Michael Guggemos’ Post

Be the outlier. Again, for visibility. There is a tradeoff between quality and quantity in terms of networking and relationship building. When you think of your strongest networks, they most likely include shared experiences. Events such as school, prior jobs, service, and church come top of mind. If you are veteran and are looking to advance your business abilities and career, “Business Readiness for Veterans” via AZNext is a shared experience with a clear purpose and benefit. -         Tuition free, but effort intense. If you’re active duty, reserve or received an honorable discharge, you’re already paid up. -         Executive, entrepreneur, and C-suite facilitators, most are veterans. -         Leverage your military attitude and training to serve as a business asset. -         Remote attendance feasible, on-site is best. You will learn from executives and world class leaders and build relationships with other veterans over the course of 5 weeks. This is interactive, discussion-based learning. Commit to 12 – 15 hours a week and you will be better off for the time and experience. I recommend you continue a wide variety of networking efforts, but don’t overlook the Benjamin Franklin when you are picking up your Lincolns. (i.e. Tripping over the $100 bill to pick up a penny) HireMilitary, Veterati, Veterans Helping Veterans, DAV (Disabled American Veterans), The American Legion, Career Connectors

🗞 Great article of the Harvard Business Review summarizing how software companies can enter the 🇺🇸 U.S. Defense Market and validate product-market fit! Thanks Jeff Decker & Eric Li! My key takeaways👇: ➡ Three factors make the defense market a much more appealing vertical for U.S. software startups today: 1️⃣ Speeding the procurement and integration of emerging technologies thanks to: new commercial-friendly organizations (Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) & AFWERX), software-specific procurement processes (ATOs & Platform One) and cloud software certifications (FedRAMP, GovCloud partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS)) 2️⃣ the United States Department of Defense is a stable customer maintaining a consistent and large budget, with high switching costs for their software solutions 3️⃣ Private capital investors are increasingly supporting companies in the defense market in areas like cybersecurity and AI which enable investors to capture ROI ➡ How to tackle the defense marketplace: 1️⃣ Use commercial traction to secure early defense revenue by achieving commercial product-market fit and securing non-recurring revenue (grants, SBIRs, APFIT, etc.) but not mistaking non-recurring revenue for success 2️⃣ Use existing channels to get to recurring revenue faster by leveraging the position of prime defense contractors 3️⃣ Build a dedicated team to scale defense sales 4️⃣ Finding the right investor backing #Defense #USA #AI #Software #GTM https://lnkd.in/eqNUNtyF

The KPMG global organization is proud to receive the 2023 Microsoft Global Defense & Intelligence Partner of the Year award. KPMG was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in #innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft #technology. KPMG US collaborated with Microsoft to create a leading #5G smart warehouse solution built on Azure and Dynamics 365 for a federal agency. It incorporates new and emerging technology to help improve mission readiness and operational efficiency by controlling and managing the warehouse through a single integrated function. With this 5G smart warehouse solution, federal agencies can achieve advanced capabilities, helping to dramatically reduce labor costs, improve auditability and accountability, improve safety and increase speed of inventory processes. Learn more about this recognition here: https://lnkd.in/e6McyzmE #KPMGModernGovernment #KPMGAlliances #KPMGProud

Curious to learn more about #DefenceTechnology ❓ Make sure not to miss this amazing piece of content co-written by my colleague at AVP (AXA Venture Partners), Eric Li.

This is nothing short of masterful. Wish I'd had this 30-ish years ago -- and especially about 14 years ago, at the outset of my DoD acquisition-focused EMBA journey. I engage with industry a lot (probably more than some people think I should), and have for years. It's honestly been something of a secret weapon for me in my professional life; and I frankly enjoy engaging people vastly smarter than I am - it's an always-on free education. I tend to prefer engaging with technical/engineering reps - to get into the meat and potatoes of a product, a tool, a system protocol, an architecture or a design model. From the earliest days of my career, I've suffered something of imposter syndrome, since that day as a young LTJG when a Vanderbilt-educated MSEE-holding Navy Captain of considerable renown in the Cryptologic Community quizzed me upon reporting into his staff as to whether I was "technical." The only right answer was, "No Sir, but I like to learn." Often the BD/sales/marketing folks show up in my office along with the engineers and computer scientists. Over the 25 or so years I've been keeping an open door on this, I think if I was paid $100 for every time I went to the whiteboard to essentially train a BD lead on some aspect of this "selling to government" challenge, I probably could have easily retired a long time ago. Most companies suck at this; some are astonishingly clueless about most of it. While I often get free training on deeply technical subjects, I often give free training on BD and selling to the DoD. I'm thinking of a new requirement for any industry player to get on my calendar. You have to read this in its entirety first. It's like a mini master's degree in DoD acquisition, contracting, competition, colors of money, understanding how spending decisions actually occur in our moribund and sprawling bureaucracy. The piece is long, and will stimulate probably at least a few weeks of look-ups. Industry friends: Read it, and do the look-ups. If you're in DoD-related industry, or aspire to be, this could be the best thing you read this year. Especially if you're a start-up or still small. Some quotes of the piece: Re competition. "Now, keep in mind, even if you do ALL OF THE WORK, creating requirements with end users, working it up to the customer, getting them to put it in their budget and then put out a contract to buy it, 99% of the time you will still have to COMPETE for it. Sorry, that's called equality of opportunity, don't like it, move to Russia." Re the DoD acquisition bureaucracy itself. "Save the complaints, there's a library-worth of studies, reports, and white papers talking about how bad the system is. You have two options: 1. learn the rules and play the game better than the next person. 2. go find an easier industry."

