Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / The B2G Playbook Nobody Talks About (And It's Printing Money)

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The B2G Playbook Nobody Talks About (And It's Printing Money) · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
The government is handing out billions in contracts and most
0:02
founders don't even know the door exists.
0:05
By the time an opportunity is publicly posted, the deal is
0:08
already done. Insider shaped it, named the
0:10
requirements and built the walls so only they fit through.
0:14
If you think competing for big institutional contracts is fair
0:17
open market, you've already lost.
0:19
But here's where it flips. One founder went to a
0:22
conference, didn't pitch a single feature.
0:24
Just ask people why they hated their jobs and closed their
0:27
first customer without a product.
0:29
No demo, just a slide deck in the right pain point.
0:32
Then they went to build it. That company charges up to
0:35
$300,000 a year per client and has over $20 million in wins
0:40
flowing through its platform. All because they understood
0:43
something most founders completely ignore.
0:46
Revenue is a lagging indicator of customer love.
0:49
They the problem before they solved it, and the customers
0:52
came running. So what if the biggest deal
0:53
you'll ever close is already being shaped right now by
0:56
someone who doesn't know you exist and the only thing
0:59
standing between you and it is that you never walked into the
1:01
room. Welcome to AI for Founders.
1:04
I'm Ryan Estes. My guest today is Nick Lopez,
1:06
cofounder and CEO of Prozol, and this conversation is for any
1:10
founder who wants to understand how AI is unlocking the most
1:13
lucrative, most overlooked markets in the world.
1:16
If you sell anything, build anything, or know anything that
1:19
solves a real problem at scale, this one's for you.
1:22
The playbook is in the newsletter.
1:24
The frameworks, the pricing models, the Scrappy 0 product.
1:27
Go to market move. All of it's broken down and
1:29
waiting for you at AI For founders.co, founders who
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subscribe don't just stay informed, they stay dangerous.
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1:41
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Go to kickcaster.com and tell them AI for founder sent you.
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That's Kick Caster by MO Burst. Nick, welcome to the show.
2:18
Thank you so much for joining me.
2:20
I appreciate you having me. Ryan yeah, I'm really excited to
2:24
talk to you. We do a lot of B to B, We do a
2:27
lot of B to C, but we rarely do B to G And I'm always fascinated
2:30
on kind of the nuance and and differences and also tantalized
2:34
by the opportunities of B to G contracts.
2:37
So let's dive right in. Your, your company's called
2:40
Prozol or prozol.com is the URL. Tell me a little bit about your
2:45
business. Yeah.
2:47
So Prozol is a market intelligence platform for
2:50
federal contractors. We focus mostly in defense, but
2:54
we help business development and capture.
2:56
And capture is kind of AB to G kind of area.
3:01
But we hope business development and capture teams map the
3:03
market, understand their competition and ultimately make
3:06
smarter decisions faster. OK.
3:10
So talk to me about your kind of ideal client.
3:13
Who, who? What clients are you serving?
3:16
So typically we're serving the middle market, so anywhere from
3:20
100 million in annual awards up to about 4 billion in annual
3:24
awards. And our core client has a couple
3:26
business development teams. Each of those teams is
3:29
responsible for a certain customer or a capability is what
3:32
they call it. And typically our customers are
3:37
defence focused. They're dealing with paper cuts,
3:40
thousands of paper cuts of data everywhere, and we essentially
3:44
help them make decisions off that data, spend less time
3:48
behind a computer screen and more time talking to customers
3:51
and partners. And we can get into that because
3:53
that is really the bread and butter of P2G is relationships.
3:57
Yeah, let's let, yeah, let's talk about that.
3:59
So let's imagine I'm defence contractor, I'm coming to
4:02
Prozol. Is basically this like a, is
4:05
this a directory or marketplace of different government
4:09
contracts that what they're looking for?
4:11
Is it a place that I kind of show like what I'm doing
4:14
research in, in production on and then government reaches out
4:17
to me? How does the?
4:19
How does the communication exactly work?
4:22
Yeah. So our customers typically come
4:24
with us, come to us with a pipeline, a very, very deep
4:28
pipeline. They've been in the space
4:29
typically 5 to 10 years. They have a lot of capabilities.
4:32
And what they're struggling with is for an opportunity and RFI,
4:36
maybe it's a recompete. They're struggling with figuring
4:39
out should we go after this, right?
4:41
The government contracting life cycle anywhere from six months
4:47
to a year, It's shrinking with the current administration.
4:49
We can get into that. But ultimately, they're gonna
4:52
find an opportunity. They're gonna pitch it
4:54
internally to their leadership and they're gonna allocate money
4:57
and capture and fly into conferences and meeting the
5:00
client to ultimately what's called shape this thing, right?
5:03
By shaping, we mean talking to the government and user and
5:07
understanding, hey, what's troubling you today?
5:09
Do you have a contractor that's not doing a good job?
5:11
What are your pain points? Do you have anything that you're
5:13
really struggling with that we can help you with?
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And So what we help them do is say no to those things that
5:19
maybe isn't a great fit and yes to the things that are a perfect
5:22
fit. The reason this is a problem
5:24
today is that when you go and find an opportunity, and that is
5:27
an art in itself, right? Because a lot of these are not
5:30
really publicly facing, but when you do go find that opportunity,
5:35
you got to understand everything about it.
5:36
So you'll get an RFI, it's 40 pages, 15 pages of that is kind
5:41
of your basic legal boilerplate language.
5:43
And then scattered throughout or hey, this is what we're looking
5:46
for. This is approximately our
5:48
budget, if they even have one. And so they need to go out and
5:51
do external research to understand, OK, who's who's
5:54
going to compete against us? Are we going to go up against
5:55
Booz Allen and Lockheed? Are we going to go up against,
5:58
you know, that's medium sized contractor that we can actually
6:01
compete and win for? And if Lockheed Martin's going
6:04
after it, well, maybe we should partner with them, right?
6:06
So there's a lot of outstanding questions at the beginning of
6:09
this contracting life cycle that they need answered.
6:12
Oh, and mind you, they're still working on proposals.
6:14
They're still working on their deals.
6:16
And So what ends up happening is they end up just delaying that
6:20
process of getting that information to say yes or no.
6:23
And by the time they get to that answer, heck, their team, their
6:27
ideal teaming partner has already been swooped up by
6:29
another company. So essentially what we help them
6:32
do is at that moment, based on their company, their
6:36
capabilities, they get all the requisite information to make a
6:40
decision. Who are The Who are the
6:41
competitors? Who is the incumbent?
