San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Consultants link startups with military research contracts
While he was a contracting officer for the U.S. military, including Air Force cyber teams in San Antonio, Sam Rein learned that his acquisition team was falling behind its competition in adopting new weapons technology.
“That was causing the
DoD to lose an arm’s race,” Rein said. “If it takes us nine to 12 months to put something on contract, there’s already a new iPhone generation that comes out during that time, and whatever we sought out was obsolete by the time we bought it.”
In late 2020, nearly a year after leaving that position, Rein leaned on such experiences in launching SBIR Advisors Inc. The Boernebased consulting firm focuses on streamlining connections between tech startups and the Defense Department, and is named after the federal Small Business Innovation Research program that many of its clients tap into to obtain government contracts. In 2021, the company, with 35 employees across Texas, helped private sector clients across the U.S. obtain about $100 million in government work.
Last year, SBIR Advisors, formed by military veterans, worked with 120 clients involving about $160 million, including five San Antoniobased clients that it helped win about $50 million in contracts. An additional $4.6 million was awarded last year to nonprofit research institutions, a group that includes a close partnership with the University of Texas at San Antonio’s National Security Collaboration Center.
The company’s clients are “on track” to secure at least $200 million in military contracts in 2023, Rein said.
“Probably the same percentage of work will go toward San Antonio clients,” he said, noting that the company has garnered about $5 million in contracts for local companies this year.
Bridging gaps with SBIR
Typically, the Defense Department forecast budgets 12 to 18 months ahead, Rein said. Large companies like Lockheed Martin — the nation’s largest military contractor — have the financial resources to wait out the snail-like contract cycles, but startups, which generally survive quarter to quarter and have to show traction to investors, rarely have that luxury.
Rein said his company has been “bridging the gap between now and the next fiscal year” by pursuing
SBIR contracts and contracts through the Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, program. Both programs are designed to help startups secure funding from government customers.
“The DoD is thinking about what they want to buy in 2026 right now. If you’re a startup founded in 2026, it’s two years late because they came up with the funding requirements two years ago,” he said. “So SBIRs and STTRs provide this pot of money that government customers can tap into and leverage to get access to technology that wasn’t on their radar two years ago and is on their radar now.”
The programs are highly competitive. And that’s where Rein believes his company, with its military veterans and former contractors, has an advantage.
“We’re not in the business of spamming the government with as many proposals as we can,” he said. “We only want to bring the DoD technology that they want and need, so when we call, they actually answer the phone.”
Toward that end, Rein said, SBIR Advisors is “selective” in accepting clients, taking into account “gaps” and “needs” in Defense Department portfolios and working with various venture capital firms to identifiy potential matches between his clients and the military.
At present, the company has a growing number of startups in its San Antonio portfolio, which includes Knight Aerospace and Renu Robotics.
“It’s been a pleasure working with the various military officials during the SBIR process, and we’re excited about the future,” Renu Robotics CEO Tim Matus said via email. “The research and development we’re doing is aligned with our work with current customers, as well as the military.”
San Antonio-based Knight Aerospace — which builds containers outfitted as medical suites for military aircraft, among other products — recently won $3.75 million in SBIR contracts from the Air Force Research Laboratory to build futuristic cargo containers for rockets. The Defense Department has grand plans to deliver military and medical supplies around the globe at top speeds.
Luke Perkins, Knight Aerospace’s director of engineering and innovation, credits SBIR Advisors with helping the company “get our new technology to the right people in the DoD.”
Quickening the pace
The Defense Department trails the private sector in its ability to create and adopt new technology.
The government launched the Army Futures Command in 2018 to focus on ways to quicken the pace of developing weapons and getting them into soldiers’ hands. The following year, Austinbased venture capital firm Capital Factory launched its Center for Defense Innovation.
In April 2022, Capital Factory announced that it would expand the CDI program to a new space at Port San Antonio’s Boeing Center at Tech Port. The thought behind expanding to Port San Antonio is that the program could connect tech companies to the city’s large defense commands and defense industry, particularly those on the Port’s 1,900-acre campus, which has a network of major companies in cybersecurity, aviation, biomedicine, military intelligence and logistics.
Rein and his staff want to continue working with local clients. “San Antonio is abundant with diverse and large customers here.”