The Department buys through a dozen doors. Most companies spend a year knocking on the wrong one.

SAM.gov, DIBBS, ECAT and DAPA, SBIR and STTR, MTEC, OTAs, service-level BAAs, and the program offices behind them do not talk to each other. The person who writes the requirement is rarely the person who has the money, and neither of them signs the contract. A product can be demonstrably better than what's fielded today and still never get bought.

The companies that make it through are not always the ones with the best product. They are the ones that understood, early, who the real customer was, which funding line could carry them, and which contract vehicle would move the money — and then worked that sequence with discipline.

• SBIR Phase II ends and nothing follows.No program of record picked it up, no STRATFI or APFIT bridge was set up in time, and the company is back to zero.
• The RFI that shaped the requirement closed before you heard about it.The vendors who answered it wrote the spec your competitor now matches.
• The demo went well and then went nowhere.The people in the room liked it. None of them owned a funding line.
• Eighteen months of conference travel, no contract.Relationships without a path to a vehicle are just expensive friendships.
• A pile of pilots and no production order.Units will test almost anything. Getting a program office to buy it is a different job.