Hack (Apart) Your Career — How to Fund Doing What You Love

so as some of you who follow me on Twitter now I'm a marine spouse I've served in the Marines as the spouse of a marine captain for the last 25 years and one thing that I've really tried to do with higher ground is make sure that we invite the veteran community to hear about other people's stories but also hear about unique stories about funding their own companies or finding their career or changing careers somebody I interviewed was a hospital corpsman in the Navy but then because of his home lab that he was building he ended up leading a cybersecurity practice for a major DoD company so it's always great for me to hear that story

we also higher ground and besides Las Vegas board voted to at least provide five veteran badges so that veterans can come in and experience the be size community totally you know on gratis for the the community we start that I started that program also at blackhat so it's it's really a passion of mine so when I saw this young man's and you're young cuz you're younger than me proposal about serving in the Navy but then going through his career and then starting his own company and finding ways to fund it I figured that this would hit two points within the community people who were interested in starting their own company and also successful that veterans going on to go

on into a career in cybersecurity so for no further ado thank you for your service

and so let me just take a look at the time can you all hear me okay deciding to be closer all right okay go to what all righty so I'm John so hopefully you're in the right spot so we'll be going over a whole bunch of stuff really quick but I wanted to make sure I gave you all something like tangible to take away so I'm gonna try to fly through this as fast as possible and still leave time for questions and just to say I wanted to use the phrase hack apart since it's so cheesy so many times ever since I used to have an email feed for the word hack and then like one out of

every 100 it's like wife gets angry and hacks apart her husband so I'm so happy I was able to check that off my bucket list so first a little bit about me because that's kind of the impetus of this talk as I mentioned before I was in the Navy seven years had nothing to do with cyber I was a Korean linguist I was really shitty at that I was then a postulant wrist which I was less shitty at and then moved over into counter-terror so the analysis side and a little bit of cyber but no no training I was a German major in college and so of course when I got out during the first sequestration in 2013 I went to

the corporate side because they said hey what do you know about computers and servers I said I speak pasta too and they said cool you're hired you should definitely come like set up people's Sims so I did that for a while learned a lot of good things spent about eleven months at a big firm then moved to a startup just quality of life issues right big firms are great they have good money quality of life work-life balance not usually the best so then I went back to the I went while I went to the Department of army went back to the gub side did some freelance stuff I went on the actual offensive side so by this

time I had went and I got another bachelor's degree in something computer ish that was whatever but I learned a lot of great stuff and I went back to army cyber work like I said work in the operations department so what I kept noticing is I really dug the mission when I was in right because you're not worried about revenue you're not worried about like the bottom line for dollars right you're really focused on the mission but it doesn't pay terribly great and in true army fashion there was a pay Steffes or after like a year itch there I then did some more freelancing this did a startup of my own and that's where I'm at now so that's kind of what it

feels like day-to-day but it's ok right because it's a little bit more fun and actually don't work that hard so so again so going back to why we wouldn't want to work for ourselves right so I kind of tried to focus on like do I enjoy every day like doesn't mean every day has to be like an amazing like life-changing day but there was a guy when I got out of the Navy during like went about processing briefs he had been I want to say a pilot and Vietnam could have been Korea I'm not sure if he was that old shot down prisoner war right it's been it's been a while but he would always he

was just like super jovial guy I knew would always be like I never have like any bad days like some may not as be as good as others right because he's like I never had a bad day and I was like yeah I'm sure after being like stuck in a cage for like come on so and right like like it shifts your attitude so that's kind of what I was trying to I set out to do when I went off into my own company I just really I noticed like I kind of like didn't care where like customers would call me and like they have some sim that goes down at like midnight and they're like hey man we

need to serve her back on I was like cool but that could wait till you know like the Sun comes up I like I don't care but you can't really tell people you don't care right so I was looking for that balance and so then I kind of like the current state of affairs I feel like the cyber security cyber whatever realm has kind of redefined and reshaped and then a lot of us kind of blew it so we said like yeah we want all these like super cool perks and we're going to be paid a ton of money and we want all this really nice stuff but you can work us to death right like we'll do 80 hours a week so

long as like we feel like we're kind of in charge and like it to be like the coolest kids in the room and we felt like right into the same trap right and that to me is kind of a waste so I see a lot of people at these conferences like big conferences little conferences I see a lot of people that have a lot to offer that are generally kind of marginalized for one reason or another and it certainly the bottom line right like the companies we work for generally like are there to make money so that doesn't lend itself really well to doing stuff outside of the norm and utilizing people straight right so enough of that things could be

better okay so in this talk like I said I want to give you all something tangible something to take away so funding sources my goal is to give you all a strategy where to look who to talk to for these types of funding sources also a grants a lot in this it's not really grant money and I'll show you why it's not really great many folk but for all intents and purposes it's great money alright so when I wrote this I was like let's break down the big picture and then I realized I'm totally not breaking down the big picture I am breaking down like the offshoot of one branch of like the big picture but it's