6:43
Is there an implied incumbent? What's the contract lineage?
6:46
Is this a merger of two existing contracts or is this truly a new
6:49
requirement? Oh, and by the way, who should I
6:52
talk to, right? Who should I reach out to to
6:54
start socializing this thing at the government end user?
6:57
So what we do is we take all that information across a
7:00
multitude of different databases and give it to them just in
7:03
time, synthesize in a way that they can turn into a deck,
7:06
present to their leadership and get the ball rolling, ultimately
7:09
increasing that pipeline velocity.
7:12
Got it. So this is saving them massive
7:13
amounts of time. And telling them things they
7:16
didn't even realize, right? So they'll see a list of names
7:20
that we provide as a call plan. They'll be like, wait a second,
7:23
I recognize that guy. I served with him, you know, 10
7:25
years ago in the Army. I didn't realize he was working
7:29
for that agency. Now I should reach out to him.
7:31
So really that aha moment of the knowing the known unknowns,
7:36
right? Knowing that there is more
7:39
analysis out there that maybe you don't, you know, you don't
7:42
have to bring in three subject matter experts into a meeting
7:45
off of a contract they're on. Rather, you can get that Intel
7:48
really early on. Love it.
7:51
Cool. That makes a lot of sense.
7:52
So, so the government releases an RFI, which is a request for
7:58
information, information request for information about a project
8:02
they want to work on. And then there's a bidding
8:04
process. So on one side they're like, OK,
8:07
we want to go after this, but go securing that bid takes six
8:10
months to a year, so massive amounts of time.
8:13
At least, right. And sometimes it'll go from a
8:15
source of sought to an RFI to an RFP.
8:18
And that time cycle can be up to two years from that original
8:22
RFI, depending on things like budget, funding and a bunch of
8:27
other factors. But here's the key is that not
8:29
everything comes out in as an RFI.
8:32
And so the really, really, really sophisticated players are
8:36
like, it's good account management, right?
8:37
It's the same thing in B2B sales is know your customer, know
8:41
their pain points and stay top of mind and help them out.
8:43
Become that external resource. And So what we'll see a lot of
8:47
times is the more sophisticated contractors are not looking for
8:50
the RFI because by the time the RFI comes out, they think it's
8:53
too late, which sometimes it is. What that means is that someone
8:57
else was plugged in deeper with a customer.
8:59
They understood the pain points and they said, hey customer, you
9:02
should put on an RFI for this thing.
9:04
And we're definitely going to respond to it.
9:06
So they're almost like creating these opportunities, So much so
9:10
to the point when an RFP comes out, if you didn't know about it
9:14
a year prior, you're not going after it 'cause you know someone
9:17
else is pulling the strings in the back end.
9:20
Yeah, it's kind of the good old boy network.
9:22
It's like deals are done on the golf course. 100%, And I will
9:27
say this is shifting now in the current administrative
9:30
landscape. Pete Hexif has gone towards more
9:33
of a rapid prototyping model, which is how we operate agile
9:36
methodology in the corporate world.
9:38
And so they're moving towards other contracting mechanisms
9:41
like OTAs, which is an other transactional agreement, which
9:45
doesn't require, and I don't want to get too deep into the
9:47
acronyms, but the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the FAR
9:52
is the rulebook to say if you want to buy some something above
9:56
250K, you need to go through this process.
9:59
Well, now they're leveraging these other vehicles like OTAs
10:01
and requests for prototype proposals and basically asking
10:04
for turnarounds in 30 days. Now that's affecting our
10:07
customers significantly because most of the time they're not
10:10
hearing about it a year in advance.
10:12
They're hearing about it when it drops.
10:13
And so now they got to compress this whole business development
10:16
life cycle from what used to be 6 months to a year to 30 days.
10:20
I got to make a decision the day it comes out as to are we
10:22
competitive, what's the price to win, Should we team, Do we have
10:25
the capabilities? Do we have the personnel?
10:28
And so that's where we're really trending in the government in
10:32
general is they're opening up more doors for commercial
10:35
companies to go in and compete for these things without having
10:39
that good old boy network. Interesting.
10:42
OK. So we're talking about billions
10:45
of dollars in contracts. You're working all the way, $100
10:48
million contracts on up. So the the investment in time
10:52
and building these relationships is crucial, but knowing where to
10:56
spend that time is also important.
10:58
So what Prozil does is comes in, it's going to have maybe a
11:01
pipeline of deals that are emerging from different places
11:04
and it's going to give you different entry points to begin
11:07
that relationship. So what would would it would
11:09
that be to say that it'd be like, hey, actually this is Heg,
11:12
Seth's cousin, and he works in your town.
11:15
Maybe you should reach out to them and build a relationship
11:17
with them, see where it goes. 100% and always tied to data,
11:22
right? Like there is.
11:23
Here's a perfect example that I love to bring up on leading
11:27
indicators, right? So the Army is going through a
11:31
barracks modernization process. The reason they're going through
11:34
a barracks modernization process is that someone at some journal,
11:39
some journalists came in, went and inspected the barracks and
11:43
did a whole piece about how our troops are living in squalor
11:48
rats, so, you know, beds that don't work.
11:51
And so the Army got that and said, Oh my God, we got to do a
11:55
whole barracks revitalization. And so those that were really
11:58
astute and paying attention saw that article and said they're
12:01
going to do something about this.
12:03
Now, the Army is a very, very big organization.
12:06
It's not just, hey, let's just go talk to the head of the Army.
12:09
I, you're probably not going to get time with him.
12:12
What the actual approach there is to understand what sub office
12:17
is funding this? What office is contracting this?
12:20
And then putting all those stakeholders together in your
12:23
mind, getting them all aligned that your solution is the right
12:26
solution. Fascinating.
12:29
OK, this is really interesting because, you know, there was
12:32
some statistic that said I think 60% of senators never check
12:36
e-mail. Never.
12:38
So, you know, largely we're we're talking to people that are
12:41
kind of cutting edge of technology and like the our
12:44
relationships and database largely are growing
12:46
asynchronous, you know, which is why I like the podcast so much
12:50
because it gives you an opportunity to have
12:51
conversations with interesting people like Nick Lopez.
12:55
But you know, the, the majority of folks in government, at least
12:59
by this statistic, aren't using technology.
13:02
They're only having these kind of conversations and
13:04
relationships. So basically you got to you got
13:06
to play by the rules if you're going to play in someone else's
13:09
ballpark. So this makes a lot of sense.
