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Comment by Edmond | Hacker News Reader

The federal government is generally biased in favor of large entities that'll be around in 20 yrs because that is the timescale over which the government operates, which is why their technology is always significantly behind.

As a startup your best bet is partnership with the big guys, meaning you'll have to craft your solutions in a way that it can piggy-back on all the checklists (things like FeDRAMP) the big guys already have checked.

Don't even get me started on the bureaucracy full of people whose sole purpose for existence is to ensure nothing can get done:)

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Not true. 23% of all government money goes to small businesses. Over 30% in certain agencies and up to 60% in some. Like I've been saying here, you need to take the time to learn the market because if you don't, you will just believe it is stacked against you when it really isn't and is actually more friendly to smaller companies than certain commercial markets.

My response was in relation to a VC funded startup business, that is very different from the "small business" segment you're referring to.

There are loads of "small business" entities out there who get government business merely by being in existence and meeting the sizing requirements.

I however wouldn't quit my job to start one of these because these are really just people grazing on the federal acquisition process and provide in most cases little to no value, it is not much money either.

I know this because I have experience with working on government projects where you can easily have 20+ contractors involved and it is not clear what their roles or input are to the project.

question:

are most of those small businesses partnered with larger entities on RFPs to win those contracts/money?

A large percentage of them are. When starting out many small businesses exclusively work as subcontractors to larger entities which must partner with smaller businesses to meet set asides.

Some contracts require the prime contractor to be a small business. Often when this is the case and the contract is large the small business acts almost purely as a pass through to a larger contractor. Taking a percentage off the top and filling a couple of slots on the contract while the larger contractor does fills most of the slots and takes the majority of the money.

true in some cases, but some set asides require the small to do a certain percentage of the business

Which is why I said often and not always.

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