5 ms·

I think you've left out the most important problems in this space: the graft, turf building/protectionism, and corruption. Tech isn't going to solve those. That

by sidlls 5y ago

I think you've left out the most important problems in this space: the graft, turf building/protectionism, and corruption. Tech isn't going to solve those. That aside, this seems like a pretty decent idea for a company. Also, this is a gem: " Most people don’t realize, but the vast majority of government opportunities are only released to a subset of organizations called “prime contractors”. We have built a network of these prime contractors who are uploading their “private” opportunities into our application. " A lot of people truly aren't aware of it! Nor are they aware of the fact that often the Primes' contract vehicles have requirements/constraints on the subs the primes select to farm work out to (e.g. some minimal fraction of the subs must be minority or women owned, subs cannot be foreign entities, etc.). What your feature here looks like to me is something that may be prone to abuse: primes post a set of (sub)contracts and cherry-pick the subs that they can shoe-horn into their checkboxes at minimal cost. Alternatively, this just seems to relabel links in the chain: instead of a would-be contractor bidding on a government vendor portal, they're bidding on your portal, and the bids are submitted to Primes instead of the government. I'm not sure this solves a problem so much as adds a middle-man. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it. Any thoughts about that?

mikeweiland 5y ago
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]).
clairity 5y ago
> "...the most important problems in this space: the graft, turf building/protectionism, and corruption. Tech isn't going to solve those." rather than the byzantine prescriptive requirements we have now, the simple, straightforward solution to all of these is to disallow consolidation in procurement, making the contract sizes much smaller in most cases. it's much easier to hide significant graft in a billion dollar contract vs. a multi-thousand dollar one. the federal government tries to use size as its leverage over price, but we should be using competition instead. make contractors compete each time for smaller bites of the apple, rather than giving them the whole orchard in a single go, which often leads to complacency and corruption.
- monocasa 5y ago
  IDK, it probably comes out the same. Feels like the "one horse sized duck, or a hundred duck sized horses" argument.
- mikeweiland 5y ago
  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).
  - clairity 5y ago
    i'd wager you wouldn't have 5000 potential vendors once effective competition and smaller deal sizes squeezes out excess profit/graft. but from my experience with state procurement processes, the initial weed-out phase seems highly automatable, leaving a much more manageable fraction of candidates to consider manually. also, transparency rules should be rigorous enough to illuminate all ultimate beneficiaries (through shell companies and subcontractors) so that larry, his brother darryl, and his other brother darryl can't artificially muddy competitiveness and undermine fairness.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"I'm not sure this solves a problem so much as adds a middleman." The default "business plan" of any so-called "tech" company. At some point the novelty of the internet and ever-smaller computers ("tech") may wear off and these companies will just be seen for what they are: "middlemen" (with silly, infantile company names). The problem to solve in this space is arguably one of transparency ("Most people don't realise...") Allowing citizens, i.e., taxpayers, to see what kind of deals their government is making could add accountability. To the parent's point about malfeasance in government contracting, perhaps more transparency would better allow the exising laws to be enforced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act
- johnsillings 5y ago
  What a hilariously broad take
  - beepbooptheory 5y ago
    Why? Is there something different in your mind that startups like these tend to do? It seems to me that in the freemarket you can either create a "need", broadly construed, or facilitate access to a need that already exists. What else is there?
    - oneplane 5y ago
      Efficiency, specialisation, scale. You doing one thing on your own vs. a collection of many of those 'things' you used to do solo, guess which one has more potential? This does or course not mean that this applies all the time, everywhere, forever. But in this case, the 'startup' merely has a model of economy of scale, and then probably making sure the benefits are big enough that they can scrape a bit of a provision off of it. That way they can make money while still delivering something that has a higher value to a customer than the customer doing it themselves.
- binarymax 5y ago
  I disagree with this sweeping assessment, and I prefer to calling a service like this an "agent", "assistant", or "delegate". This is because technology cannot solve most human and social problems, but they can help as a delegate in dealing with complexity so you can focus on other things worth your time and interest.
whalesalad 5y ago
You hit the nail on the head. Even if there is a "fair bid" it never ends up being truly fair, and the taxpayer is the one footing the bill for all the nepotism.
truthwhisperer 5y ago
Good point and the personal relationships
uncoder0 5y ago
Agreed 100%, I've only ever had my companies win ~$5m while bidding on 50m+ over 10 years most losses ended up in program failure due to likely graft... It's just the way it is.

by sidlls 5y ago

mikeweiland 5y ago

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]).

clairity 5y ago

> "...the most important problems in this space: the graft, turf building/protectionism, and corruption. Tech isn't going to solve those." rather than the byzantine prescriptive requirements we have now, the simple, straightforward solution to all of these is to disallow consolidation in procurement, making the contract sizes much smaller in most cases. it's much easier to hide significant graft in a billion dollar contract vs. a multi-thousand dollar one. the federal government tries to use size as its leverage over price, but we should be using competition instead. make contractors compete each time for smaller bites of the apple, rather than giving them the whole orchard in a single go, which often leads to complacency and corruption.

monocasa 5y ago
IDK, it probably comes out the same. Feels like the "one horse sized duck, or a hundred duck sized horses" argument.
mikeweiland 5y ago
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).
- clairity 5y ago
  i'd wager you wouldn't have 5000 potential vendors once effective competition and smaller deal sizes squeezes out excess profit/graft. but from my experience with state procurement processes, the initial weed-out phase seems highly automatable, leaving a much more manageable fraction of candidates to consider manually. also, transparency rules should be rigorous enough to illuminate all ultimate beneficiaries (through shell companies and subcontractors) so that larry, his brother darryl, and his other brother darryl can't artificially muddy competitiveness and undermine fairness.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"I'm not sure this solves a problem so much as adds a middleman." The default "business plan" of any so-called "tech" company. At some point the novelty of the internet and ever-smaller computers ("tech") may wear off and these companies will just be seen for what they are: "middlemen" (with silly, infantile company names). The problem to solve in this space is arguably one of transparency ("Most people don't realise...") Allowing citizens, i.e., taxpayers, to see what kind of deals their government is making could add accountability. To the parent's point about malfeasance in government contracting, perhaps more transparency would better allow the exising laws to be enforced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act

johnsillings 5y ago
What a hilariously broad take
- beepbooptheory 5y ago
  Why? Is there something different in your mind that startups like these tend to do? It seems to me that in the freemarket you can either create a "need", broadly construed, or facilitate access to a need that already exists. What else is there?
  - oneplane 5y ago
    Efficiency, specialisation, scale. You doing one thing on your own vs. a collection of many of those 'things' you used to do solo, guess which one has more potential? This does or course not mean that this applies all the time, everywhere, forever. But in this case, the 'startup' merely has a model of economy of scale, and then probably making sure the benefits are big enough that they can scrape a bit of a provision off of it. That way they can make money while still delivering something that has a higher value to a customer than the customer doing it themselves.
binarymax 5y ago
I disagree with this sweeping assessment, and I prefer to calling a service like this an "agent", "assistant", or "delegate". This is because technology cannot solve most human and social problems, but they can help as a delegate in dealing with complexity so you can focus on other things worth your time and interest.

whalesalad 5y ago

You hit the nail on the head. Even if there is a "fair bid" it never ends up being truly fair, and the taxpayer is the one footing the bill for all the nepotism.

truthwhisperer 5y ago

Good point and the personal relationships

uncoder0 5y ago

Agreed 100%, I've only ever had my companies win ~$5m while bidding on 50m+ over 10 years most losses ended up in program failure due to likely graft... It's just the way it is.