Getting Beyond Innovation Theater

If you’re a startup founder trying to break into the Pentagon, you’ve probably already heard the usual advice: get a meeting, demo your product, win a pilot, apply for SBIR, rinse and repeat. That playbook might get you early traction—but it won’t get capability into the hands of a warfighter at the speed the world now demands.

I’ve operated on both sides of this divide: as a commander responsible for getting life-saving solutions to units downrange, and now as a CEO working with hundreds of companies and government teams. The truth is simple and uncomfortable: government and industry aren’t hostile to one another—they’re speaking different languages, running on different clocks, and optimizing for different outcomes. If we want to work together in the national interest, both sides must change how they show up.

A resource that can help is the 2025 PEO Directory created by Steve Blank, co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, and published by GKC, BMNT and America’s Frontier Fund. It offers startups and investors a playbook and blueprint for the Pentagon’s buying offices, contracts, and programs. We believe it will change the way startups, investors, policymakers, and the Department of War work together.

Steve and I recently spoke with A’ndre Gonawela on his Burn Bag Podcast to unpack why selling to the Pentagon is so incredibly hard, why the PEO Directory changes that, and what companies and problem solvers can do to improve their chances of success. Here are some takeaways from our conversation.

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It’s Not B2B—It’s an Entirely Different Operating System

In the commercial world, the user, the buyer, and the budget are often sitting in the same building. In the Department of War (DOW) the users, buyers, budget setters, and requirements writers are different organizations with different incentives and timelines. If you behave as if this is enterprise sales, you’ll talk to the wrong people, at the wrong time, with the wrong message.

• ‍Users ≠ Buyers. Users know the problem and context; buyers own the authority and money to act at scale. Winning love from users is necessary, however in the public sector, it is not sufficient.

• Budget and Requirements are upstream. Appropriations and requirements shape what buyers can do. If you never engage those paths, you’ll stall after a flashy demo.

Founder takeaway: Stop assuming “one more pilot” equals progress. Your go-to-market strategy must choreograph users, buyers, requirements, and funds—in that order, or very deliberately out of it.

Innovation Theater Is the Enemy of Impact

We have more incubators, accelerators, and demo days than ever, yet far too many aren’t connected to acquisition dollars or a path to deployment. They generate applause, not outcomes. When I ran the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, I measured success by impact and leverage: a $120M annual budget helped catalyze $1.5B in work to solve urgent battlefield problems. That’s a 10–15x multiplier. If a billion dollars poured into an “innovation entity” yields $1.1B of activity—we failed.

Government takeaway: Fund to outcomes, not optics. Tie innovation money to dollars that can be directly obligated, contracting pathways, and transition plans before you approve the first “experiment.”

The Most Expensive Resource Is Time

Friction isn’t a single roadblock; it’s a thousand ankle-biters that add months to obvious decisions. A recent real example: a team found a fix for a problem costing ~$50M/year. All they needed was $250,000 in licenses to test at scale. It took nine months to move the money—enough time to burn tens of millions continuing the status quo.

A Takeaway for both sides: Treat time as a key performance parameter. If “faster” is part of the requirement, your processes and behaviors must change to “make faster possible.”

Myths That Waste Your Runway

• ‍“Dual-use” is the destination. For most startups, dual-use is a funding strategy, not an outcome. Use government dollars (e.g., SBIR) to iterate with real users and preserve equity; scale later with the right product and channels.‍
• “We’ll be the next SpaceX.” Unless a billionaire is underwriting your patience, you won’t brute-force the system. You must navigate it.‍
• “Government should act like a VC.” VCs concentrate capital in a few winners. The DOW must solve thousands of problems, many of them time-critical. The mindset shift isn’t “be a VC” but “be an accelerator of companies that can repeatedly deliver,” which means writing contracts that help firms become durable suppliers—not just funding a cool demo.

The Underused Weapon: Contract Strategy

Contract strategy is your oxygen plan.

• Don’t anchor on one vehicle. Money moves fastest through the least painful legal path available to the buyer you’re talking to. If they can’t access your vehicle, you don’t have a path.
• Maintain multiple vehicles (FAR and non-FAR) that match where you are: R&D, prototyping, production.‍
• CEOs must understand the FAR, DFAR, and non-FAR options well enough to drive sequencing decisions. If you outsource this entirely to BD, you’ve ceded control of your company’s destiny.

When I ran REF, I kept an Excel grid of vehicles, cycle times, and fees. I chose speed when lives were at stake and cheaper paths when time allowed. Founders need the same discipline.

