GovTribe brings a better user experience to federal government acquisition

[caption id=”attachment_19073” align=”alignnone” width=”600”] Source: govtribe.com[/caption]

In an industry that constantly talks about transforming government procurement, one startup is been quietly making a go of it, and it just keeps getting better.

Few businesses are legitimately tackling the Herculean task of federal government acquisition but with GovTribe, and its new web release late last year, we’re starting to see what FedBizOps and related commercial offerings could and should be doing.

GovTribe first released as a mobile app, however, in November it launched a web version that offers, relative to related services, a lower cost option with a much simpler user interface and forward-thinking approach to web-based services for all elements of the acquisition spectrum.

One of the most important aspects of GovTribe’s web offering is that this is the first time this type of information has been publicly-accessible and usable in a format like this, whereas other commercial offering are hidden behind a paywall or, in the case of FedBizOps, lack a useful interface for those unfamiliar with the nuances of federal procurement.

According to GovTribe co-founder and CEO Nate Nash, since the launch, the site has averaged 7,000 unique visitors and 30,000 page views per month. The site has delivered 800,000 past and present opportunities, 60,000 contracting officer profiles, 200,000 vendor profiles, agencies, offices and NAICs codes. Other features include custom alerting, pipeline tracking and market profiles.

There are freemium (track up to three keywords) and paid ($16/month) versions, as well as subscription access to its application programming interface.

GovTribe also offers custom reports, a “service providing deep dive analysis into specific market segments.”

Here’s an excerpt of a recent email exchange Nash and I:

"When people in this town think of government contracting, they typically think of the big brand name players. Initially, that’s what we thought our market should be. However, there is a massive segment of small and medium-sized businesses working on government contracts all over the country." "Sure, SAIC does a ton of business. But there are also a bunch of companies serving the 20M annual peanut butter market. Those folks are totally underserved when it comes to market intel. And those folks are now our customers. "The influx of calls we get from people looking to get into the government contracting game has been eye opening. They find us because we are one of the few services that puts all of the opportunities on our website, for free. "It has been really cool to speak with people who have small firms that do awesome work, and want to do it for the government. We think that is exactly what the government contracting market needs. Better access equals a more competitive marketplace and ultimately leads to better government services."

As new, low-cost, enterprise web-based offerings continue to expand across all sectors, GovTribe now provides one to an industry that desperately needs it, on a fundamental component critical to making government work better.

Making it easier to access federal business opportunities is just one aspect to building a better procurement process, but it’s the start, and startup, that we need.