New York, NY - Dec 09, 2024 - Startup GovSignals announced today that it has raised a $5.5M seed round led by Unusual VC, and launched the first AI platform to automate the full process of finding and bidding on government contracts. 

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Traditionally, it's been difficult for private-sector companies to earn government contracts and grants. The process is time-consuming and complex, requiring large research teams and weeks or months of work for proposal creation. This has meant that only large companies typically pursue and win these contracts. Political connections tend to supersede great ideas, and many companies don't even engage because the process is so difficult and slow.

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"The current government contracting process is broken, and the next administration will likely be making major changes in government spending," said Lars Albright, General Partner at Unusual Ventures. "It's perfect timing for a new tech platform that leverages AI to accelerate the govcon process and ensure that the most innovative ideas and technology make their way to the government. GovSignals has the best technology and the right team to make this work."

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GovSignals removes much of the time and complexity of government contracting with its AI engine that constantly scans for new opportunities, flags relevant projects for users, and helps companies create compliant proposals with just a few clicks. In the first two weeks of using the platform, a GovSignals customer recently more than doubled the number of proposals submitted and found additional opportunities to apply for, with no extra staff. GovSignals can do in a few minutes what would take a research team months to do, and GovSignals proposals are fully compliant (meaning they cover every requirement that the RFP specified). 

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GovSignals has doubled its customer base each quarter in 2024 and works with companies of all sizes; moreover, GovSignals recently signed on a global top 3 consulting firm looking to improve efficiency for its govcon processes. Founded in 2023, the founders self-funded the first year with capital from their past successful exits. This new funding will help GovSignals invest in hiring and product development as it takes advantage of this unique moment in time.

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Other vendors in this space have pinpoint solutions (for instance, just grants, or just federal government opportunities) and mostly offer simple LLM wrappers that generate rough copy without writing to the government's requirements and understanding of industry nuances across the vertical. Only GovSignals handles everything from pre-RFP through submitting compliant proposals for federal, state, local, and education (SLED) government opportunities. And only GovSignals has Intelligence capabilities to surface potential opportunities pre-RFP and then connect them to a compliant proposal process.

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GovSignals was founded by four serial entrepreneurs with deep experience in government contracting, procurement and advanced AI:

• Derek Hoyt, GovSignals co-founder and CEO, spent nine years as a DIA Intelligence Officer before joining Palantir, where he led the SEC contract and rollout of advanced AI tech to the U.S. Marine Corps. He also managed Ultra's R&D engineering development proposals for Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon.
• Ethan Aldrich, co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO), has worked in the govtech space for eight years and studied AI at Stanford. He has delivered software to 100+ counties and states including prisons, police and local governments.
• Jeremy Doochin, co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), has founded and built several successful tech companies and served as Special Advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy, where he oversaw $34B in contracts. He also served as a National Director of the Sierra Club and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.
• Conner Aldrich, co-founder and CTO, has deep experience building and training LLMs and complex enterprise-scale AI solutions. His work spans high-performance computing, real-time inference systems, and fault-tolerant architectures.

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"There are two things we consistently hear from customers - the first is that they love our ability to automatically create proposals that are tailored to a company's core capabilities," said Hoyt. "The second is our ability to surface intelligence about potential procurement opportunities before the government even knows. Our aim is to ensure that the government finds the best ideas and technologies so the US can mitigate its current national security risk of slow and mismatched acquisition processes.”

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Message from the Founders

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About GovSignals

GovSignals is redefining who wins trillions in government contracts each year with the first AI platform to automate the full process of finding and bidding on government funding. In the past, the largest, often least innovative companies won contracts through outsized resources and political clout. GovSignals assembles and analyzes unstructured & structured data across the government to help the most innovative companies get in early in the process and then generate best-in-class fully compliant proposals with one click, condensing what used to take months of research down to minutes. Founded by a team with deep GovCon, procurement, and AI experience having built and led many large successful enterprises, GovSignals is on a mission to bring top-tier tech to companies whose products are vital to the US maintaining an edge in defense and global innovation. GovSignals is doubling its customer base each quarter and is working closely with the best US companies from small businesses to Fortune 500s to streamline every part of GovCon. Learn more at GovSignals.ai

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