How to Find Your Customer in the Dept. of Defense -- The Directory of DoD Program Executive Offices

Finding a customer for your product in the Department of Defense is hard: Who should you talk to? How do you get their attention?

How do you know if they have money to spend on your product?

It almost always starts with a Program Executive Office.

Looking for DoD customers

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The Department of Defense (DoD) no longer owns all the technologies, products and services to deter or win a war – e.g.  AI, autonomy, drones, biotech, access to space, cyber, semiconductors, new materials, etc.

Today, a new class of startups are attempting to sell these products to the Defense Department. Amazingly, there is no single DoD-wide phone book available to startups of who to call in the Defense Department.

So I wrote one.

Think of the PEO Directory linked below as a “Who buys in the government?” phone book.

The DoD buys hundreds of billions of dollars of products and services per year, and nearly all of these purchases are managed by Program Executive Offices. A Program Executive Office may be responsible for a specific program (e.g., the Joint Strike Fighter) or for an entire portfolio of similar programs (e.g., the Navy Program Executive Office for Digital and Enterprise Services). PEOs define requirements and their Contracting Officers buy things (handling the formal purchasing, issuing requests for proposals (RFPs), and signing contracts with vendors.) Program Managers (PMs) work with the PEO and manage subsets of the larger program.

Existing defense contractors know who these organizations are and have teams of people tracking budgets and contracts. But startups?  Most startups don’t have a clue where to start.

This is a classic case of information asymmetry and it’s not healthy for the Department of Defense or the nascent startup defense ecosystem.

That’s why I put this PEO Directory together.

This first version of the directory lists 75 Program Executive Offices and their Program Executive Officers and Program/Project Managers.

Each Program Executive Office is headed by a Program Executive Officer who is a high ranking official – either a member of the military or a high ranking civilian – responsible for the cost, schedule, and performance of a major system, or portfolio of systems, some worth billions of dollars.

Below is a summary of 75 Program Executive Offices in the Department of Defense.

You can download the full 64-page document of Program Executive Offices and Officers with all 602 names here.

Caveats
Do not depend on this document for accuracy or completeness.
It is likely incomplete and contains errors.
Military officers typically change jobs every few years.
Program Offices get closed and new ones opened as needed.

This means this document was out of date the day it was written. Still it represents an invaluable starting point for startups looking to work with DoD.

How to Use The PEO Directory As Part of A Go-To-Market Strategy
While it’s helpful to know what Program Executive Offices exist and who staffs them, it’s even better to know where the money is, what it’s being spent on, and whether the budget is increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same.

The best place to start is by looking through an overview of the entire defense budget here. Then search for those programs in the linked PEO Directory. You can get an idea whether that program has $ Billions, or $ Millions.

Next, take a look at the budget documents released by the DoD Comptroller –
particularly the P-1 (Procurement) and R-1 (R&D) budget documents.

Combining the budget document with this PEO directory helps you narrow down which of the 75 Program Executive Offices and 500+ program managers to call on.

With some practice you can translate the topline, account, or Program Element (PE) Line changes into a sales Go-To-Market strategy, or at least a hypothesis of who to call on.

Armed with the program description (it’s full of jargon and 9-12 months out of date) and the Excel download here and the Appendix here –– you can identify targets for sales calls with DoD where your product has the best chance of fitting in.

The people and organizations in this list change more frequently than the money.

Knowing the people is helpful only after you understand their priorities — and money is the best proxy for that.

Future Work
Ultimately we want to give startups not only who to call on, and who has the money, but which Program Offices are receptive to new entrants. And which have converted to portfolio management, which have tried OTA contracts, as well as highlighting those who are doing something novel with metrics or outcomes.

Going forward this project will be kept updated by the Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.

In the meantime send updates, corrections and comments to sblank@stanford.edu

Credit Where Credit Is Due
Clearly, the U.S. government intends to communicate this information. They have published links to DoD organizations here, even listing DoD social media accounts. But the list is fragmented and irregularly updated. Consequently, this type of directory has not existed in a usable format – until now.