Eastern Foundry, the 21,000-square-foot incubator in Crystal City for gov-tech startups that
officially launched in mid-December, is at 95 percent capacity, according to Geoff Orazem, incubator CEO and founder. As a result, the incubator is planning on opening an additional 6,000 square feet of space by mid-March and another 6,000 square feet by mid-April or May. The incubator is also offering a bootcamp to help startups prove that they are ready to work with government agencies and large contractors.
"There are 42 different companies here, with about 135 different people [all together]," says Andrew Chang, chief operating officer for Eastern Foundry. "The kitchen gets pretty packed." While some companies are local one-person or two-people operations, "others are headquartered out of state and have offices here to take advantage of being close to the Pentagon." Chang says Eastern Foundry companies hail from Hawaii, Alaska, Georgia and of course, the Valley—to name just a few places.
Stone Security Engineering is just one of the 42 companies working out of Eastern Foundry. The company "does high-end engineering work," like engineering blast-resistant walls for secure buildings, Orazem says. "They're a great team of engineers, working day and night." In addition to analysis of, planning and training for and assessing risk, Stone Security Engineering has developed
an app for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Besides offering space to work and proximity to agencies, Eastern Foundry is also offering programs to help tech startups that want to work with the government, its agencies and large corporations learn how to navigate the sometimes stormy waters of contracting. The incubator is holding a government contracting
bootcamp February 23–27 at its space.
The bootcamp is essentially a one-week certification program that Orazem says arose from needs identified by agencies and large companies. "[You may be] a really fantastic cyber programmer," he explains, "but there is no way to communicate to agencies that [you] understand the government process. Are [you] going to do reporting correctly? It's a parallel to the PMP certificate program for project managers."
This first certification will illustrate that startups can "administer and process materials for the government contracting space," Orazem says. Eastern Foundry plans to have additional certification programs after the initial bootcamp is complete, in order to meet the needs of the companies at the Foundry. "When you're scaling government contracting production, [as a startup], what you need on Day 0 is different from Day 300, or three years in."
The one-week bootcamp will run $250, which includes all materials. Eastern Foundry offers a 20 percent discount for veterans and for government employees.