tech-company, startup-costs, us-governmentWhen trying to research available federal government opportunities, freely accessible sites such as [fbo.gov][1] provide info.
In addition to the free websites, a number of companies have built their own products around government data for business opportunities: companies such as [Deltek][2] (GovWin IQ, which seems to have the most market share in this space), [Govini][3], [Bloomberg Government][4], [Ovnia][5], and others. These products can be expensive, particularly for a small tech start-up.
On the plus side, some of these paid tools may let you know of opportunities at an earlier stage; they can let prime contractors know you are a small business willing to be a sub-contractor; they offer help in other ways, too, but they offer no guarantee of obtaining a contract.
Are the odds of obtaining a contract significantly increased with these paid tools, or does it not matter all that much?
In other words, is it a worthwhile investment for a small startup to shell out thousands of dollars for one of these products? [1]: https://www.fbo.gov/ [2]: https://www.deltek.com/en/products/business-development/govwin/why [3]: http://www.govini.com/ [4]: https://about.bgov.com/ [5]: https://www.onvia.com/for-business/products
What matters most is your network of contacts. Particularly at the influencer level, i.e. the set of people who will compile offers for the decision makers (or decision committee).
Much like large corporations, governments have a handful of favorite suppliers. When opportunities arise they issue RFQs and follow pre-established processes to decide and pick what the most appropriate offer. The services you mention will put aggregate and filter these RFQs for you.
In practice, influences tend to leak some information during RFQs to favorite suppliers, allowing the latter to get a few shots at adjusting their offer before firing their final one. This isn’t to say that favorite suppliers always end up winning bids, of course - they don’t. What I mean here is that it’s common practice, in government and large corporations, to gather competing bids for the sole purpose of getting a better deal out of favorite suppliers (typically by driving their prices down).
A proxy to check what you’re up against before bidding is to check past RFQs for similar products or services: if the same suppliers always won recent RFQs, your odds of winning as a newcomer are slim at best.
With this in mind, subscribing to such a product can make sense to spare yourself the grueling (and expensive) task of aggregating and monitoring the wide variety of government RFQ sources that you might be interested in. But in your startup’s early stages, figuring out how to approach sales and working out who’s who will likely be much more important.
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