Team, I'm incredibly grateful for the huge amount of support you all provided as I move to start up the #innovation directorate at Team U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC). But let's talk about what that actually means. We aren't entering into enterprise contracts for the command or finding IT solutions or making decisions for the headquarters writ large. We are a directorate supporting the larger staff, and not a decision maker for the entire command. So what do we actually do? Our job is exactly what I laid out in our Innovation Playbook at HRC (find it here: https://lnkd.in/dbVC2ij7). We're developing a USAREC specific version, so stay tuned. We are here to: 1. Intake ideas and IDEATE to identify the initial problem; 2. DESIGN an actionable plan for creating value; 3. Develop a PROTOTYPE that we can test with real users; 4. Evaluate the needed resources, governance, and buy in to SCALE; 5. Effectively work with stakeholders to INTEGRATE the solution; 6. Design an approach to ASSESS the solution and propose new ideas. When we get our feet under us, we'll be taking in ideas on our cooperative idea platform with Army Enterprise Marketing Office (AEMO) and filtering those for experimentation and evaluation, and then you'll see us developing requirements, needed resources, and workflows to pitch for decision to scale. In the next couple weeks, we'll make our idea platform more broadly available for those who want to help us solve the problems of the Army recruiting enterprise. But remember, you'll be submitting those ideas for our test entity to run in small batches, not for the enterprise to adopt immediately. And this is different than submitting a response to an RFI/RFP. If you're game, well, we're risk takers and experimenters. We'd like to hear what you've got. We're here to take on the things that the larger enterprise hasn't tested yet, and run evaluations for them for decision. Let's try this out! DM me here or email on my enterprise email. #ArmyInnovation #TalentAcquired #ArmyRecruitingInnovation

A Case Study of Transforming an IT Consultancy into a Market Leader Your Service Offerings are great. Until they aren't. It's the common issue, either not winning clients, or not profitable in delivery, something is broken in your IT Consultancy businesses model. But what happens when you hit the ceiling? The lack of opportunity or services becomes a bit of a grind and there is no obvious path to grow without adding more overheads, staff, risk, cost, and personal time. Andy is a CEO/Managing Director of a small, midsize Microsoft partner company and I talked to him about how using The Everest System ™ has transformed the way he does business and his income. If you're offering an Outdated Service Offering or not sure how to package your services and take them to market there are plenty of gold nuggets in this interview: https://vist.ly/35gik To your success Ian 'value extractor' Markram

A Case Study of Transforming an IT Consultancy into a Market Leader Your Service Offerings are great. Until they aren't. It's the common issue, either not winning clients, or not profitable in delivery, something is broken in your IT Consultancy businesses model. But what happens when you hit the ceiling? The lack of opportunity or services becomes a bit of a grind and there is no obvious path to grow without adding more overheads, staff, risk, cost, and personal time. Andy is a CEO/Managing Director of a small, midsize Microsoft partner company and I talked to him about how using The Everest System ™ has transformed the way he does business and his income. If you're offering an Outdated Service Offering or not sure how to package your services and take them to market there are plenty of gold nuggets in this interview: https://vist.ly/35gii To your success Ian 'value extractor' Markram

🌟 Thrilled to shine a spotlight on AvePoint, a company that helps you collaborate with confidence in your digital work place. AvePoint has been a consistent game-changer, revolutionizing the way organizations harness the power of technology. With a focus on Microsoft 365, data management, and security, we've been a trusted partner for businesses worldwide. Connect with me here and lets talk about #digitaltransformation #innovation #datamanagement #leaders #Microsoft365 #cloudsolution at any time!

We asked CompTIA Community leaders and industry experts to share their predictions for the next 12 months on new technologies, workforce trends and economic expectations. Here’s what they had to say. #CompTIACommunity