How to Actually Work Together (Action Lists)

What Startup Founders Should Do

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2. -- Map the stakeholder chain before your first meeting. Who sets requirements? Who owns today’s money? Who owns tomorrow’s? Which PEOs and programs buy at scale?
3. -- Use the 2025 PEO Directory as your starting grid. It’s part phonebook, part playbook. Use it to identify the right program offices and senior buyers, then tailor your message to each point in the chain. (And yes—read the 30-page preamble on go-to-market paths.)
4. -- Sequence your asks.
   • • With users: validate the mission problem and context; secure access and data.
   • • With buyers (PEOs/programs): align to requirements, budgets, and contract vehicles; negotiate a transition plan before the pilot starts.
   • • With requirements and budget influencers: ensure your solution shows up where next year’s money will be.
5. -- Run a “technical terrain walk” for yourself. Before you propose, do the hard interviews across cyber, CIO, data owners, test, and sustainment. Identify the ankle-biters upfront and build them into your plan.
6. -- Build an explicit contract strategy. Keep two to three viable paths open (e.g., OTA, IDIQ task order, CSO, SBIR-derived sole-source) matched to the buyer’s reality.
7. -- Instrument for impact. Quantify time saved, dollars avoided, lives protected. You are selling outcomes—make them legible in the metrics that government actually tracks.
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What Government Should Do‍

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2. • Publish—and own—the phonebook. Opacity benefits adversaries and incumbents, not the nation. The PEO Directory exists because startups (and many inside the building) can’t see the system. Make it official, current, and searchable.
3. • Tie innovation to acquisition. Shut down “innovation” activities that lack a path to obligated funding. Demand a transition plan and contracting route before the demo.
4. • Measure leverage, not spend. For every dollar you appropriate, what multiple did you mobilize and transition? Make that the scorecard.
5. • Pre-compute transitions for experiments. No combatant command should start a pilot without a documented pathway to a buying office and vehicle.
6. • Teach PMs to assess startups. Train program managers to run technical terrain walks, interrogate claims, and build ecosystems (interfaces, data, test ranges) that let multiple companies plug in and compete continuously.
7. • Remove recurring friction. When you see the same roadblock 10 times, fix it once—centrally. Don’t make 10 teams invent the same workaround.
8. • Publish—and own—the phonebook. Opacity benefits adversaries and incumbents, not the nation. The PEO Directory exists because startups (and many inside the building) can’t see the system. Make it official, current, and searchable.
9. • Tie innovation to acquisition. Shut down “innovation” activities that lack a path to obligated funding. Demand a transition plan and contracting route before the demo.
10. • Measure leverage, not spend. For every dollar you appropriate, what multiple did you mobilize and transition? Make that the scorecard.
11. • Pre-compute transitions for experiments. No combatant command should start a pilot without a documented pathway to a buying office and vehicle.
12. • Teach PMs to assess startups. Train program managers to run technical terrain walks, interrogate claims, and build ecosystems (interfaces, data, test ranges) that let multiple companies plug in and compete continuously.
13. • Remove recurring friction. When you see the same roadblock 10 times, fix it once—centrally. Don’t make 10 teams invent the same workaround.
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Where the PEO Directory Fits

For a decade, our Hacking for Defense students asked, “Who do we call? What’s the path from MVP to fielding?” We built the 2025 PEO Directory to answer that at scale. It’s not a silver bullet, but it removes the blindfold. Founders can stop throwing darts and start sequencing the right conversations, in the right order, with the right asks. Combatant commands can identify stakeholders before they experiment. Program offices can see adjacent buyers and line up transitions.

Use it to:

• Identify the senior buyers (PEOs) and the programs under them that actually obligate dollars.
• Align your message to where you are on the patient vs. impatient capital spectrum.
• Build a stakeholder map that spans users → buyers → requirements → budget—and then plan your contracting approach accordingly.
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A Final Word on Accountability

Founders: master the system well enough to drive it. If you don’t understand the acquisition pathways and contracting options, you’re burning cash and ceding control.

Government: your job is not to run a talent show; it’s to write contracts, move money, and scale capability. If your processes can’t do that quickly, fix the processes—not the rhetoric.

Our adversaries are not waiting for our org charts to settle. The national interest demands that we collapse the distance between a good idea and a fielded solution. We’ve done it before under fire. We can do it again—on purpose.

Download the directory here, map your path, then tell us how you used it—and what friction you hit—so we can keep revising the playbook together.

Catch the whole conversation here, or follow along by topic at the timestamps below:

• 2:06: The way the Pentagon does business is not the same as the commercial world; it’s like speaking two languages.
• 4:31: In government contracts, end-users and buyers may have completely conflicting interests.
• 6:21: How working with DoW has improved … and what still needs work
• 9:10: Patient vs. impatient capital approaches
• 12:47: The state of the Pentagon’s current innovation system
• 19:21: Why should founders who want to sell to the DOW care about what a PEO is?
• 25:08: Two recognizable trends in DoW innovation, discovered when building the Directory.
• 30:17: The entry point for companies who want to sell to the Pentagon.
• 39:08: The biggest roadblock impeding smaller companies, startups and dual-use tech companies.
• 42:13: The biggest myth about startups selling to the DOW, and the biggest myth that DOW has about itself.

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