Why We Built FedScout
We built FedScout because the current government market sales tools don’t work for new vendors who frequently don’t understand the federal market, the processes, and can’t spend hours on sales each day.
Behind FedScout
Geoff Orazem, the founder of FedScout, started life as a Marine Infantry Officer where he was the “beneficiary” of the government contracting process (he bought a lot of his own equipment).
After leaving the Marine Corps, Geoff graduated from Harvard Law School and then returned to Iraq and Afghanistan, as a government contractor. During these deployments he learned the contracting process and discovered that the problems were as much commercial as they were legal, so he joined McKinsey & Company to learn more about commercial decision making, processes and strategy.
As Geoff was preparing to leave McKinsey, the US made the embarrassing launch of the HealthCare.gov website, which crystallized his interest in fixing the government contracting market.
Geoff started Eastern Foundry, an incubator for small government contracting companies in 2014 and then launched Federal Foundry, a software and services company focused on the federal market in 2016.
Evolution of FedScout
In 2015, Eastern Foundry partnered with a large federal market intelligence tool so that incubator members could purchase subscriptions at a deep discount. While many members initially participated, very few continued into the second year. Two years later, Eastern Foundry partnered with another tool provider that had built a tool specifically for small businesses, but similarly, the Eastern Foundry community didn’t embrace it.
After finding that two of the biggest systems in the federal market were not working, we decided to build a solution for our members. We spoke with our members to understand what didn’t work about the other systems and what they really wanted and needed. And this is what we heard:
- Our members are on the move, so any tool has to fit into their highly mobile lives
- Our members are experts at the product or service they provide, not government contracting, so the tool needs to educate them
- Our members didn’t have business and sales processes, so the tool had to help them drive outcomes and decisions
- Our members are busy so our tool had to expedite their work
- Our members wanted help making decisions, not piles of data
So that is what we built, and are continuing to build.
FedScout Milestones
Future Events Geoff Orazem Will Attend
MIT
IAP 2022: Mission Innovation Program—Dual-use Ventures: Navigating Both Commercial & Defense Markets
Thursday, January 20, 2022 at 9 am to 5 pm
MIT InnovationHQ at E38, Floor 7 292 Main Street Cambridge, 7th Floor
Geoff Orazem will be speaking about When and What to Bid