13:10
So I'm a customer, I'm logging into a Prozol.
13:15
Do I have a dashboard? What exactly is my interaction
13:17
with the company? Yeah.
13:19
So we make sure to start off by populating those things that you
13:23
do know, right? Those things that are in your
13:25
pipeline that have been sitting for quite some time because
13:30
you're working other things, you're working writing
13:32
proposals, you're working networking.
13:34
So maybe those 10 opportunities that you found a month ago, you
13:38
haven't had time to qualify them, right?
13:40
So we adjust that and we qualify every single one of those
13:43
opportunities. And by qualify, I mean bring in
13:45
all the requisite information for you to make a decision.
13:48
What are they asking for who you're going up against and can
13:51
do you have the past performance to do this Past performance is
13:54
very interesting in this space. It's almost like that whole
13:58
adage about getting your first job.
14:00
You need experience, but in order to get experience, you
14:03
need your first job. It's kind of like that in that
14:05
you need performance on contracts with that customer in
14:10
order to write a very strong proposal.
14:12
So we'll bring that in from across the organization as well
14:14
from those publicly available records and help you understand,
14:18
do we have the past performance, do we have the capabilities, do
14:21
we have the relationship. And so you essentially get an
14:24
output of almost like a brief on that opportunity to understand,
14:29
hey, I can make a decision right now, yes or no.
14:32
Now from that, we also just deployed our Corvus competitive
14:35
intelligence module. This Corvus is, you can think
14:38
about it as ChatGPT but trained on all government data, right?
14:42
And so it understands your company.
14:44
We pre process that company's information to create
14:47
essentially a very sturdy matching profile so that when
14:51
you ask a question about, hey, what's the price to win, you get
14:54
that comprehensive answer with the methodology that you choose.
14:58
And you're not wrestling with prompt engineering, because I
15:00
can't imagine nobody wants to learn prompt engineering when
15:03
you've been in business development and you're good at
15:05
talking to people for 30 years. You just want to ask a question
15:08
and get an answer. And so we've made it silly silly
15:10
easy for them to do so. Amazing.
15:13
OK. So it's kind of deep customer
15:15
analysis, deal analysis. You can then you can be like
15:20
actually I have two degrees of separation with that person.
15:22
That seems like a good entry point.
15:24
Plus I'm not going up against Lockheed.
15:27
You know who who already, you know, goes to their daughter's
15:32
quinceanera or whatever. It's like, OK, there's some some
15:35
of these deals, you can kind of see how they shake out.
15:37
But other ones you're like, no, we got this one.
15:39
And that's obviously where you want to invest your time and
15:42
resources is going after the thing that you're you're shirt
15:45
up or you have better higher percentage to make that shot.
15:51
Yeah, I'll give you one. It's called P win, probability
15:54
of win. It's a industry terminology.
15:56
It's P win. That's what they're always
15:57
trying to optimize for. Fascinating.
16:00
How did you get into this line of work?
16:03
That's a great question. So I studied engineering at
16:07
Georgia Tech, went off. I wanted to become a mechanical
16:09
engineer. So my first job out of college
16:11
was actually at Lockheed. I worked on a couple of really
16:13
cool programs and basically saw this kind of gap in the market,
16:18
which is the technical folks that are really good at building
16:21
these tools and doing this analysis are on the programmatic
16:24
side. So once the deal is 1, they hand
16:26
it off to the engineers and there's no communication back
16:29
and forth. The BD folks are like that tip
16:31
of the spear. They've really deep domain
16:34
knowledge about what they do, their customer, what matters to
16:37
them, but they may not know what their engineers think or what
16:40
other people in the company think or even, hey, we actually
16:43
did work for this agency five years back that you never heard
16:46
of. And so we essentially make it
16:49
really easy for those two things to merge, right, That technical
16:52
expertise in the hands of the BD folks.
16:55
From there we actually started off trying to solve the RFP
16:58
process in non profits to start. But what we had seen was the
17:04
business development process in the federal space was way
17:07
larger, way more sophisticated. And so that's the problem we
17:10
want to tackle. So we moved into Pureplay
17:12
federal contracting. This episode is brought to you
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founders.co. Now back to the show, where was
18:12
your office with with Lockheed located?
18:16
I was in Orlando, so I was at the missiles and fire control
18:19
site. Cool.
18:20
Yeah, they're I'm just South of Denver in the foothills kind of
18:24
if you know Red Rocks, I'm just probably 10 miles South of there
18:28
in the foothills and there's Lockheed is just is right down
18:30
the road a little bit, you know, with the the big amazing
18:34
warehouses with no windows on them.
18:36
Do you have a technique? I I really want to go tour it,
18:41
but I don't know how to get past the guys with machine guns.
18:43
Do you? How can I cure a tour of that
18:46
Lockheed facility? Well it's all relationship space
18:50
right? So meet someone at the bar
18:52
that'll give you that tour. No, but you can typically go up
18:55
to them and ask. Hey I'd love to see the
18:57
facility. I'm interested in potentially
18:59
working here. Can you give me a non a
19:01
declassified tour? They may say yes, or they may
19:04
say no. We're not doing.
19:06
That no, Sir, please turn around immediately.
19:08
Like all right, can I, can I name drop?
19:10
Can I be like Nick Lopez said it was cool.
19:13
Hey, if that works then kudos to you.
19:15
Go go right ahead. I don't think they'll recognize
19:18
my name at the Denver site though.
19:21
Amazing. OK, so Prozol, what's the
19:23
business model? How are you guys getting paid?
19:25
Yeah. So we are software, just a SAS
19:28
subscription and we do basically customized pricing based on the
19:33
needs. One of our biggest theories
19:36
about like the future of software and AI is that
19:39
customization and configuration is everything.
19:41
So we take our time to truly understand that customer and
19:44
make sure that we're not just giving the keys and driving
19:48
right. We're not just giving them some
19:50
software they're never going to log into.
19:51
We work with them on a weekly basis to understand how we plug
19:54
into their existing systems. And hell, if they don't want a
19:57
platform, we'll we'll abstract that away, right?
20:01
If they just want an answer and they want us to build into their
20:03
Slack and use Prozos, the back end, happy to do so.
20:07
But we are essentially a software subscription model
20:10
built annually. Amazing.
20:12
And then are you charging by seat?
20:14
Do you have kind of an ABC package, kind of what's the
20:16
pricing look like? Yeah.
