Asserting the 2025 version of the DoW PEO Listing. On-line right here.

Consider this PEO Listing as a “Who buys within the authorities?” telephone e-book.

Discovering a buyer in your product within the Division of Conflict is difficult: Who do you have to speak to? How do you get their consideration? What’s the proper Go-To-Market Technique? What’s a PEO and why ought to I care?

Ever since I co-founded Hacking for Protection, my college students would ask, “Who ought to we name within the DoW to allow them to know what downside we solved? How can we present them the answer we constructed?” In the previous couple of years that query stored coming, from new protection startups and their traders.

On the identical time, I’d get questions from the brand new wave of Protection Buyers asking, “What’s the perfect “Go-To-Market (GTM)” technique for our startups?

PEOs, PMs, PIAs, PoRs, Consortia, SBIRs, OTAs, CSOs, FAR, CUI, SAM, CRADAs, Primes, Mid-tier Integrators, Tribal/ANC Corporations, Direct-to-Operator, Direct-to-Discipline Models, Labs, DD-254… For a startup it’s a wholly new language, new buzzwords, new companions, new guidelines and it requires a brand new “Go-To-Market (GTM)” technique.

Work With the DoW
Beneath are simplified diagrams of two of the various paths for a way a startup can get funding and income from the Division of Conflict. The primary instance, the Affected person Capital Path, illustrates a startup with out a working product. They journey the standard new firm journey by way of the DoW processes.

The second instance, the Impatient Capital Path, illustrates a startup with an MVP and/or working product. They ignore the standard journey by way of the DoW course of and go on to the warfighter within the area. With the rise of Protection Enterprise Capital, this “swing-for-the fences” full-speed forward method is a Lean Startup method to develop into a subsequent technology Prime.

(Notice that in 2025 promoting to the DoW is prone to change – for the higher.)

Promoting to the DoW takes time, however a well-executed protection technique can result in billion-dollar contracts, sustained income, and technological impression at a nationwide scale. Current protection contractors know who these DoW organizations are and have groups of individuals monitoring budgets and contracts. They know the trail to getting an order from the Division of Conflict. However startups?

Why Write the PEO Listing?
Most startups don’t have a clue the place to start out. And promoting to the Division of Conflict is not like any enterprise or B-to-B gross sales course of founders and their traders could also be acquainted with. In comparison with the business world, the language is totally different, the organizations are totally different, the tradition of danger taking (in acquisition) is totally different, and most significantly the go-to-market technique is totally totally different.

Amazingly, till final 12 months’s first version of the PEO listing there wasn’t a DoW-wide telephone e-book accessible to startups to determine who to name within the Conflict Division. This lack of knowledge made sense in a world the place the DoW and its suppliers have been a intently knit group who knew one another and expertise innovation was taking place at a sedate decades-long tempo. (And assumed our adversaries didn’t have entry to our DoW net pages, LinkedIn and ChatGPT.)

That’s now not true. Given the fast tempo of innovation outdoors the DoW, and new distributors in UAS, counter UAS, autonomy, AI, quantum, biotech, et al, this lack of transparency is now an impediment to a whole-of-nation method to delivering innovation to the warfighter.

(This lack of knowledge even extends internally to the DoW. I’ve began receiving requests from workers at a number of Combatant Instructions for entry to the PEO Listing. Why? As a result of “…it might be highly effective to incorporate a database of PEOs to hyperlink to our database of Necessities, Gaps, and Tracked Applied sciences to particular PEOs to name.”)

This can be a basic case of info asymmetry, and it’s not wholesome for both the more and more pressing wants of the Division of Conflict or the nascent startup protection ecosystem.

Our adversaries have had a whole-of-nation method to delivering innovation to the warfighter in place for many years. That is our contribution to assist the DoW compete.

2025 PEO Listing Version Notes
The primary version of this doc began solely as a PEO listing. Its emphasis was (and is) the worth of a startup speaking to PEOs early is to get indicators on what warfighter issues to resolve and whether or not the DoW will purchase their product now or sooner or later. These early conversations reply the questions of “Is there a necessity?” and “Is there a market?”

This 2025 version of the PEO Listing makes an attempt to seize the key adjustments which can be occurring within the DoW – in organizations, in processes and in folks. (For instance, the PEO workplaces of the three largest new protection acquisition packages — Golden Dome, Sentinel and Columbia – will report on to the Deputy Secretary of Conflict, relatively than to their respective Providers. And the SecWar killed the cumbersome JCIDIS necessities course of.)

What this implies is that in 2025 the DoW will develop a brand new necessities and acquisition course of that can determine probably the most pressing operational issues dealing with the U.S. navy, work with business earlier within the course of, then quickly flip these into fielded options. (That additionally means the Go-to-market description, folks and organizations on this doc shall be outdated, and why we plan to replace it frequently.)

What’s New?
This 2025 version now consists of as an introduction, a 30-page tutorial for startups on how the DoW buys and the varied acquisition and funding processes and packages that exist for startups. It offers particulars on find out how to promote to the DoW and the place the Program Government Workplaces (PEOs) match into that course of.

The Listing now additionally consists of details about the components of the federal government and the laws that affect how the DoW buys – the White Home Workplace of Administration and Price range (OMB), and the Federal Acquisition Rules (FAR).  It added new workplaces corresponding to Golden Dome Direct Reporting Program, DIU, AFRL, DARPA, MDA, CDAO, OSC, IQT, Military Transformation and Coaching Command, SOCOM, and others.

To assist startups perceive the DoW, for every service we added hyperlinks to the group, construction, and language, in addition to an inventory of every Service’s Normal Officers/Flag Officers.

Appendix B has a linked spreadsheet with the names on this doc.

Appendix C has an inventory of Enterprise Capital corporations, Company Buyers, Non-public Fairness corporations and Authorities businesses who spend money on Protection. As well as, the Appendix consists of particulars concerning the varied DoW SBIR packages, an inventory of OTA Consortia, Partnership Middleman Settlement (PIA) Organizations, and Tribal/Alaska Native Company (ANC) Corporations.

Appendix D now lists and hyperlinks to the navy and state FFRDC take a look at facilities the place startups can conduct demos and take a look at gear.

Appendix E added an inventory and hyperlinks of Protection Publications and Protection Commerce Exhibits.

Appendix F has an inventory of all Military system contractors.

A number of reminders:

• That is not an official publication of the U.S. authorities
• Don’t rely on this doc for accuracy, completeness or enterprise recommendation.
• All knowledge is from DoW web sites and publicly accessible info.

Because of this 12 months’s companions serving to to keep up and host the Listing: Stanford Gordian Knot Heart for Nationwide Safety Innovation, America’s Frontier Fund and BMNT.

This version of the PEO Listing is on-line so it may be up to date as the most recent adjustments develop into accessible.

Ship updates and corrections to updates@americasfrontier.com

You may entry and obtain the total doc right here.

Filed beneath: Company/Gov’t Innovation, Gordian Knot Heart for Nationwide Safety Innovation, Hacking For Protection, Nationwide Safety, Expertise Innovation and Nice Energy Competitors, Enterprise Capital |