I've done a lot of road trips with it around the US for a few years now--it gets really spotty outside of larger towns. On the other hand, it's great to get off a plane in a different country and have a working connection to the internet.
I just registered on SAM and submitted a bid (something unrelated to this), but no idea what I was doing, I mean I put together a plan, had meaningful past performance, but overall I'm just hoping for the best. Would you happen to have any resources you followed? Or, suggestions that you believe led you to submitting a successful bid?
There are Procurement Technical Assistance centers in every region of the country. They are staffed by former procurement officers, and help companies learn how to sell to government and prime contractors.
I was just looking into it a few hours ago, do you have a good experience with them? Just as many people on here I've been through different forms of office hours, one of them with a locally run entrepreneurship center, I saw an attorney (that was years ago before I could properly afford one). I know the guy volunteered his time, but basically what he said was "hey, give me a portion of your company, and I'll provide you with services", I came away with absolutely zero advice. That's why when I was looking into it today, I was a bit skeptical.
I saw a presentation from one of the people from the local office. Her advice seemed reasonable: Go to the procurement conferences, get a one-pager of the capabilities of your firm, and talk to the purchasing agents. See government contracting as a supplement to your business revenue, not the core.
Custom database product for EPA, seemed like a good fit. While I have no connections to EPA, I do some collaborative work with bio-engineering department at a university in Chicago, I'm a data scientist/developer/have a small team, I thought I'd try dipping my toes in something new.
Any technical people you were able to have discussions with in preparing your bid would be good places to start with follow-on conversations.
An acquaintance with a setup similar to yours does well with a virtuous cycle of rolling SBIR and STTR results into his commercial products, which fuel more SBIR wins. He also does lots of legwork in the form of hand delivering white papers he’s written in office calls with customers and potential customers during site visits.
People do business with people — particularly those we like, know, and trust — not companies and agencies. Find someone whose headache you can make go away. Keep the conversation moving.
This is a patient person’s game. Sometimes you’re planting seeds that will bloom later.
SEEKING WORK - Chicago area or remote Full-stack web developer and freelancer with 10 years of experience and a math background looking for work in the Chicago area. So far I’ve specialized on digital startups, and have worked with clients out of Chicago’s 1871--I love building MVPs. Throughout my work I’ve also been involved in helping startups build the back end of their application, design and optimize their websites and develop their business. Interested in short and long term projects. While working with me you'll also get access to a copywriter and an artist/designer.
Primary Specialties:
- MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular.js, Node.js)
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), including Wordpress
- Server set up on: CentOS, Solaris, Ubuntu, and Debian
- Data analysis in R and SAS
All of my development is responsive. In the past, I’ve worked on e-
commerce sites, social networks, mobile versions of websites, and other projects. Here are some publicly available examples:
http://loadcost.com - Node.js (JavaScript), data analysis model written in R
SEEKING WORK - Chicago area or remote
Full-stack web developer and freelancer with 10 years of experience and a math background looking for work in the Chicago area. So far I’ve specialized on digital startups, and have worked with clients out of Chicago’s 1871. Throughout my work I’ve also been involved in helping startups build the back end of their application, design and optimize their websites and develop their business. Interested in short and long term projects. While working with me you'll also get access to a copywriter and an artist/designer.
Primary Specialties:
- MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular.js, Node.js)
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), including Wordpress
- Server set up on: CentOS, Solaris, Ubuntu, and Debian
- Data analysis in R and SAS
All of my development is responsive. In the past, I’ve worked on e-commerce sites, social networks, mobile versions of websites, and other projects. Here are some publicly available examples:
http://loadcost.com - Node.js (JavaScript), data analysis model written in R
Full-stack web developer and freelancer with 10 years of experience and a math background looking for work in the Chicago area. So far I’ve specialized on digital startups, and have worked with clients out of Chicago’s 1871. Throughout my work I’ve also been involved in helping startups build the back end of their application, design and optimize their websites and develop their business. Interested in short and long term projects. While working with me you'll also get access to a copywriter and an artist/designer.
Primary Specialties:
- MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular.js, Node.js)
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), including Wordpress
- Server set up on: CentOS, Solaris, Ubuntu, and Debian
- Data analysis in R and SAS
All of my development is responsive. In the past, I’ve worked on e-commerce sites, social networks, mobile versions of websites, and other projects. Here are some publicly available examples:
http://loadcost.com - Node.js (JavaScript), data analysis model written in R
Full-stack web developer and freelancer with 10 years of experience and a math background looking for work in the Chicago area. So far I’ve specialized on digital startups, and have worked with clients out of Chicago’s 1871. Throughout my work I’ve also been involved in helping startups build the back end of their application, design and optimize their websites and develop their business. Interested in short and long term projects.
Primary Specialties:
- MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular.js, Node.js)
- LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), including Wordpress
- Server set up on: CentOS, Solaris, Ubuntu, and Debian
- Data analysis in R and SAS
All of my development is responsive. In the past, I’ve worked on e-commerce sites, social networks, mobile versions of websites, and other projects. Here are some publicly available examples:
http://loadcost.com - Node.js (JavaScript), data analysis model written in R
It's a great product, unfortunately (for us) the price has been steadily rising. When I first signed up it was $20/month for everything now I think it's $40/month.
I don't think it's about intelligence, I'm from Chicago, I know a lot of incredible people from the top schools, but I've also met plenty of the "less intelligent" people from Northwestern and University of Chicago.
I believe it could be about being able to get your way in into the right circles. Getting in into an ivy league school is usually challenging, unless you're born into money, you have to figure out a plan and correctly execute it in order to get in--just like meeting the right people, starting a business, and then getting funded.
Also I think we like to associate and surround ourselves with people of the same background. So when a successful Harvard graduate sees another Harvard alumnus, there is an automatic desire to help out.
"Getting in into an ivy league school is usually challenging, unless you're born into money, you have to figure out a plan and correctly execute it in order to get in--just like meeting the right people, starting a business, and then getting funded"
You do realize that the planning for getting into an Ivy League school has to start at around age 14, right? At that age, whether you'll be able to "execute a plan" to get into a school (or even have the perspective to care what school you get into) will 100% depend on whether your family is rich and privileged itself.
Poor kids don't think about going to Ivy League schools at age 14. And neither do rich kids. Only rich kids' parents do.
I was thinking about getting into a top school at this age, although I was thinking CalTech and MIT for science instead of the Ivies, and while they were a special case (as in, not really planning on spending anything to speak of on our educations), my rich parents were very much not. Of course, one of the reasons for that was I'd been told for as long as I could remember that I had to study and make good grades or I'd end up "digging ditches" as a career.
Heinlein wrote a book, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel that you tend to read at about that age which has a hidden sub-agenda of telling you exactly what you need to do to get into one of those schools. Hmmm, his first juvenile also touches on it, but its much more of an aside.