20:18
So it, it typically depends on the functionality that they
20:22
want. Some folks come in and they say
20:24
I don't need the opportunity discovery.
20:26
I don't need conference intelligence.
20:27
All I need is rice to win. O we'll understand, you know,
20:31
how many people in your organization are doing this
20:32
work. And then we'll put together a
20:34
custom ricing ackage based on the individual number of users
20:37
and then on average the amount of requests they're doing on a
20:40
monthly basis. The one thing that we haven't
20:43
done yet and we're still kind of deciding whether or not we want
20:46
to do is token based pricing. What we've learned is that a lot
20:50
of our clients really like balance sheet stability.
20:53
So they like to see, hey, this is the price.
20:55
I know that this is predictable. And so we essentially don't
20:59
charge by tokens or overages yet.
21:00
We have yet to have overages on usage.
21:02
So maybe in the future if we get to that point, but hopefully
21:05
not. Well, yeah, totally.
21:08
What's that kind of average subscription price for an
21:11
average customer on a monthly? Basis.
21:13
So it it really, it really depends.
21:16
It's anywhere between 70 to 300 K annually, OK. 70 to 300 K
21:23
annually and that's quite a range.
21:26
Is that because number of just the size of each organization?
21:30
Yeah. And also the structure of the
21:32
organizations, like some folks want a deeper integration into
21:36
their existing software. Other folks are a little bit
21:38
more tech forward and they say, hey, our people know how to use
21:41
this thing. We don't need the training, we
21:43
don't need the onboarding. All we need is access to the
21:45
tool. And it also depends on the size
21:47
of the organization. So there's a very big gap from a
21:50
contractor that's doing 20 million a year to the contractor
21:53
that's doing 4.3 billion a year. Yeah, totally.
21:57
How many customers do you have? So right now we have about got
22:03
to say like 150 to 200 users across a sizable amount of
22:08
companies. I'm not at liberty to say that
22:10
just because we do have some Ndas in place, but we'll just
22:14
say a fair amount. Yeah.
22:17
So we're talking substantial revenue here for for your, your
22:21
company. Let's say substantial work
22:25
because the revenue is great, but the we again we, we really
22:30
act as partners to all of our clients.
22:33
I mean, you could almost think of of us as software enabled
22:36
consultants, right? Because we are in the trenches.
22:39
Then cool. And and I mean I guess
22:41
substantial revenue is relative, but I I'm thinking at least
22:45
eight figures annually. Is that is that a fair estimate?
22:48
Yeah. Yeah, you said yeah, fast.
22:50
So it's like much further north than that.
22:53
Perhaps. Nice, cool.
22:58
And this is a, a, a great example so of, you know, going
23:03
diving in on a, a SAS product or a service as a software product
23:07
where the data is very, very valuable and underserved.
23:12
You know, I was speaking to a great guy.
23:14
We'll have him on the podcast recently and you know, he's
23:16
doing a SAS product that's $10 annually.
23:20
So in order to kind of create, you know, the, the kind of
23:23
revenue that you're doing, he's got to have, you know, absolute
23:26
penetration, traction and like scale.
23:29
You know what, what kind of lead?
23:31
How did you see the the the value and how did you identify
23:35
that that this kind of customer base was being so underserved?
23:39
Yeah. I, I really do love that
23:41
question because we again we came into the start up world in
23:45
a build first mentality. I left out one of our earlier
23:50
pivots. We pivoted in from away from
23:52
helping nonprofits connect with diversely owned and operated
23:54
agencies to helping those agencies find state and local
23:58
contracts. And so that product was priced
24:00
at around $79 a month and we had over 10,000 users and 400 paying
24:06
customers. What we realize is that the
24:09
product LED growth kind of model doesn't lead to a lot of deep
24:13
insights. We would have feedback across
24:15
the board, very heterogeneous and it was very difficult to
24:18
pick and filter away the noise and understand, OK, why is our
24:22
turn so high because we didn't have those frequent touch points
24:25
with our customers. And here's the other thing is
24:27
that we've seen is when you charge so little for a product,
24:31
there's no mutual investment, right?
24:33
And and you want your clients to invest in you like a partner,
24:36
right? That feedback is so, so
24:39
important. So when you have that kind of
24:41
product LED growth model, it's really like, my advice is scope
24:45
down your features because it's going to be so easy to feature
24:48
creep and grow and grow and feature creep.
24:50
And then by the time you get to that point where your churn is
24:53
13% a month, you have no idea which features to keep because
24:56
everybody's using something different.
24:58
So that's kind of how we thought about it.
25:00
And the other way we thought about kind of pricing was on the
25:04
size of the deals, right? What is the value of 1 tidbit of
25:08
information that you wouldn't have known on a $50 million
25:12
contract? What if that affected how you
25:15
approach the entire situation? What if you were able to kill a
25:19
$30 million pursuit because you found out that the incumbent has
25:23
been there for 20 years and you found that out the day you got
25:25
it rather than six months down the line after sending half of
25:29
your BD folks to different conferences to start, you know,
25:31
networking this thing. So it's, and this is one of the
25:35
more difficult parts of pricing and it's kind of art and
25:38
science, but getting to the point where, and we've had this
25:42
all the time where we try to set objective metrics and they
25:45
essentially come back to us and say it's more touchy feely.
25:48
And the reason for that is all these individuals in the BD
25:52
realm in the federal defense contracting space have such such
25:56
deep intelligence about what they do.
25:58
And so they're not very trustworthy of an AI that can
26:01
come in and know the depth of the quality of information that
26:05
they have. And so it almost comes down to,
26:08
hey, tell me about an opportunity that you have, let
26:10
me go ahead and run it through our competitive intelligence
26:12
explorer and then you tell me how off or on we are.
26:15
And 95% of the time, not only is it spot on, but it's above and
26:19
beyond. It gives them additional
26:21
viewpoints, additional thoughts. Not only does it confirm their
26:24
thinking, but it opens up their aperture to the, to the realm of
26:27
the possible. And I think that is something
26:30
that, I mean, we're trying to do a study on melt water and how
26:33
they position their product. But that's ultimately comes down
26:35
to is like, can you get the unit price for a tidbit of
26:39
information, right? Can you mathematically say the
26:42
value of knowing that, you know, a specific contract, the head of
26:48
that contract from the last iteration to this iteration has
26:51
since move on to another role and that's created an opening in
26:54
the market, right? What is the value of that truly?
26:57
I mean, it's got to be a percentage of the contract
26:59
itself, right? Yeah.
