Tim Goltser and Curtis Mason, co-captains of their high school robotics team, have been collaborating and creating together for years. The two joined forces once again in college, along with Sean Doherty, to develop a scheduling app called Hang. However, their entrepreneurial drive did not stop there.
As the year 2022 rolled around, Goltser, Mason, and Doherty found themselves itching to tackle a new venture. After carefully considering various ideas, they decided to tap into a market that was largely unaddressed: providing tools for small businesses to secure U.S. government contracts.
The federal contracting community has seen a shrinking of the small business industrial base for much of the past decade.
Doherty explained to TechCrunch, “It’s hard for these companies to compete against giants like Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman. It’s also expensive for them to bid on contracts – if they don’t win, they may run out of cash.”
Securing government contracts is a time-consuming and complex process, filled with labyrinthine systems and mountains of paperwork. According to Doherty, it can take weeks to complete and often, the most successful companies are those with the most resources.
In a 2023 survey by Setscale, a purchase order financing startup, small business owners cited insufficient cash flow, working capital, and a lack of time and resources as their biggest obstacles in securing government contracts.
To provide a boost for these small businesses, Goltser, Mason, and Doherty founded GovDash – a platform that streamlines government contract capture, proposal, development, and management processes. In 2022, GovDash was accepted into Y Combinator, and Goltser even dropped out of college to devote himself fully to the endeavor.
Essentially, GovDash is a contract proposal generator. The platform utilizes generative AI to automatically search for relevant contracts and craft proposals based on the requests for proposals.
GovDash can sift through solicitation documents to identify requirements, requested formats, evaluation factors, and submission schedules for contracts. It can also determine which contracts a business may be qualified for based on their past performance, sending alerts to the desired inbox, says Doherty.
- GovDash’s Resourceful Solutions for Small Businesses
- GovDash diminishes time and resources needed to secure government contracts
- GovDash uses AI-powered proposal generation
- GovDash checks relevancy and requires human review for quality control
“Generative AI is not perfect,” Doherty acknowledges, “but GovDash has implemented extra measures to ensure accuracy and efficiency.”
Companies now have one place where their business development data flows seamlessly, with an AI agent at its core to automate tedious workflows.
According to Doherty, the platform undergoes cross-checking and heavy human review at each stage of the proposal-generating process to ensure quality. Although these steps are not flawless, he asserts that they are superior to many other competitors’ methods.
While GovDash faces growing competition, such as Govly and Hazel, both backed by Y Combinator as well, Doherty remains confident in their ability to stand out and expand.
With investments totaling $12 million from investors like Northzone and Y Combinator, including a $10 million Series A funding this month,GovDash plans to strengthen its engineering team, employ additional federal proposal managers to assist in product development, and implement new capabilities into its current platform.
GovDash, headquartered in New York with six employees, is currently working with about 30 federal contractors across the U.S. Doherty states that the company is “nearing” the point of being cash-flow positive.
“We’re focused on building lasting solutions for our customers,” Doherty notes. “And we have the financial support necessary for future market success.”
