NGA Accelerator: Two Year Reflections & Lessons Learned
The end of November marked the two year anniversary of the launch of the NGA Accelerator, the first of its kind in developing early stage dual-use geospatial companies for both commercial and government customers.
Over these past 24 months, Capital Innovators has operated the NGA Accelerator applying our time-tested CI Accelerator playbook to the geospatial sector while adding defense and intelligence specific components. To date, CI has operated three NGA Accelerator cohorts amassing 24 impressive alumni companies.
Retrospectively, we are discussing some of the learnings we have had from the first three programs and addressing ways we can create an even greater impact in the United States intelligence and defense ecosystem.
Agility is paramount - Early stage startups come in all shapes and sizes. Programs need to be agile and individualized to be effective. Despite our focus on Pre-seed, Seed and Series A - there was still a massive range in where companies were at with fundraising, team size, DoD relationships, and more. As a result, programming evolved after the first few weeks of general discovery to cover topics identified as growth areas for the companies both individually and as a group.
Advance funding is necessary - Early stage startups operate week to week and are worried about their survival on a daily basis. Government timelines and paths to contracting often exist on an annual timeline. It is hard for startups to justify allocating time and resources to exploring working with DoD customers without upfront and incremental funding. While it may mean an initial investment from DoD with a longer path to return, grants such as the $100,000 each of our alumni received are necessary to open the bandwidth of early stage founders to consider use cases with the government. In addition, having capital and/or contracts pre-designated and reserved for post-program funding would further encourage companies to continue the pursuit of servicing DoD priorities.
End user buy-in is critical - Each of the NGA Accelerator participant companies were paired with a group of end users within a directorate termed Champion Teams. Accelerator companies touched base weekly with their Champion teams which served as an extended period of customer discovery and learning. These sessions helped educate the founders, jumpstart new introductions, and guide their product development. On the flip side, end-users were able to get a glimpse into solutions that could one day become part of their daily work flow.
The more stakeholders the better - While the focus on the first three programs were with the NGA, we learned that there are a finite amount of contracts available and that not all companies ultimately fit mission critical needs in the near term. Over the three programs we began running workshops highlighting other opportunities in the DoD and IC, bringing in partners such as DARPA, DIU, and NSIN. While these workshops were successful in outlining new paths for these founders to pursue, we think the most successful program would be one that integrates the broader intelligence community into the core interactions to help these early companies find the best alignment. At the end of the day, it is difficult to know all of the challenges and needs of other agencies. Getting representation and support from other agencies would create a more complete and cohesive program, and hopefully lead to more startups continuing down the path of working with the DoD and IC.
Building a collaborative flywheel creates value - After all of the learnings mentioned above, a major observation was the value of collaboration created as the program began to mature in Cohort 3. By Cohort 3 we had a handful of alumni teams involved, providing their wisdom and networks. Throughout the twelve weeks of each of the three programs we also saw the cohort participants explore product overlap and collaboration with other cohort companies to develop joint solutions.
These takeaways from the first three programs were valuable and will be important lessons for future accelerator program development in the dual-use space. To continue on the improvement of the program, we want to meet with anyone and everyone involved in the defense ecosystem to find ways to involve them in the curriculum and help with technology acquisition within the DoD. As we await the next steps and future dates of the NGA Accelerator, we will continue to foster the growth of the 24 alumni companies. These young companies are the future of a more scalable and efficient national defense and intelligence strategy.