27:02
See is that part of the the pricing model is a percentage of
27:05
the deal closed? No, so not today.
27:07
I mean, we've tried it with some partners, but it, it just so
27:10
happens that the sales cycle is so long and it's, it's like
27:14
Apollo, right? So you get a lead from Apollo,
27:17
you're not going to attribute that deal to Apollo, you're
27:20
going to see it as a stepping stone to the deal that
27:22
ultimately you worked. So we've kind of moved away from
27:26
that. And also because of the Federal
27:28
acquisition regulation, you know, we want to make sure that
27:32
our our posture around compliance is sealed shut,
27:37
right. We don't want to open up or
27:39
introduce any potential liabilities on profit sharing or
27:44
lead sharing because the Federal acquisition does have some
27:47
stipulations around that. Yeah, and that makes sense.
27:50
I mean, that's that you guys are obviously working in good faith,
27:53
but there could be bad actors that are out there scouring
27:56
deals and you know. Yeah, I could see that.
28:00
I mean we've. Seen it before, we've seen
28:01
business models and I mean it's, it's a sound business model and
28:04
they've gone through the legal checks to make sure that it
28:08
works. But we've seen organizations
28:10
that basically scour a very specific vertical of the market
28:14
and then identifies commercial companies that can do that work
28:18
and then connects the two offers to write the proposal and offers
28:21
to do the government management for them after.
28:25
And it's been a pretty successful business model for
28:27
them. For us, we prefer a little bit
28:30
of stability. Yeah.
28:32
Are there particular stories? You know, because I really love
28:35
what you're doing. It's absolutely fascinating.
28:37
And, you know, say you're selling on average $100,000
28:41
annual subscriptions for data and, and clean data and a lot of
28:47
the bells and whistles, you know, which is not a big price
28:51
to pay when you're talking about like, yeah, if it UPS your
28:54
closing percentage 1%, then it's almost just a rounding error.
28:59
What they paid for the data and intelligence and.
29:02
Not only that, I mean, you gotta imagine, Ryan, that these
29:05
business development folks, I mean they're stalwarts in their
29:07
space. I wanna give them the most that
29:09
they served and they've served their country for many years and
29:14
they've been in the space for 10/20/30 years.
29:16
You got to imagine their salaries are at least
29:18
250304100K. You really leveraging that asset
29:22
if they're spending their time doing Google research?
29:25
No, you're levering at that asset.
29:27
The more time they spend talking to customers, TTC or partners
29:31
TTP, the more time they spend out from behind the computer
29:35
screen in real life making those connections, the more valuable
29:39
they are. So we're talking about the
29:41
quarter of a price of a single business development person and
29:44
optimizing 25% more of their time to be out there instead of
29:48
behind the computer doing really slow research because guess
29:51
what, it's required of them. It's a good pitch, man.
29:56
You're a good salesman. I like it.
29:57
I'm sold. You know what?
29:58
What are some other anecdotes maybe you've heard over the
30:01
years? Are are there stories were like,
30:02
man, I was working on this deal for 18 months and then I found
30:05
out that, you know, his cousin got the bid and they were going
30:08
to do it that way the whole time.
30:10
I mean, some of this is speculative, but, like, what are
30:12
some of their other pain points? I'd just be curious to hear.
30:15
Yeah. I have a really really good
30:16
example. We're working with this client
30:19
that was thinking ad hoc about going after that Shield IDIQ,
30:23
right, the Golden Dome, very big contract.
30:26
He's like 150 billion, right? And they just didn't, he wasn't
30:30
getting the traction internally for them to actually seriously
30:33
dedicate resources to this. And mind you, he's working 10
30:36
other deals. So it's not priority for him.
30:38
So we went off and we did an analysis on Shield and how they
30:42
line up, who they were teamed with.
30:43
And he took that brief that we had and he circulated it with a
30:47
senior leadership. They ended up going after it.
30:50
And guess what? They ended up getting on that
30:51
IDIQ. Really, that's a good win.
30:58
It I mean, this is just one of many.
31:00
Another example is, you know, another client that he saw an
31:03
opportunity that we matched to them based on their semantic
31:06
capabilities and he was able to, based on what we pulled in what
31:10
we call our deep dive. He was able to look at the
31:14
price, the people, the competitors, the teaming
31:17
partners, and he said, go, let's go after this.
31:20
And he said that if he didn't have that information, he would
31:23
have thrown that opportunity away entirely because he didn't
31:25
have the time to go in and dig into this information,
31:28
especially at this early stage, at this maybe.
31:31
So we provided him with the Intel to say, yeah, let's go
31:34
after this. Oh, man, amazing.
31:38
OK, we're at the time of the podcast where we're about to
31:42
enter the Quantum Round. Are you ready for the Quantum
31:45
Round? Hey I'm I'm ready man, I'm
31:48
ready. I'm like 2 electrons
31:50
communicating at at a distance right now.
31:54
Nice. OK, so the the listeners of this
31:57
podcast love ideas and you had a very good one that seems like
32:01
it's paying great dividends. Are, is there a similar data set
32:06
for an industry that has similar, you know, deal sizes
32:12
and maybe the the length This seems to be like the the common
32:15
denominator of of shrinking expenses and finding new
32:18
opportunities. Is there another category
32:22
perhaps that that is right for the similar disruption?
32:25
100% And I would say just dialing back on that, an idea is
32:31
great. The execution is what matters,
32:33
right? And so I think the time to an
32:35
MVP and a demonstratable prototype has shrunk
32:39
exponentially. So my advice would be great
32:42
idea, but does it work right? And you can validate that in any
32:45
number of ways. Today you can make 200 cold
32:48
calls and pitch the thing without even building it and
32:51
seeing what that traction is before you write a line of code.
32:54
So that's what I would say is like, yeah, you have a you have
32:56
an idea. Take all ten of your ideas from
32:58
the week and like a scientist to test every single one to see
33:02
which one gets the best reaction.
33:04
I would say. I mean, this exact market exists
33:08
outside of the United States, right?
33:10
All other countries are buying things and they're putting them
33:13
publicly in South America. It's Lisi Taciones.
33:16
So I think that, you know, it is really the ingestion of those
33:21
large data sets and understanding the user journey
33:25
so deeply that you know what to do with it.
33:29
I wouldn't, I don't have any specific examples.
33:32
I would say Healthcare is probably a fairly good one just
33:35
because it's so, so slow moving and you know, there's a lot of
33:40
compliance around that. But I'm not sure how much of
33:43
that data is publicly available. Yeah.
