Agreed on all accounts. Slowly but surely we'll start gather the State / Local / Education level opportunities in our long road to be the unifying platform. In the end we do want a more efficient government and if that is selling the platform to them, great, we are in - I definitely don't want to become a government employee...
First answer, we agree the headline is a bit contrived. We’ll blame the 80 character limit :)
This is a very complicated industry as you know. We do make it easier to find opportunities, run analytics on buying trends, manufacturers and customers in a single place that aggregates data that is not just in the public domain. This is a benefit for both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ contractors. Ultimately, the bid must go through the prime and finding the opportunity you're interested in can bring you to becoming a prime or finding one that already exists. This networking enables a level of efficiency for both the user/organization and the government.
Not cynical. We agree and to a great extent it would be nice to participate in the reform, though knowing how the gov works, it'll be a few generations from now. It would be nice to aid or even 'be' a platform that the government uses instead of industry using it to make sense of the government 'mess'.
I couldn't agree more. The GWAC / IDIQ referenced above attempts to do both (increase competition with pre-qualified companies and limit the number of primes that have access) but in the end it's still a limiter to competition.
This all said, there some valid reasons to limit. For example, if the Department of Education wants to buy 1000 laptops and there were 5,000 responses to the opp there is a significant lift/cost for reviewing and responding to each of these. What is more cumbersome for the government is when one of the 'losers' protests the award. This halts the delivery of the computers to the customer as it goes through a 3rd party (still gov) review. In the end, the original awardee generally gets the ability to sell the computers but by this time they are now 18-24 months old... This is a complicated system governed by a few thousand pages of rules called the FAR (federal acquisition regulations).
I bet what you built is still in play with a those companies - The systems haven't changed much (if at all).
We are starting to pull in award data and amassing the database of historical awards, customers, locations, etc. Mix that with requested technologies and OEMs and the data starts showing some really interesting competitive trends.
Ultimately, organizations are going to be able to create their profile and list their certifications/capabilities/security compliances/etc. It will be a place to showcase who you are and what you can bring to the table for other orgs/primes/government customers to see.
There is significant growth in what are call GWAC and IDIQ contacts (these are basically avenues to sell to any agency in the government under the guise that the government doesn’t know what it wants to buy [yet] but that it is going to buy a lot of it) and we agree with you that they lend themselves to a protectionism mentality because they are generally 10 year contracts with only a small subset of companies that are allowed in (they are awarded the contract- a kind of ‘hunting license’). We are trying to combat this protectionism mentality with our tool Today by bringing transparency and visibility to an arena that is previously unseen.
For the foreseeable future, there is no way of getting around primes. They are the ones on the hook with the government should anything go wrong with delivery of the goods and service. Govly provides network effect of being able to find new subcontractors or more importantly, for would-be contractors to find prime that can submit bids to opportunities they are working on with government customers (they just need an avenue to actually sell to the government). Govly doesn’t submit bids nor will it - We just facilitate the conversation and development of a bid between prime and sub in a singular place and provide both sides of the transaction a place to clearly see, find, track and analyze the massive amount of opportunities that exist (both the public and private ones [that primes grant access to]).