies. We have an established framework for identification, execution, integration and onboarding of targets. These acquired solutions bring deep industry expertise and vertically-tailored software
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solutions that provide additional sources of growth. We believe that our methodology, track record and reputation for sourcing, evaluating and integrating acquisitions positions us as an “acquirer-of-choice” for potential targets. We have acquired 52 companies since our inception, including five in 2021, nine in 2020 and 13 in 2019. We are currently tracking over 12,000 North American businesses, primarily across our core verticals, as potential acquisition opportunities.
Our customers
We define a customer as an individual or entity that utilized or was capable of utilizing an EverCommerce solution or service for which they paid any one or combination of recurring, re-occurring or transactional fees in a given period. For solutions contracting with entities that service groups of customers, for example franchises or other multi-location businesses, the customer is counted at the level of the individual business utilizing the solution.
We serve a wide range of customers across various verticals, micro-verticals, geographies and sizes. We believe the customers that we serve are representative of the highly diverse and varied nature of the SMB service economy. Our customers provide expert services which, in turn, play a critical role in supporting the everyday lives of millions of end consumers – for their homes, their health and their well-being.
Our Verticals Micro-vertical Examples
Home Services HVAC/plumbing, electrical professionals, remodeling and home improvement contractors, window and door replacement specialties, security and alarm installation and monitoring businesses
Health Services Specialty private medical practices, mental health therapists, chronic care specialists, ambulatory and EMT services, specialty branches of hospital systems
Fitness & Wellness Services Chain and franchise gyms, full-service health clubs, boutique studios, personal trainers, dance and instructional schools, salons and spas, massage therapists
Other Non-profits, veterinary care facilities, small accounting and tax firms, educational facilities, social services, pet/veterinary care, professional services, consumer services
As of December 31, 2021, we served over 600,000 customers. Of these customers, approximately 66% were based in the United States and approximately 34% were international. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic forcing hundreds of thousands of SMBs across the United States to permanently close, we grew our total customer base by approximately 20% in the year ended December 31, 2021.
Competition
While we have built a scaled, differentiated platform, we compete in a variety of highly fragmented markets and face competition from a variety of sources:
• Manual processes, basic PC tools, standalone payment terminals and homegrown solutions, utilized by many service SMBs;
• Vertically-specialized competitors, including mobile sales applications and field service management platforms in Home Services, EHR/EMR and practice management platforms in Health Services and facility and employee management and member management and programming platforms in Fitness & Wellness Services; and
• Horizontal competitors, including Salesforce for CRM, Intuit for financial products, Square for payments and HubSpot for marketing related solutions.
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The principal competitive factors affecting our market include:
• Breadth and depth of vertical solutions;
• Quality of products and features;
• Seamless integration and ease-of-use;
• Customer support capabilities;
• Pricing and costs;
• Product strategy and pace of innovation;
• Name recognition and brand reputation;
• Sales and marketing execution; and
• Platform security.
See Part I. Item 1A. “Risk Factors” for a more comprehensive description of risks related to competition.
Our product strategy
Our product strategy organization develops an in-depth understanding of the customer and their varied workflow needs across our target industries, in order to pursue holistic “buy” vs “build” strategies to deliver an integrated value chain to our customers. The product management organization partners closely with our marketing, sales and customer teams to hear market insights and VoC feedback to improve retention and wallet expansion, build stronger integrations between solutions and pursue adjacent market penetration opportunities.
Our go-to-market
Our go-to-market organization includes our centralized marketing, business development, sales and customer success functions who align to build positive customer experiences across the business. These teams drive scalable and efficient organic growth in three key areas: new customer acquisition, wallet share expansion and go-to-market of acquired or built products. Our centralized, highly-trained team members are organized into several targeted and coordinated groups to address specific service SMB market’s highly varied audiences, while aligning priorities through Centers of Excellence to ensure the broader set of unified EverCommerce growth and scale objectives are met. Our teams relentlessly test and measure results to expand channels, optimize go-to-market, increase sales conversion, identify customer upsell opportunities and explore adjacent expansion verticals. Through this targeted, coordinated approach, we maximize expert resource allocation and allow for growth programs of scale with attractive customer unit economics across our business.