33:46
How did you validate and who was or how'd you get your first
33:50
customer? I love, that's my favorite
33:52
question of all time. So as we were going through and
33:56
evaluating this pivot, we went through it to a conference,
33:59
right? And we essentially we take this
34:02
in a very scientific method and we say, OK, let's run a copy
34:05
test at this conference. And we say we literally wore
34:07
shirts that said RFPs suck. And so just by nature of these
34:12
shirts, he would come up to us and say, yeah, they do.
34:14
Yeah, they do. And we say, why do they suck?
34:17
And then we would start jotting down what they said and finding
34:20
the overlaps. Turns out one of those same
34:23
people are like, hey, yeah, like we're struggling with
34:26
identifying all this information about every opportunity really
34:30
early. And we said, sure, we can do
34:31
that. And so we pitched them.
34:33
They said this is interesting, but I don't know anything about
34:36
it. You haven't shown me a product.
34:37
We showed them a slide deck where we in the back end really
34:41
did all this work manually and we basically they committed to a
34:45
30 day pilot with us. As we were in that pilot, we
34:48
started automating a lot of that work that we did manually
34:51
presented that final product and said, hey, this is great, let's
34:54
move forward. And so that was our first like,
34:56
aha, OK, there's something here, but it's still at that point is
34:59
very malformed. It's got like weird edges that
35:03
you don't really know where it starts and where it stops and
35:05
what the true problem is. And so from that you take that
35:08
same script, that same pain point, you run it again.
35:11
If that doesn't work, or maybe you assigned one more, but they
35:13
cared about a different thing, then you take that, run another
35:16
feedback loop and you keep doing it, keep doing it here.
35:19
A lot of no's. And actually now in the last two
35:23
months we've rolled out this new product and it's just been like
35:25
this is exactly what we need. This is exactly what we need.
35:28
But it was, you know, a year of finding your way through a dark
35:34
forest and really having no flashlight and every kind of
35:38
clue in a different direction is you got to take a step in that
35:40
branch, evaluate, if not step back, move to another branch.
35:43
Does that answer your question of how to get deeper into that?
35:47
Because that's one of my favorite kind of antithetical
35:51
startup methodologies because most people think, build the
35:54
product and then everybody will come.
35:56
No, no, no, no. The biggest thing for us is
35:58
copy. How you talk about your product
36:00
is the magic words that helps people understand whether or not
36:04
it's going to help them in their day-to-day lives.
36:08
Well, I tell you what man, I, I love that story.
36:10
You're my hero. So you, you didn't have the
36:14
product, you go to the conference and you close the
36:16
first deal at the conference for a 30 day.
36:19
Do you remember how much you charge for that 30 day
36:22
beginning? I think it was like 3K or
36:26
something. It was nominal.
36:27
But really the idea is to get the buy in right because they
36:31
can talk. And this is the biggest thing
36:33
that I see with early founders is people will gas you up.
36:36
They'll say this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
36:39
I love this, I want it. But then when it comes time to
36:42
pay for it, they'll ask for a discount.
36:44
So they'll say it's not really a good time.
36:47
The way you know that a problem is so painful is when you don't,
36:51
you barely have a product, you have the framework for what a
36:55
solution would look like and they buy it right.
36:58
They put the credit card down. That is your your validation
37:02
mechanism is when they put that credit card down because they're
37:05
going to go through internal strife to circulate this with
37:08
the right people and they're constantly going to be thinking,
37:11
is this worth it? And so your job as a salesperson
37:14
is to understand so deeply their pain points and that one or two
37:18
things that's going to change life.
37:19
Forget about your 30,000 features.
37:22
Think about the one or two things that's going to change
37:24
their life and just harp on those.
37:27
Love it. Yeah, sell it before it's built
37:30
so you know, you have traction. It's it's the exact opposite
37:32
intuition, you know, for product LED growth, which these people
37:36
will fall in love with their solution, bury their head in the
37:39
sand, build the thing, wake up and be like nobody's buying
37:42
this. Why?
37:43
As opposed to just going straight to them?
37:45
What do you need? I'll, I'll, I've got that for
37:48
you. Sign right here and then rush to
37:50
go build it, you know? Yeah.
37:52
And I mean, you got to execute, right?
37:54
Because if you don't execute, then your name is completely
37:57
shattered. But if you have that confidence
37:58
yourself to execute and you understand, you ask the right
38:01
questions. I mean that's how you work it.
38:03
And I think the other thing is that, and I take a different
38:07
opinion on this than I did two years ago, is product LED growth
38:11
happens after you truly understand the customer.
38:17
Like, it is a byproduct, not an intent, right?
38:20
And so like going out and building is great, but you're
38:24
likely you're, you're basically showing them, you know, a roll
38:28
of like 30 or 40 different food items and they're gonna probably
38:32
pick 10. But really there's only one of
38:33
them that they really care about.
38:35
And so when you have too much, it's hard for them to decide.
38:38
It's like being at the Golden Corral, right?
38:39
What am I getting at the buffet? I don't know.
38:41
I'll get a little bit of everything.
38:42
But what did you really want? If I told you you could only
38:44
have one thing from that buffet, guess what?
38:46
Your brain starts thinking in a different way.
38:48
What matters the most to me? Am I really hungry?
38:50
Am I thinking about my health? And so that's how you really
38:53
start evaluating. Is this real?
38:57
Yeah, yeah. I mean you, you can't come out
39:01
of stealth and and rely on product LED growth.
39:03
You just because you know it, the the first iteration is going
39:07
to be pretty bad. You're going to need a little
39:08
bit of consolation be like, hey, I'm stay on, stay with me.
39:12
Let's keep this moving. Like you, you need a
39:14
distribution strategy. If you ask me, I think the
39:17
founder let I think what you're doing going on podcast is a
39:19
really smart idea. I think like putting yourself on
39:22
the out there and saying like, Hey, you know, you can trust me
39:25
because I'm putting the company on my shoulders.
39:28
I think that's probably the best go to market strategy.
39:31
You can. You can begin with and I will
39:34
say. Ryan, just to add to that really
39:36
important thing that I've seen is the hardest part about all
39:40
this is feeling like you're not making progress but you actually
39:44
are. You know what feels like you're
39:45
making progress is writing code and deploying product.
39:48
You know, what doesn't feel like you're making progress is having
39:51
a 30 minute argument with your Co founding team about what the
39:54
most important thing that matters to that person is like
39:59
really like the language is that first line that you got across
40:03
is you can pitch things a million different ways, but
40:06
there's only one way that really speaks to that person.
