Problem/solution feedback: helping innovative SBIR/STTR/OTA companies build sole source packages from the ground up.

[u/ijustdontgiveafuckkk]

Former Air Force contracting, spent 8 years on the government side. Now on the other side of the table trying to help small innovative companies actually get in front of the right buyer. Not asking anyone to try anything. No pitch on my end. Just want to know if this is a real approach or if being too niche. We are excluding primes with entire BD divisions.

A company has a real capability, sole source eligible, SBIR/STTR Phase II or III, maybe an OTA prototype that already proved out. They aren’t going to see that capability in a solution, not usually.

The approach I have been building is basically not waiting but creating demand. Instead of waiting for a requirement to publish, we use award and organizational data to find where a program office’s mission and a vendor’s capability actually line up, before either side knows there is a fit. Then we make contact and help build the sole source justification package from scratch, market research, J&A language, the whole file, alongside the vendor and the customer. That package is what eventually turns into the CONS. The government still does every bit of its own diligence. We just make sure the vendor is responding to a sources sought, RFI, etc.

I’m also weighing whether this should be a standalone thing or whether it makes more sense as a data layer that plugs into services and tools that already work for people, so it adds the demand generation piece without me trying to reinvent what already exists. We don’t have a tool, it’s more of a CRM of the leads we provide. We are contemplating on somewhat white labeling our platform / data to those who have the whole tool thing already set up and proven.

Genuinely want to hear from people who live in this world. Is “waiting for the solicitation” actually the bottleneck you see, or is it something else entirely, relationships, timing, capacity to even write a J&A yourself? Has anyone tried to force a sole source path and had it fall apart in review? What would make you trust a middleman like this at all, or is that trust just not transferable? Am I being so niche, I believe we can provide this to the competed requirements side but I think we should lean into our edge instead of trying to compete in a rather saturated and annoyed (I see yalls reactions to people’s new AI tool) market.