Hard tech is hard, and the money you raise to build it can quietly decide which customers you are allowed to serve. This week on GovCon Unscripted, Mollie Jahner makes the case that most defense founders reach for venture capital by reflex, when a stacked strategy of non-dilutive federal, state, and local funding, plus smart teaming, gets them further with more control.

Host Chelsea Roberts sits down with Mollie Jahner (Mission Cultivate, founder of Raise, formerly founder/CEO of Spring & Forge) on capital stacking, why the wrong investor can trip a CFIUS or foreign-ownership review and block your end customer, how teaming unlocks solicitations a single company cannot reach alone, and where Raise fits in helping founders find non-dilutive money faster.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:00 Why working moms make great operators

3:00 Getting government and industry in the same room

6:00 Founding Mission Cultivate and the Raise platform

10:00 Teaming and consortia: unlocking bigger contracts

13:00 The capital stack: non-dilutive funding beyond VC

15:00 The VC trap and the wrong kind of capital

18:00 Why human relationships beat AI noise

21:00 Who Mission Cultivate serves and the Raise launch

26:00 Wrap-up

Resources:

• Follow Mollie Jahner
• Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

• Raise Website
• Mission Cultivate's Website

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

🔹 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GovConUnscriptedUS

🔹 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/govconunscriptedpod/

🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/govcon-unscripted/posts/

🔹 JOIN OUR #govcon #community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14618490/

Everyone reaches for the free federal databases. Almost nobody reads them correctly, and the wrong read sends a whole pursuit in the wrong direction.

In this week's episode of GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea Roberts sat with Eileen Kent, the Federal Sales Guide and President of Custom Keynotes, LLC, who has pulled the SAM ad hoc report thousands of times over twenty years.

She walks through the free public data that most contractors misread: why “place of performance” often shows the vendor’s address or the manufacturer’s plant instead of where the work lands, why “dollars obligated” is the only money figure worth trusting, why a string of negatives is usually an adjustment rather than a vendor being pushed out, and how to hunt for patterns of who buys what you sell from whom.

She makes the case that AI and paid aggregators can accelerate a bad decision because they cannot interpret dirty data, and that the deal is still closed in the field, through relationships. She closes on the discipline she cares about most: a real bid/no-bid process, and the strength to walk away when there is no relationship.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro · 01:00 The Three-Step Program

02:30 Early tools (FPDS, USASpending, FedBizOpps, CCR)

06:30 Free vs paid · 07:30 The place-of-performance problem

12:00 Inside the SAM ad hoc report

15:00 Reading patterns (DHA, VA VISNs, CMOPs)

20:00 The 2025 shift of commodities to GSA

23:00 Why outreach bots fail

28:30 Dollars obligated and negative adjustments

33:00 Bid/no-bid discipline.

Resources:

• Follow Eileen Kent's LinkedIn Profile
• Follow Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn Profile

Other Resource:

• https://federalsalesguide.com

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

🔹 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GovConUnscriptedUS

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/govconunscriptedpodcast/

🔹 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/govconunscriptedpod/

🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/govcon-unscripted/posts/

🔹 JOIN OUR #govcon #community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14618490/

A $50 million company with 600 employees almost fell out of its own sale. Not because of revenue, but because every decision still ran through two people.

Most owners think exit planning starts when they call an M&A advisor. In this episode of GovCon Unscripted, host Chelsea Roberts talks with Robert E. Jones, CPA and Principal Advisor at Corvata, who has spent 20+ years in government contracting, and says that by then the value of the business is already fixed. The real work happens two to five years earlier, left of the transaction, where structure, discipline, and decision flow still can be changed.

In this conversation, Robert breaks down his Enterprise Readiness Operating Model, the seven decision failure modes that stall companies, why owner-dependency scares off buyers, and how tightening operations can move an EBITDA multiple from the low end of a 6 to 9x range to the high end. He also shows how tools most contractors already pay for can cut a 12-hour payroll run to two or three hours.

Timestamps:

00:00 Does anyone actually plan the exit?

01:00 “You will exit your business”: on your terms or not

02:00 Left of the transaction: where value is still changeable

03:00 The Enterprise Readiness Operating Model (structure, discipline, decision flow)

06:00 The seven decision failure modes

11:00 Due diligence: documents that “magically appear”

13:00 The $50M company that almost couldn’t be sold

20:00 Policy vs procedure vs work instructions

21:00 Getting off paper: SharePoint, Planner, and the tools you already own

25:00 Value growth: profitability, the multiplier, and the multiple

29:00 The 10-year math: working backward from the day you want out

33:00 The three kinds of optionality this work buys you

Resources:

Follow Robert E. Jones

Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

Corvata's Website

Schedule a consultation

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

🔹 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GovConUnscriptedUS

🔹 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/govconunscriptedpodcast/

🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/govcon-unscripted/posts/

🔹 JOIN OUR #govcon #community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14618490/

#govconunscripted #exitplanning #federalcontracting #enterprisereadiness #govcon