40:09
And so you feel like for a long time you're not making any
40:11
progress because you're not building.
40:12
You're not building, but the progress and the metric you
40:14
should align to is learning, right?
40:17
If you can align to that metric of I learned 2 new things every
40:21
single week about my client, and every four weeks, then I wrote
40:24
the line of code based on what I'm really really sure about.
40:27
That's when you got it and you got to trust in yourself.
40:29
You got to trust that your process is working and
40:31
eventually it will happen. You just got to be that person
40:34
that is headstrong and is so firm in their belief because
40:38
they've overanalyzed this thing and they deeply understand from
40:41
an emotional state, from a financial state, the life of
40:44
that customer. Then you got it.
40:47
You got to know what they have for breakfast every morning.
40:50
Love it. I love it.
40:52
OK, I forgot I was in the quantum round.
40:55
I got to get the quantum. Uaps, are they real?
41:01
No comment. Amazing.
41:06
OK. If you if I want to get into R&D
41:11
on the future of defense, I'm looking at where we are right
41:15
now and where the pucks going looks to be robots, AI attached
41:19
to things with atoms, drones, lasers, audio, defense
41:26
mechanisms, hybrid is very. Important right now.
41:32
Talk to me about like what? What are what's demand like as
41:36
far as defense goes? It's across the board.
41:40
There's a lot of demand across the board from what you think
41:43
about as traditional defense. So developing systems really big
41:48
right now is a tradability. So you're not going to build a
41:54
$20 million missile that can be taken out by a $10 drone that
41:57
someone 3D printed in their basement, right.
41:59
And so the, on the, in terms of the kinetic warfare side of the
42:03
house, it's really one, how can we make sure that our supply
42:07
chain is not a risk? Can we make sure that we get in
42:10
a consistent logistics environment, the ammunition, the
42:13
food, the support that we need to the war fighter as quickly as
42:17
possible? But then there's also, you know,
42:19
this whole realm of outside of defense training government
42:22
employees to use AI, right? Like government spends a lot of
42:26
money on training and they just, they don't know, right?
42:29
And so I think the easiest for anybody to jump in, especially
42:33
if you're an expert in a specific type of training, is in
42:35
that training environment. Outside of that, I mean, we're
42:39
moving towards unmanned submersibles, US VS so
42:42
completely unmanned submarines. We're moving towards UUVS, we're
42:47
moving towards really everything unmanned, but also in the cyber
42:51
realm. So cyber attacks, well
42:54
coordinated cultural attacks, right?
42:57
There's a lot of defense building in that infrastructure
43:00
layer, especially as it comes to AI.
43:02
Because AI is so new, we don't really have like a super robust
43:08
security posture around deployment and usage of AI.
43:11
Obviously there's a lot of moral issues at play here, like should
43:14
we give, you know, unmanned fighter jets full autonomy
43:19
debate is out on that front. But I mean, just look at kind of
43:23
how the government is going, right?
43:25
They really want the innovation of the United States at the
43:28
forefront. They really want to see these
43:30
non traditional defense contractors, what they call non
43:33
traditional defense contractors to get more companies involved
43:37
and kind of break the monopoly of the bigs who will charge
43:41
absorbent exorbitant amounts for a 10 year development life
43:45
cycle. No, they want it.
43:46
They want to request for prototype proposal in 30 days,
43:49
give me a prototype of the newest USB.
43:52
So that's kind of where we're trending.
43:54
And I think that and this will this will be kind of my theory
43:59
for the next three or so years. I see a disintermediation of Big
44:02
Prime and I think they know that and they're starting to become
44:06
more agile in their approach to teaming really being that kind
44:10
of frontline with the relationships.
44:12
And then beneath them as subcontractors are all these
44:14
individuals, specialized niche companies that can do the
44:18
specialized quick, rapid iteration work.
44:20
Outside of that, there's also a lot of manufacturing
44:24
revitalization happening. They want to bring a lot of the
44:27
manufacturing into United States and then you have a lot of kind
44:32
of adjacent areas. So chip manufacturing, raw
44:37
materials, like there's a lot happening in all facets.
44:41
And it's really hard to say because the government is so
44:44
large, but we can zoom in on a particular agency or a
44:47
particular branch of the military and understand what
44:51
their individual needs. Are it's interesting, I think
44:55
there is legislation about autonomous vehicles actually
44:58
being able to like, you know, fire on targets and things like
45:01
that, but it's probably written in pencil, you know, what are
45:09
what, what are some of the non traditional defense capabilities
45:13
that you're seeing that maybe we haven't heard about?
45:16
Yeah. So I would say a lot in kind of
45:19
the what we call commercial off the shelf components, COTS is
45:23
what the government calls it. Let's say 10 years ago, if the
45:28
VA needed a new CRM, they would typically work with a large
45:34
defense contractor and who knows and understands the government's
45:37
base, understands all the intricacies of security, and
45:39
they would build a homegrown CRM.
45:41
Now you'll see Salesforce just won a huge contract with the
45:45
government to go and deploy their CRM across across the
45:48
government. And so those are kind of like
45:51
some examples of, I mean, even learning management systems,
45:54
right? That's a big one that most of
45:57
them have been home grown for many years.
45:58
And there's plenty of commercial LMSS that just don't know that
46:01
this market exists. And so the government is really
46:03
trying to bring in a lot of these non traditionals.
46:06
I mean, even start-ups, right? A shout out to Ascari.
46:09
They were another startup in that works with us out in
46:12
Chattanooga through Brickyard, BC and they basically built
46:17
drone killing drones. That's all they do.
46:18
Their drone is super cheap, easy to manufacture, and all it does
46:22
is you launch it, it latches onto the drone, the enemy drone,
46:25
it takes it out. So I would say it's less about
46:29
being a Jack of all and more so understanding the requirements
46:33
from a very specific branch and understanding exactly what they
46:36
need. I mean, health, some company
46:39
deployed this is, and I think this is a great idea, a great
46:41
example. They deployed a drone that's
46:43
shaped like a football. So imagine like you're in the
46:46
field, you don't most of this advanced weaponry, you need
46:50
manuals and training on how to deploy a Hellfire or a jagged
46:53
missile. In this case, they pull out the
46:56
football, they open it up and they toss it.
46:58
They throw a six spiral, which most people in the military play
47:01
football on the side and they know how to throw a six spiral.