As an example of this approach, we acquired and onboarded Joist in our EverPro solutions group in December 2018. Joist is a mobile app used by small contractors to provide estimates, invoices and collect payment for a project. At the time of acquisition, Joist went to market with a freemium model in the very early stages of monetization. Shortly after onboarding Joist, we began executing several different growth and profitability initiatives, including: (i) product enhancements to transition from its freemium model to a tiered subscription model; (ii) leveraging our centralized digital marketing capabilities, we accelerated customer acquisition and added more than 40,000 SaaS customers in 18 months; and (iii) modifying payments integration to increase unit profitability by leveraging the scale of our payments platform. In the aggregate, these actions helped to drive an approximately five times increase in revenue over our first two years of ownership of Joist.
Our people, culture and values
We consider our people and culture to be vital to our success. We place a high level of emphasis on the relationships we have with our people, their engagement and commitment to the organization. Our fundamental belief is that when a company has a strong relationship with its employees, they in turn deliver exceptional customer service and in turn that delivers strong business performance. We have seen and believe our diverse, inclusive and innovative workforce is and will continue to be a competitive advantage. We plan to continue to make investment in our human capital a priority.
We believe in and prioritize diversity, equality and inclusivity in our workplace and behave in a manner where these
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values are the underpinnings of how we build programs, in the selection and promotion of individuals and how we support the growth and development of our people. We aggressively manage and measure our identification, selection, retention, growth and development of our current and future employees. We have a robust methodology that enables us to successfully and with a high level of engagement, integrate individuals into our organization.
Our human-first culture has been built upon our values and they are a critical part of how we behave, lead and engage with our people. Our values reflect who EverCommerce is and serve as our guiding force on how we plan to achieve our organizational objectives.
In addition to providing continuous learning, autonomy and engaging work, we provide a series of competitive benefits, including health insurance for employees and dependents, a 401k match, paid parental leave and paid time off. We allot over 15,000 hours per year for our employees to volunteer for causes that are important to them. Within the tight-knit culture we have built and sustained, we celebrate our people and their successes with company events, team building activities and other important benefits. We invest in continuous growth and development with training and education and we provide career opportunities for people to continue to stretch their strengths and capabilities. None of our employees are represented by labor unions or covered by collective bargaining agreements.
As of December 31, 2021, we had approximately 2,200 employees operating across six countries, including approximately 1,800 employees located in the United States. Given the ever-changing dynamic of the work environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have become increasingly nimble and flexible, with a significant portion of our workforce worldwide working remotely since March 2020.
Our technology
Our SaaS solutions are strategically integrated to best serve our service SMB customers and ensure they have all the tools to help them grow and scale. We leverage a common set of best practices, IT infrastructure and architectures that serve as a foundation for highly scalable and secure software solutions.
Key areas and features of our centralized strategy and operations that serve as a foundation to our technology approach include:
• Software development: Our software teams use best-in-class technologies and practices to develop our SaaS, mobile and (in selected situations) on-premise solutions. Our software is purpose-built to meet the specific needs of the industries we serve.
• Tech and IT shared services: Our shared services across its technology platforms provides a centralized and consistent approach to software development, as well as cloud engineering and data center migration. Our centralized IT administration allows for 24-hour support for all our people and platforms worldwide.
• Shared infrastructure: We systematically upgrade our data centers, centralize our collaboration platforms onto Office 365 and deploy a variety of standardized third-party software products sourced through EverCommerce. Migration of more than half of our technology solutions to AWS has allowed for gains in productivity, cost efficiency, expanded capacity and faster innovation.
• Cyber security: Our Security Operations team uses industry best practices and functional expertise to perform regular risk assessments, audits and remediation across our IT infrastructure and the data we maintain therein. Our centralized security efforts also include incident prevention, incident response, monitoring, scanning and alerting.
• Offshore development team: Our software is primarily developed internally; however, we also use independent firms and contractors in the United States and internationally to perform some of our product development activities.
