The New DC Startup Scene Focused on Military Tech: Interview with BTS, Part 1

At the intersection of government contracting and the booming tech startup sector, is a new set of companies developing and adapting civilian technologies for the exclusive use of the Federal government. The Washington, D.C. region is home to many of these tech startups and surely there are countless individuals sitting in their offices brainstorming, planning, and asking themselves the questions, “Can I get funding?”, “Is the government receptive to my ideas?”, “Has anyone else had success with this model?”

To explore these questions further I sought out a company that has successfully navigated the road of tech startup to government contractor. The company I chose to profile and interview is BTS, a Maryland based startup that took its vision to develop software and hardware that would allow for the instant deployment of cellular network coverage in tactical battlefield situations from concept to successful adoption by the U.S. military.

Traditionally, cellular networks are spread out through large networks of cell towers. BTS technology collapses those networks into small boxes that can be installed into Humvees or MATVs to allow soldiers on the battlefield to access cellular networks with commercial smartphones such as iPhone, iPad or Android devices. The value to our military of technology like this cannot be understated, as seen just this past week during the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden (BTS technology not confirmed to be in use for this operation) where operators quickly sent video and images back to the President and his national security team for analysis. From an intelligence perspective, the ability for forward deployed military personnel to access cellular networks and reduce the time-delay for sending images, video, etc for analysis from days or hours down to seconds  is invaluable.

I was lucky enough to be able to ask some specific questions to COO Craig Cummings, Ph.D. The first portion of the interview will discuss their process in deciding to start BTS and how they determined the need for their product. The second portion of the interview, to be published tomorrow, will focus on the DC startup scene more generally.

CPost: What is the military’s critical need that you are trying to fill and how did you determine that need?

BTS: Sean Lane (BTS CEO) and I were both intelligence officers for the Air Force and Army, respectively.  We both resigned from the military to help address what we believed was a critical need on the battlefield—the need to move intelligence data quickly.  Biometrics data, for example, is typically collected on handheld devices in remote locations of the battlefield and then it must be transported to Forward Operating Bases by vehicle and then uploaded into computers for transport to databases where the biometrics data is then assessed.  As you can imagine, this usually takes hours if not days to get the feedback Soldiers require to make decisions as to how to handle that person (i.e. is that person’s fingerprint associated with past criminal action). With a tactical cellular capability, Soldiers can get that answer in less than a minute as that data can now traverse the cellular network and reach those databases in seconds.

CPost: How is your team uniquely qualified to tackle this need? IE What separates your company from competitors in providing a solution to this need?

BTS: Our founders and key leaders literally came right out of the military and the Intelligence Community, where they had spent careers operating forward deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and facing the challenges associated with the “slow” movement of intelligence data.  We knew the communication challenge first hand and we knew which government organizations were trying to solve those challenges. We recruited top engineering talent as well.  We then built a customized solution for the military based on commercial cellular standards.  Other companies tried to sell a commercial “box” to the military whereas we built a ruggedized, tactical box with commercial cellular capability that directly satisfied the customer requirements in terms of size, weight, power, range, and more.

CPost: Virtually every successful startup can cite at least one key “turning point” that enabled them to succeed. What was your turning point?

BTS: We spent years campaigning to the government that cellular could be mobile, tactical, and secure.  In August of 2009, we briefed a senior Army Intelligence advisor who had that “aha” moment and said, “We must do this.”  That advisor then took this idea of tactical cellular to the highest levels of the Pentagon where it soon spread like a wildfire.

CPost: What was the process you went through to go from idea to a fully functioning company with a major government contract in place?

BTS: Once we pitched the idea of tactical cellular and demonstrated that it worked, the government soon put us on contract to further explore the potential of our technology.  Once the idea was endorsed by senior Army leaders, the contracts very soon followed.  This allowed us to grow the company from 3 employees at the end of 2008, to 11 at end of 2009, to 37 at the end of 2010, and by mid-year 2011 we will probably exceed 60.

Update: Read part 2 of the interview Craig to read his opinions on the DC startup scene, the availability of funding for government focused tech startups, and more!