If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the Pentagon is way too bureaucratic and siloed, especially when it comes to engaging with industry.
Most of the proposed fixes to the Pentagon’s red-tape hellscape revolve around faster procurement, prototyping, and fielding. Seattle-based software startup Integrate is trying to solve a different bottleneck: how programs are actually managed. This week, they raised a $17M Series A led by FPV Ventures to help scale their classified network project management platform across the DoD.
Race to integrate: Launched in 2022, Integrate was the product of Air Force veteran and space sector alum John Conafay’s firsthand frustration with the stovepiped project management systems that contractors and their partners in the Pentagon used to collaborate and stay on the same page.
“I’ve literally had a customer overlay two PDF printouts to compare schedules before, and other tools just don’t enable you to work with external organizations while keeping the data separate,” he told Tectonic. “After 10 years, I realized that nobody was going to build software that allowed you to manage external organizational relationships, schedules, and inputs seamlessly…so we built a solution that allows you to do all that in classified environments.”
Classified collab: Integrate’s platform is all about making sure teamwork makes the dream work. Their software:
- Works across both classified and unclassified environments with clearance controls to streamline coordination between contractors and Pentagon program managers.
- Allows program suppliers and customers to share schedules, live updates, and interact with each other to keep things running as smoothly as possible (which, when talking about the Pentagon, should be taken with a big ol’ grain of salt).
- Is the only collaborative project management platform deployed on the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), the Pentagon’s top-secret network used to transmit classified information.
That platform, Conafay said, allows government and commercial users to “identify risk and see smoke before there’s actually fire, whereas usually it’s largely backward looking,” and they’ve seen some momentum with commercial and government customers already.
Last June, the startup snagged a $25M Space Force contract with the Space Systems Command, where Conafay said it’s used within the launch PEO to “manage satellite missions directly with external commercial customers on the exact same platform.”
Scale up: With $17M in fresh funding after the Series A, Integrate has their eyes on getting their software into more earthbound users and “accelerate the launch of new product capabilities to government customers” to “meet the needs of the defense tech sector.”
“We know this has deep applications within the Navy and maritime industry, as well as aviation and automotive beyond that,” Conafay said. “There’s really not a customer that can’t take advantage of or use our software within the government.”