Why QED invested in GovPort

We're thrilled to announce that we are co-leading GovPort's Seed round. GovPort is building a platform that allows government contractors to easily manage their certificates while laying the foundation for broader fintech solutions.

You may know that the U.S. government is the world’s largest employer, employing more than 2.8 million people. However, you may not have realized that there are 550,000 certified SMBs looking to win government contracts, employing at least another one million people. These SMBs won $145 billion of federal government contracts and $82 billion in subcontracts in 2021.

Every government contractor must prove and maintain compliance with a host of rules and restrictions. This is for good reason as the government has an obligation to ensure taxpayer dollars are put to work doing the most they can for constituents. The agencies a government contractor may interface with might include IRS, SBA, Acquisition and Sustainment, FedRAMP, ISACA, DCAA, GSA, and Defense Logistics Agency. For defense-related government contractors, the list grows even longer.

Today, government contractors have to manage compliance with all of these various agencies or they pay consultants to do this on their behalf. This is typically a very manual and tedious task on an ever-growing to-do list of a government contractor. Compliance management is a costly and mandatory exercise for every government contractor. If a contractor is in breach of compliance, they could lose their contract and face penalties for breach of contract.

The intricacies of compliance become exponentially more difficult when we inject the complexities of a prime contractor and subcontractor deal. If a subcontractor were to be in breach of a requirement or fail to maintain a certificate, the prime contractors’ entire contract could be at risk. With GovPort, government contractors can offload the tedious and time-consuming task of managing each others' compliance while staying on top of approaching deadlines and expiration.

Using GovPort, government contractors upload existing documentation and certifications to the platform. GovPort then generates various forms for compliance management, reports for counterparties and reminders of approaching deadlines and expirations, enabling prime contractors to manage their subcontractors' compliance and saving subcontractors time, money and headache. By managing compliance, trust is elevated and risk is mitigated; laying the foundation for deeper partnerships among contractors.

Eventually, this will position GovPortto be the operating system for government contractors – offering a suite of financial products and solutions. GovPort offers a win-win situation, and we couldn’t be more excited to be partnering with Tonio, Brendon, and Jason to make this vision a reality.