like a big picture desk so ok what I'm going to focus on our air for small business set-asides this is kind of how its laid out so within the DoD within the government there are things called SBIRS or sippers right sp ours are our servers our small business set-asides it is a pot of money that people that you've given to certain groups right everyone from like NIH to do Eid air for you all the service component everybody usually has some way to get their hands on super money STTR we're not going to go into SCT ours are for non small businesses but for people that want to spin off tech from research institutions right so from colleges or whatever so

we're going to focus on sippers small business need to be under 500 people can't have a current contract for the tech you're soliciting with that agency so you couldn't double tap the airforce right if you already had to deal with the Air Force and US owned for the most part right US citizens ok so now under the super umbrella there are a couple groups although this is by no means all of them that are kind of like the tech accelerators the incubators whatever the people that are supposed to go out and kind of like make all the connections and they've all come up at different times and so some of them have a lot of

overlap but some of them say they do the same thing but they do it way differently so the ones leaving it eff works cyber works I would say maybe now AFRL which is research labs wedge is it that there's a smaller one and then Kessel run is a software it's kind of a software partnership in with the air force where they bring in industry and then they kind of co-locate and solve some of the problems so if you're looking for what I tend to think of as some of the better ones we'll focus on these companies and then the subset of that of what kind of proposals like what do their RFPs look like open

calls traditionals I'm not going to get into the traditional as much at pitch days the open goals and pitch days are almost the same thing except in pitches as an in-person component so I'm not really going to go into that just know that what I say applies to pitch days just put it in person component so an open call right we're gonna walk you through a proposal for that sure it's still doing good on time all right so an open call generally the way these things worked on the traditional side was hey we have this problem we need like a red teaming tool we need a whatever tool right we need like body armor could be anything what do you have

that can fit that named or where can you build us right and show us that you can build it an open call this backwards it says what do you have that's like super hot in the commercial side and how can they never force to use it now give us a pitch on that and we'll give you a bunch of money so or it's a bunch of money to me we'll give you money I guess bunch is subjective all right supers go in phases phase one customer discovery feasibility which is like their catch-all term they give you money for three months right it is usually a fifty or seventy-five thousand dollar cap that doesn't mean you have to work full time

right for three months but it means in the three months you need to come out with an air force customer that's going to say hey I really did what they have I'm willing to do a POC on it right and so that leads you to a phase two phase - just think of it as a paid POC so when I first came across this I was like holy this is awesome like who pays for a POC well they Air Force does and so the rough idea twelve to eighteen months POC it's about a $750,000 cap you can get matching funds so if people bring in investor money they'll match it so you can take a million from an investor you

can take a and then 750 from the Air Force if there's an Air Force customer that actually wants to do it because remember this comes out of Air Force Research money not the customer money so there's ways you can actually like kind of like exponentially your money on that should wrap up in a year year and a half you can do it for short some people do for four to six months it's a paid POC Phase three takes it out of the green money so out of the R&D money and it rolls it into a legit GSA sole source contract key we turn there right is sole source right not open though the people to bid and

snake you on your technology and the work you've done you will own that for however long you negotiate for it so there's a little bit of work to do but I will say this is like the easiest process if you've ever been forced to do like a GSA RFP proposal like those are the worst ever this one the way you start right you got to have a small business incorporated somehow you go through getting a Duns number you get a cage code get a same stuff not important what that is start with the silver side I'll give you it walks you through all of it right the leg work to get this is maybe like a day tops the wait time

though is like six weeks for the government to process all your stuff so just keep that in mind all an open-call consists of a fifteen slide pitch deck so if you're already a small company already wrapped in some sort of product odds are you already have a fifteen slide pitch deck by a five-page tech ball which is not much of anything there's a couple of boilerplate things right background you can expand on the tech if you need to and a cost ball and to business info takes like 15 minutes phase 2 so for that paid POC same thing 15 slide pitch deck 15 page tech ball in case you really need to break out what

you're doing you need to include like statements work stuff like that again you're getting paid to do all this so if you've already gotten to phase one that's what you're doing in the phase one just writing this this takes again like a day 100 second video because I really suck at making videos is by far the hardest part and you have to come with a customer MOU right you come with the air force customer like I said this is hey this is super cool we're not going to pay for but we'll let you pay us right so then that like kind of run a trial with this stuff these are the sites the two sites I would recommend

the top one not to be confused with the other super site which I have no idea why the other super site exists this is the one you go through it's the portal for all this stuff you start to log in here it walks you through all that other stuff I told you about the second one is specifically the app works version it's just more explanation about what they're looking for oh and Twitter just follow these groups on Twitter they all have a huge Twitter presence I community and networks okay love in minutes Community Network so a big part of why I'm in this now had nothing to do with me going out and knowing about any of this stuff there's

a group called deaf or deaf X I really don't know if the X is still on there I don't know how to explain it they're a group it's a lot of beauty it's a lot of ex-military it's a lot of current military they don't really back vendors it's just networking but it's like everybody it's kind of like the new mafia that wants to replace replace like the old mafia so like they're trying to push out a lot of like or get the focus off of like the Lockheed's the booze islands and they'd be like no well we'll do the same thing but you know we're cooler and younger so they've been awesome they have a slack channel it's

