[weilandia]

Thanks for the correction! Failed by a quick google search...

Our primary differentiation is the network--Being able to connect with your supply chain on the platform and find other potential partners to work with. This is what makes the proprietary data possible/compliant.

[pbronez]

Interesting idea, I have questions:

- How will you incentivize primes & subs to participate?

- How will you organize contracts and contractors to identify relevant partnerships?

- Will you provide any ratings, reputation or other mechanisms to document performers' track records? How does that change the participation incentives?

- What support will you provide to companies that haven't sold to the government before and thus need to start from scratch on certifications, etc?

[weilandia]

- Primes are incentivized to participate for a number of reasons. First, it provides a way for them to efficiently manage their own processes--Getting out of Outlook and providing transparency internally. As well as the automation tools we reference.

The incentive for the primes to participate in the network, in the beginning, is competitive advantage. Primes are always trying to get new/more manufacturers/resellers/distributors to work with them. They can use Govly as a selling point similar to how insurance brokers might use their "easy to use employee portal" to differentiate themselves.

- As far as organizing contracts and contractors to identify relevant partnerships, there are a few ways we're thinking about this. One will be to tie award data to primes and allow people to analyze the award data of opportunities that would have been relevant to them in order to identify strong partners. On the other side, primes can use the analytics we surface with their data in order for them to identify up and coming product types/technologies/manufacturers in order to find new, cutting edge partnerships.

- We actually just got off a call discussing ratings/reputation. This is particularly interesting when manufacturers/resellers are deciding which primes to use. Prime A might be cheaper but has a history of paying late, while Prime B is more expensive but pays quickly. Ratings and reputation can play a big role here. This also changes the incentives of primes as the network grows because if more and more manufacturers/resellers are finding their contacts on Govly, there will be FOMO.

- The first step to supporting companies to learn how to sell to the government is education content. Once we're funded, part of the plan is to dedicate time and money creating accessible content for this purpose. We'll also manually facilitate connections in the beginning and work on ways to productize those connections so that a new manufacturer (broadly used to describe anyone selling to the gov) will be able to more easily identify partners/contacts who can help them through the process.

[imroot]

FEDRAMP compliance isn’t cheap, and it’s not really something startups have the wherewithal of handling until they are a midsized company.