47:04
And so that just goes to show that understanding the customer
47:07
again becomes the core of all of this.
47:12
Dude, worst interception ever. You're like, no, I got it.
47:14
Oh, oh, wow. Amazing.
47:20
OK, I one thing I I picked up from talking to you is that
47:24
words are really important and you're very specific about it.
47:27
I'll just be interested in how you you chose the first words on
47:29
your website. Move fast, shape more, win bids.
47:33
I love that it's constant iteration, right?
47:36
We want to essentially speak in the language of our customer.
47:40
Shaping is a terminology that is not necessarily as well
47:44
socialized in the commercial space, but shaping is this idea
47:48
of, I know the Army is looking for a new unmanned submersible
47:53
in the next two years. OK, how do they talk about it?
47:56
Do they say attritability? Do they say interoperability?
48:01
Do they, does it align with the zero trust mandates?
48:04
And so we essentially did was we understood based on our
48:07
conversations with our client, the terminology and what they
48:11
care about. They know that if you just say,
48:14
hey, win more opportunities, they're going to write you off,
48:17
they're going to say, OK, everybody's promised that and
48:19
more. But if you say hey, help us
48:21
shape an opportunity, well, that's more feasible because I'm
48:23
already doing that. You're just helping me
48:25
accomplish that. So really like you'll see our
48:29
site is catered towards our customer.
48:31
If you're not in our customer's base, it's not going to resonate
48:34
with you and that's kind of the point.
48:36
Yeah, I love that. So shaping is 1.
48:38
It's industry jargon. They know exactly what that is.
48:41
And it's also speaking to like you can help them customize to
48:45
their reader, which ultimately is the end goal that they're
48:47
looking for. And there and then there's
48:49
speed, right? And the speed comes out as a
48:51
result of how our government acquisition process is changing.
48:55
Everybody's really aware that the traditional and what's
48:59
called Shipley methodology, which is a great framework for
49:01
long term captures, but it it starts to breakdown.
49:04
We only have 30 days to find an opportunity, shape it,
49:08
understand if you should go after it and put together a
49:10
proposal. Yeah, nice man.
49:13
Can I ask you a personal question?
49:15
These do by all means. Defense could be seen as a
49:18
controversial industry. Now, we don't live in a perfect
49:21
world. And I'm very grateful that we
49:23
have the defense in place that we do have, you know, but it
49:26
could create kind of maybe an ethical quandary with some
49:30
people. Have you ever had any kind of
49:31
ethical quandaries about your work?
49:34
For sure I mean back when I was working at Lockheed, I you
49:36
always think about like, hey, I'm developing this really cool
49:39
tech. What is it going to be used for?
49:41
I think at that point what you do is really hope that we put
49:44
and we have elections. We hope that we as a society,
49:48
and this is the beauty of the United States, is anybody can
49:50
get elected, right? And so we hope that all the
49:53
people in our society are voting for the people that are going to
49:55
be using this in the right way. So yes, it definitely comes up.
50:00
I would say more important to us is really defending our people,
50:05
right? Defending the United States and
50:07
making sure that the United States and our allies are
50:09
equipped with the utmost and the top of the line technology
50:14
because guess what? Our adversaries are not going to
50:16
stop. Our adversaries may not have as
50:18
many moral qualms as we might. So that's that's kind of where I
50:22
see that fitting in. Yeah, 100% man, I appreciate
50:26
that and thanks for talking about a little bit.
50:28
I mean, we don't live in a utopian society and, you know,
50:31
the rule of law is really the guy with the biggest stick at
50:34
the end of the day usually holds holds the ground.
50:37
So, you know, thanks for talking about that.
50:39
Now I want to give a shout out to Green Latinos because I know
50:43
this is an organization that is near and dear to your heart.
50:45
Tell me a little bit about Green Latinos.
50:47
Yeah, so Green Latinos, actually my Co founder Alfredo worked at
50:52
Green Latinos and they ended up being one of our first clients
50:54
when we were back in the nonprofit space.
50:57
We helped them find some diversely owned and operated
51:00
vendors, so marketing agencies, web development agencies to go
51:03
and push their, their desires, you know, onto the world, right.
51:09
So they essentially fight for political, economic, cultural
51:13
and environmental liberation. It's Latinos that really want to
51:16
make sure that the world of today that we have and the
51:19
environment that we have today is being passed on to our
51:22
children as such. I love it.
51:24
And I love that you have a Colorado branch.
51:27
Because Coloradans. OK, correct me if I'm wrong.
51:31
Hispanics speak Spanish. Latinos are from central and
51:34
southern South America. Is that correct?
51:36
Correct. Yeah.
51:38
Cool. Yeah, I believe that Coloradans
51:40
should be grouped into there. We are part of Mexico until
51:43
1856. We share our our regional
51:46
cultural and heritage that we share with the entire Southwest.
51:49
So I'm glad to see Colorado's represented there.
51:52
But what a cool organization and of course, we all want to to
51:55
work for a great environment for us and our kids.
52:00
Amazing. If people want to check this
52:02
out, prozol.com, check out what Nick's up to.
52:06
Nick, where's the best place that people can connect with you
52:09
online? Yeah, so on our website, you can
52:13
actually book a demo with me directly, and that should be in
52:17
their top right corner. Outside of that, you can also
52:19
hit me up on linkedinlinkedin.com/in/the Nick
52:23
Lopez. And then if you want to drop me
52:25
a line, feel free to shoot me an e-mail nick@prozol.com.
52:28
Happy to have conversations with other really intelligent people
52:30
working on cool things. Cool, amazing.
52:33
One more question. So you've got book a demo on
52:36
there. It feels like you're Tam is
52:38
pretty tight and it it seems like you're in data
52:42
intelligence. Do you already know who all of
52:45
your potential customers are? For the most part, there are
52:48
definitely some surprises, but for the most part, I would say
52:52
our customers that we don't know are those customers that are in
52:55
the commercial space that have a very specific capability that
52:57
they know they can sell to the government.
53:00
The government is asking for them, but they have no idea even
53:02
where to start. So if they are, you know, and
53:05
here's the big thing is you can take the Intel, but if you don't
53:08
have the personnel to act on that Intel, it's going to be
53:10
pretty much useless. So you do have to have the
53:13
ability to take on more work if we do help you win those things.
53:16
Yeah, 100%. Nick, thank you so much.
53:19
I really appreciate it. Yeah, Ryan, thank you so much
53:22
for having me. You have a wonderful rest of
53:24
your day and hopefully we'll be in touch soon.
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