Some of you have reached out to me asking about why they haven’t received another newsletter from Interesting Data Gigs. Let me take this space to explain why.
Once in the lifetime, you have an incredible opportunity to build something from scratch; and if you don’t do it, you will regret for the rest of your life. I got that opportunity in September 2024 when I decided to create a new business from scratch with my wife.
GovCon Builder Mode
Let me give you a little context here. I’m avid YouTube watcher, especially for topics like building businesses to starting from zero one thing.
On July 2024, I got a video on my feed about Government Contrating (GovCon).
I thought for a moment about it and I asked to myself: What the heck is that? So, I got into the YouTube University and I’ve watched every single video I’ve though it could be valuable for us.
But you should be wondering yourself what is GovCon right?
In simple terms, Government Contracting is the process of selling goods or services to the United States government or its agencies.
As a Data Driven person, I started a long research journey trying to understand the opportunity behind this.
In FY2023, small-business-eligible dollars totaled $630 billion. This includes all federal contracts except those excluded by SBA’s Goaling Guidelines.
That amount represted 27.04% of the FY 2023 budget.
So, the trend and the sentiment here is to increase this number year over year.
Once I got into the research phase, I got hooked and learned everything I could about federal contracting. But I knew that if I wouldn’t take any action, all this research I was doing was to be meaningless.
It was time to TAKE ACTION
I sat with my wife and we decided that this is the thing we could do for the next 20 years.
Enter Double O Enterprises LLC
So, we incorporated a new company, got all the paperwork in September 2024.
In October 2024, we got our EIN, and started the process to register our business in order to work with the federal government in SAM.gov.
In November 2024 we got our Commercial and Government Entity (CAGE) code (our own is 09D43) which is like the Identity Card of the business for the federal government, and now we are in the middle of the process of registering to do business directly with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).
Our “niche” in this market is the Federal Supply Code 8145 (Specialized Shipping and Storage Containers). We have found that under this FSC code, there are ton of opportunities out there, and the “approved sources” for it are a few companies that could build a long term relationship with it.
The full roadmap here is to be an authorized dealer/resellers for products in this niche to become a Tier-1 distributor for many of these companies to become an Approved Source for a set of critical product in this space. But one step at time.
To be honest: There are literally millions of products (6 Millions of NSNs) you could procure to the federal government. So the opportunity is too big to let it pass.
It hasn’t been an easy journey, but I’ve had the support of many people on this path. We know for sure that we will have an incredible year 2025.
What this means for the Interesting Data Gigs and AWS Graviton Weekly newsletters
Unfortunately this means that I can’t continue writing this newsletter.
I still want to help people to find roles in the Data Engineering space, but for me it’s impossible to do my daily job as a Software Engineer (I love my work, so I’m not going full-time on this yet), build a business on the side, and write two newsletters every single week.
I still will be writing AWS Graviton Weekly, but I decided to change the cadence of the newsletter from weekly to bi-weekly.
What this means for the my job at X-Team
I love my job, I truly do love what I do every single day, so I’m not going anywhere. This means that from 9 AM to 7 PM I will work on my daily job; and for 7 PM to midnight (or more) I will take of the side hustle.
My wife is taking an Operations focused role on this, so she will be doing mostly of the work in the daytime. We have created a good synergy on this, and we are learning a ton in the process.
If you know another husband/wife duo as co-founders, love to hear any advice they have about it.
Conclusions
I just wanted to let you know one thing: The American Dream is more ALIVE than ever, and 2025 will be an incredible year for businesses.
