During its more than 25 years in business, Mandeville-based Watch Systems keeps finding itself in the right place at the right time.
The company began building its flagship software product, OffenderWatch, at a time when internet-based mapping technology and sex offender regulations were both in their infancy.
Its software is designed to help law enforcement agencies manage the complex mandates of monitoring registered sex offenders, which includes keeping track of offenders, sharing data across thousands of jurisdictions and producing a paper trail of compliance.
“We’re the only company on the planet that does that,” said Watch Systems President Mike Cormaci. “And it’s because we got lucky with building the original platform.”
Today, its clients include 4,000 law enforcement agencies across all 50 states, and it generates more than $10 million in annual revenue and maintains a proprietary database of about a million registered sex offenders.
Now it’s poised for further growth. Last fall, a Silicon Valley private equity firm purchased the company for an undisclosed price and is looking to acquire other businesses in the public safety sector.
Map tech
OffenderWatch’s platform dates back to the 1990s, when Covington-based Fuelman, which sold gas cards at a discount for company fleet vehicles, developed its own digital mapping technology to help users find gas stations in its network.
Many of the company’s clients at the time were law enforcement agencies that, Cormaci realized, could use the mapping technology to keep track of sex offenders. (Many agencies were still storing their records in filing cabinets.) Cormaci, then a sales manager for Fuelman, partnered with Fuelman CEO Lou Luzynski to spin off a new company.
“At first, the internet was so new that I would talk to sheriffs about the internet and they’d say ‘That’s not going to hang in there. Nobody’s going to use email,’” Cormaci said.
For the first few years, Luzynski and Cormaci basically worked for free, growing the businesses one law enforcement client at a time with a single developer and three other staffers.
About five years in, things began to snowball, and Cormaci’s sales trips started to get easier.
“Once I got to 20-25 accounts in a state, they started to see the benefit of the network,” he said. “Law enforcement is very fraternal, so we could start using them as references.”
In addition to contracts with local police and sheriff’s offices across all 50 states, Watch Systems also has annual contracts with nearly two dozen statewide agencies, ranging from less than $100,000 for the smallest territory to $500,000 or more for a larger state.
50 state sex codes
OffenderWatch’s particular advantage comes from its ability to cross-index the codes for sex crimes from one state to another, because each state’s laws have their own set of definitions for sex crimes and rules for those convicted of them. Over the years, it has continuously integrated state-specific requirements and updated its software as laws change.
Any private company looking to compete with the platform would have to spend several years and tens of millions of dollars to build a comparable database and client list, Cormaci said. Instead, OffenderWatch has to contend with public agencies electing to build their own systems rather than outsourcing them.
“It’s crazy because we don’t have commercial competitors. They’ve come and gone,” Cormaci said. “We have a very unique business model.”
In addition to state and local clients, the federal government uses OffenderWatch to scan flight manifests for sex offenders and alerts relevant agencies when an offender goes off the grid.
The company has also developed mobile apps leveraging its database. One helps officers update the registry in real time from the field. Another allows parents to get alerts when a registered offender attempts to contact their children. Still another allows offenders themselves to fulfill their statutory registration requirements for a fee of $60 a year.
A different but related Watch Systems software product uses the same mapping data developed to determine sex offender rules to calculate precise sales tax obligations. That can result in significant savings when it comes to sellers of big-ticket items like car dealerships.
“Ray Brandt came down to shake my hand based on how much money we saved him,” Cormaci said, recalling his last car purchase.
Investment, acquisitions
In 2021, Watch Systems relocated from Covington to its 12,500-square-foot Mandeville headquarters, from which it prints and sends about 5 million cards every year to notify neighbors that a sex offender has moved in nearby.
Last fall, the company accepted a buyout offer from STG Partners, a Silicon Valley private equity firm that specializes in middle-market enterprise software platform and tech service companies. Watch Systems was an ideal fit for the firm’s portfolio.
“We have been impressed by the company’s ability to provide high-quality, reliable software at great value to its customers,” said managing partner Rushi Kulkarni, announcing the investment.
Watch Systems leaders, who continue to run the company as they did before the acquisition, aim to use the influx of private equity cash to fuel acquisitions of similar companies and add to its 40 full-time employees and more than 15 off-site contractors.
CEO Ben Luzynski, who took over as chief executive from his father in 2024, said it has no plans to leave Louisiana.
“We want to keep it here,” Luzynski said. “We’ve had it here 25 years, and we’d like to see it here 25 more.”