fantastic you can go in there I found tons of customers that way there overall just really good people okay so this is my info I am totally here to help ten minutes I've I'm totally here to help anyone that wants help I've done it for a couple folks so far it's gone really well we've got a couple folks you know moving onto phase twos now totally for free I have no problem doing that the only thing that I always saw was like the unspoken rule was I please don't be an like if you're just like a really shitty salesperson and can't make your quota I think like I'm gonna help you beef up your numbers like I'm not going to do

that and please don't call me at midnight to talk work I will totally talk to you at midnight but not about work so that's my that's my info a like I said if you if you want to talk more about it and actually like write one together these things are super quick and in fact after this email or this evening it's like six to seven there will be a couple people from the Deaf group that I'm just going out and meeting up and having drinks with will be ad is pub 365 set the name put spots that's here so just look at the yellow hat and feel free to come over and talk shop no 67 so I'll just be hanging around on

there's not anything formal at all okay so I want to leave make sure I get the questions in case there are any but I could talk ad nauseam about this so there's a whole bunch I didn't cover questions

sure so everyone has their own brands of sippers right the Air Force with their open calls though made it a lot more attractive to someone like made they're quick so a normal suburb is about 20 pages it's a white paper with about 10 that you actually have to write so it takes a little bit longer right maybe a week but the Air Force came out with this open call it blew up the first time they were like a hundred of us it applied and I think like 50 of us got it the second time there were like 300 that applied this last round which was the fourth round I have like 1600 applied or something crazy premise huge so the word

is that what I don't like about it is that now groups because their reviews are small business set-asides the Lockheed's the the bowings and all that pull back companies and be like oh no we're not here we're just helping them but they'll make all the connections and take a take a piece and then you get a bunch of the same-old same-old in there why I kind of rather see some more diversity the Navy is starting to do this they tried to put out a version I'm not really sure what it was attending this really Shady page and I really don't want to enter my info in and it was on Facebook and that's okay and then

army is starting to do really good stuff they opened up in awe at Austin office for a army advanced labs I think they're doing something like this where you essentially do like a quick page of like here's a pitch and then they will contact you if interested and work you through the same process because they have all the same authorities but yeah Navy is still a little bit further behind I will say I'm not sure if they know how to quite do this the nice thing about this is that if anyone's ever worked a normal GSA contract it takes months like a year to get awarded from the HAR my submission time to the time I

went under contract was like two weeks which is unheard like that's just that just don't happen so they are really they're really moving fast on this stuff I mean they they now have hundreds of companies in there doing this seven the whole thing is like it's okay to fail like we they're totally expecting to toss out you know a thousand solutions by 900 will not make it that's okay because they tried they give the money out there if there was a need it should have been met you would hope right the link has been made and so they're okay with having a hundred really great solutions if 900 fail so they do so you can

petition for feedback although their force now just like packages it in and it's usually something along line so if you know commercialization wasn't strong you have to show that you have a commercial route for this sometimes I'll get really random feedback and have to go back and are you sure this is the right person that I go sorry sometimes they just have too many good proposals right we've been on plenty of lists being like hey you were number like 101 out of 100 sorry like a fine next time maybe we'll like it more so but you do get feedback which is really good because the more you the more you submit the way better odds you have of way have

you encountered any processes that are open to non-us citizens or u.s. owned companies so this one in limited fashion is but there are caveats right you either have to have like US partner or something like that I haven't seen any that have been totally funded through the DoD by non-us groups however groups like the deaf community I always feel so weird saying that they have on there's like we have their people from all over the world that come to these conferences and like just at network I've seen people do work with them from outside so like one was like the Swedish on it something was totally random but this really nice general that came in and

they're they're like this big right so they're able to work really easily with small companies so I've seen more through there but not through us beauty I don't know I don't know if any

so sure so you said are there any preferences for selecting criteria for veterans so there are spots were they will so the question is kind of are there like special selection categories that would influence right the selection of your company or their wards so yes and no it is not like GSA where a certain portion has to go to you know service-disabled veteran-owned women of the whole SD vo whatever however there's like a checkbox when you go through the portal that asked you for those so I'm assuming it is factored in somewhere but it is not as transparent or as widely used I think it's like a GSA one all basis so did I have to come

up with any additional funding to kind of run away this whole thing No so I started submitting when I was still with my old company super long story there they were okay with it but yeah so I just started writing these up on the weekends if I grab a six-pack and type up some proposals and when I started winning I was like hey guys I'm gonna fit time for me to move on but that's how I rolled into it because once you're in face ones would be a little hard to live off of right if you're giving up maybe like 40k for a little but 750,000 I was able to make that go a pretty far

distance right so yeah once you're in it and then yeah it's just snowballs after that right I've won multiple ones you've got that pressure off you so you had no additional backing up to this point

thank you [Applause]