Taking On Defense Networking From The Inside

Most of you are busy people, so here is the tl;dr — new, free defense networking platform coming soon by people who got tired of waiting for someone to build it. Join the waitlist below and help spread the word!

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A little more than a year ago, our team launched an industry connector for the Department of the Air Force. We had been working in the defense innovation space for years, and this was the natural culmination of that work. We had thousands of warfighters in need of critical technology, and soon, we’d have contract data for small businesses that had worked with the Air Force. How easy would it be to just connect them?

Much harder than you think, it turns out ... a lesson many before us in the government marketplace-building business have learned.

To make a very long story short, the challenge came down to usage. Our government users and small business users were in two different security environments, and success depended on ensuring those in the government (who operate in the more secure environment) actually showed up in the marketplace. Don’t get me wrong, we saw successes for government and industry users, and when it worked, it really worked!

But consistent usage was and is the key challenge.

The Farmers Market Dilemma

I liken it to building a farmers market. After all, when you remove the 1s and 0s, it’s really just about people transacting. Connecting those who need with those who have. What’s really the difference between a watermelon and weapon system at that level?

Markets are organic. They don’t occur spontaneously outside of demand signals. Put more plainly, you would never build your farmers market and then hope a town springs up around it. Of course, the opposite is true. Build where people are or otherwise have a reason to be, and the interactions will happen naturally. Why, then, do many marketplaces build in the digital forest, operating behind security barriers or hidden within programs?

Why not just make it easy for everyone?

I’ll be honest. It took a lot of introspection to come to that seemingly self-evident conclusion. And it has been the driving force behind our team's ongoing effort to do what hasn’t yet been done: make a single, low-threshold community space for defense and national security that brings everyone together to create real pathways for connection and collaboration.

Gatekeepers be damned.

There is a clear demand signal from every corner of the DIB, government included, to use social media to solve this problem. I know because I'm in so many of these groups, channels, and messaging threads. But let’s face it, LinkedIn or Facebook that allow anyone to join will never be the right place to talk about the challenges complicating our nation’s defense.

Welcome to the New Town Square for Defense

We are going to change that with Mission Cultivate—a new social networking platform for defense and national security coming later this summer. It’s free, GovCloud-secured, and only for verified users. MC will feel familiar. You’ll find posting to start valuable conversations. With Reddit-style communities, you can connect on topics of common concern. And with built-in messaging and shareable opportunities, you can collaborate in the same space where the conversation is happening.

We’re flipping the classic marketplace problem on its head.

We’re creating value for all users first, and we are confident the collaboration will follow naturally.

Why Us, and Why Now?

The collective engine of our national defense brings together everyone from government to research to industry to investors and beyond. I am convinced after years of working with government partners that this is never going to be a problem the government can solve on its own. Rightfully, the mission has to come first, and it just cannot open the aperture that wide. As a small business operating in this space, we have the experience (not to mention the in-house development team) and the understanding of the market to make a truly collaborative and thriving space a reality.

Everywhere we look, we’re seeing the need for something like MC.

My group is split between messenger channels.

I want a place to connect without having to know some secret password to get my foot in the door.

I’m part of so many marketplaces, and when I get in them, I feel like I’m the only one there.

We're on it!

We're building so much more than just a social network platform ... we're making a new way to connect the DIB without compromising security. Discrete. Secure. Free.

Reach out to learn more, help spread the word, and join more than 50,000 users on the waitlist ⬇️