Govtech: The $400B Market Hiding in Plain Sight
While there may be an attractive market, selling to the government is a byzantine, frustrating process that puts startups and small businesses without in-house contracting expertise at a disadvantage.<p>Before you commit to anything, study the processes that govern this space. There are lots of requirements for getting into the system — my company (not a tech startup, FWIW) needed to register for SAM (“The System for Award Management is the Official U.S. Government system that consolidated the capabilities of CCR/FedReg, ORCA, and EPLS”), Fedbizopps, GSA Vendor Support Center (VSC), ACES (the private company which issues a digital certificate), Duns & Bradstreet, etc. Then I had to bone up on general contracting requirements and pass some tests before I could bid … and then discovered individual solicitations have their own requirements, pricing restrictions, vetting processes, and sometimes huge delays (for one that I was interested in, the solicitation said “it may take up to 12 months or longer before an offer is evaluated.”) (1)<p>I am assuming that the Govtech fund has in-house expertise that can help smooth the way for new companies, but there will almost certainly be complicated processes, time-consuming bureaucratic requirements, and huge delays that cannot be circumvented. My advice would be to ask hard questions about these issues before going down this path.<p>1. <a href="http://in30minutes.com/selling-to-the-federal-governmentgsa-a-bureaucratic-nightmare-for-small-businesses/" rel="nofollow">http://in30minutes.com/selling-to-the-federal-governmentgsa-...</a>