Sweetspot Streamlines Government Contract Navigation

Once we have successfully set our business up, the time comes for us to look for customers. Best case scenario, we manage to find loyal customers who keep coming back for our goods and/or services and quickly find more, but this isn’t always achievable, at least at the beginning.

For a more stable and predictable source of income, the option of bidding for government contracts, whether it be federal, state, or local, has also become an option for businesses. With government agencies being some of the largest consumers constantly in need of various products and services, winning government contracts can be extremely beneficial for businesses, as they no longer have to rely merely on private sector customers.

For the past few decades, businesses have searched for and procured government contracts by bidding through government agencies, specifically the System for Award Management (SAM) database. This method of procurement has started becoming outdated, however, with software improvement not being part of the industry’s list of priorities.

Y Combinator-backed startup Sweetspot, founded by Sachin Subramanian, Philip Kung, and Andrew Arkhipov, aims to change this, by creating a search engine sharing the same name that is specifically created to connect businesses to relevant government contracts in a very swift manner.

Government Contracts

Though the SAM database, which can be accessed through the SAM.gov website, isn’t the only source of government contracts for businesses to procure, the database is the biggest and most commonly used one. For decades, the database has become a very critical resource for entities like businesses, nonprofit organizations, and individuals looking to do business with the U.S. federal government.

The database is a centralized, official repository of information that allows entities to bid on contracts and receive federal grants by registering in SAM and going through bureaucratic processes. If the government needed assistance in fixing a broken bridge, for example, they would give businesses in the infrastructure industry the opportunity to start bidding for that specific contract instead of looking for one themselves since there would be countless businesses to search through.

The SAM is like a bridge between the government and a private business. It becomes beneficial to both parties as it allows the government to easily search for a private-sector business that can do work for them while also giving said business more income. However, the process of finding relevant contracts for businesses has become time-consuming and complex, thus frustrating, due to the database’s outdated and cluttered website.

Industry Software

SAM.gov requires users to rely heavily on keyword searches, which often lead to irrelevant results. If we search for lawn care contracts, for example, the results can be less than ideal. Finding the perfect contact for your business may take hours, and with a clunky user interface, the experience may not be too enjoyable either.

When there are already complicated steps that businesses have to follow to fulfill a contract after winning the bid, we can imagine that they wouldn’t want the search for the contract to be as equally convoluted. Yet, this is exactly what SAM has made contract searching become, which can be extremely discouraging, especially for small businesses.

What Sweetspot does is create an AI-powered search engine that allows businesses to find relevant contracts with a single query. For example, when we search for lawn care opportunities, the most relevant contracts would show up at the very top.

Sweetspot matches the services or goods a business provides with the best and most relevant contract using an AI lookalike search. What this means is, that the search engine would look at the descriptions of contracts a business has bid on in the past and search for similar open contracts.

Upon using the search engine, businesses can fill out a form that asks about their business, what the business specializes in, what goods or services they provide, as well as their target region. The form then acts as an AI profile that will tailor the searches specifically for their business.

The AI lookalike search will not only simplify the search process, as businesses would no longer need to come up with multiple keywords that might not even amount to much of anything, but it also shortens the process. Sweetspot claims that businesses can find relevant contracts three times faster than using SAM.gov with this search engine. Sweetspot’s software can also craft contract proposals for users.

Contracts and Grants

Though Sweetspot only covers federal contracts at the moment, the startup has plans to expand Sweetspot’s dataset to include state and local contracts, widening the opportunities for businesses.

To smoothen the search process, Sweetspot has a list feature for users to keep and manage the contracts they want to bid on in case there are plenty to choose from. It also has advanced filters that allow users to search for contracts based on NAICS* codes, Set-Aside Codes*, Solicitation Types, and so on.

*NAICS: The North American Industry Classification System, the standard used by Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments to collect, analyze, and publish data related to the U.S. business economy.

*Set-Aside Codes: Codes used in government procurement to designate certain contract opportunities for businesses based on socioeconomic factors. Used to support small businesses, disadvantaged groups, and economically disadvantaged areas.

When users have something else to tend to elsewhere and can’t stay at the search engine, Sweetspot is featured with scheduled queries and email alerts. Users can schedule daily queries and have new relevant contracts sent straight to their inboxes to navigate through at a later time. Most recently, Sweetspot has begun to support government grant searches, allowing those in the academic sector to look for relevant government grants in any field.

Sweetspot raised a Pre-Seed of $500k from Y Combinator and is backed by 1984 Ventures, Soma Capital, L2 Ventures, and Pioneer Fund. With the funds raised, Sweetspot aims to further update its search engine by creating an AI proposal writing tool for users to respond to RFPs* and soon adding SBIRs and STTRs* to further support businesses and startups.

*RFP: Request for Proposal, a business document that announces a project, describes it, and solicits bids from qualified contractors to complete it.

*SBIRs and STTRs: The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), programs that encourage small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development with the potential of commercialization.

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