Data privacy and security
Regulators around the world have adopted or proposed requirements regarding the collection, use, transfer, security,
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storage, destruction and other processing of personal data. These laws are increasing in number and complexity, resulting in higher risk of enforcement, fines and other penalties. Our privacy and legal teams are committed to processing and fulfilling any requests regarding the exercise of an individual’s privacy rights with respect to personal information.
In addition, our consumer transactions business is now, or may in the future be, subject to certain financial services laws, regulations and rules, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the National Automated Clearing House Association ACH Rules, and our healthcare services businesses are subject to certain healthcare security and privacy laws, such as HIPAA, as amended by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act of 2009, and regulations promulgated thereunder (collectively, “HIPAA”) in the United States and Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Personal Health Information Protection Act (“PIPEDA”) in Canada. Privacy and security laws, regulations, and other obligations are constantly evolving, may conflict with each other to complicate compliance efforts, and can result in investigations, proceedings, or actions that lead to significant civil and/or criminal penalties and restrictions on data processing.
Healthcare regulatory matters
Our business operates in the healthcare space, and as such is affected by changes in healthcare laws, regulations and industry standards. The healthcare industry is highly regulated and subject to frequently changing political, legislative, regulatory and other influences. We are subject, either directly or through our customers, to a number of federal, state and local healthcare laws and regulations that involve matters central to our Health Services business. Failure to satisfy those legal and regulatory requirements, or the adoption of new laws or regulations that impact our business or our customers, could have a significant negative impact on our results of operations, financial condition or liquidity. For additional information regarding potential risks relating to compliance with healthcare laws and regulations, see Part I, Item 1A, “Risk Factors – The healthcare industry is heavily regulated at the local, state and federal levels. Our failure to comply with regulatory requirements could create liability for us or our customers, result in adverse publicity and negatively affect our business.”
In addition to the potential for evolving laws and regulations, the application and interpretation of these laws and regulations are often uncertain. These laws are enforced by federal, state and local regulatory agencies in the jurisdictions where we operate, and in some instances also through private civil litigation. Violation of any of such laws or any other governmental regulations that apply may result in penalties, including, without limitation, significant administrative, civil and criminal penalties, damages, fines, disgorgement, additional reporting and/or compliance obligations to settle allegations of non-compliance, contractual damages, the curtailment or restructuring of operations, exclusion from participation in governmental healthcare programs and imprisonment.
Intellectual property
Protecting our intellectual property and proprietary technology is an important aspect of our business and continued growth. We rely on a combination of trademark, copyright, patent, trade secret and other intellectual property laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as written agreements and other contractual provisions, to protect our proprietary technology, processes and other intellectual property.
As of December 31, 2021, we had 157 registered trademarks in the United States (including EverCommerce), three registered trademarks in the EU (for the EverCommerce logo), two registered trademarks in Puerto Rico, one registered trademark in Canada, 13 registered trademarks in New Zealand, six registered trademarks in Australia and seven registered trademarks in the United Kingdom; six trademark applications in process in the United States and six trademark applications in process in Canada; 35 registered copyrights in the United States and one registered copyright in Canada; and three issued patents in the United States. We also have a portfolio of approximately 3,200 registered domain names for websites that we use in our business or that are registered defensively to protect our brands.
In addition, we generally enter into confidentiality agreements and assignment of invention agreements with employees and contractors throughout our business, including those involved in the development of our proprietary
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intellectual property. We also enter into confidentiality agreements with our customers, partners and third parties who have access to our confidential information.
While much of the intellectual property we use is owned by us, we have obtained rights to use intellectual property of third parties through licenses and service agreements with those third parties. Although we believe these licenses are sufficient for the operation of our business, these licenses typically limit our use of the third parties’ intellectual property to specific uses and for specific time periods.
We intend to pursue additional intellectual property protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost-effective. See “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Intellectual Property—We may be unable to adequately protect and enforce, and we may incur significant costs in enforcing or defending, our intellectual property and other proprietary rights.”