Driving Government Modernization: Tales from GovTech Innovators | The Pair Program Ep. 41

Tim Winkler: 00:00:05

Welcome to The Pair Program from hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of hatchpad. And I'm your other host, Mike Gruen. Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups, and career growth. Welcome back. Another episode of The Pair Program. Uh, Tim Winkler here, Mike Gruen, uh, my, uh, co host Mike, what's going on, man? I feel like we haven't, uh, seen each other since the holidays. Yeah, it's going all right.

Mike Gruen: 00:00:44

Things, you know, uh, the weather in DC is always fun, up and down, cold, snow, rain, whatever, it's all good. What about you? How you doing?

Tim Winkler: 00:00:51

Good, good, good weather, uh, pitch there. So let's talk about the weather. I'm good, man. Um, I was actually listening to a podcast this morning and it was talking about how Chipotle is kind of scaling up staff right now. Uh, did you know that there's a burrito season? I did not. Yeah. Burrito season is March to May, so Chipotle is gearing up. I'm pretty pumped. Is there like a, uh, a go to, go to burrito that you, uh, you roll

Mike Gruen: 00:01:19

with? So I'm a big fan of California tortilla, which is like a local DC, um, chain. Um, I've been going there since the, like the, one of the first franchises in Bethesda and I know the owners and, um, yeah. But is it that white

Tim Winkler: 00:01:34

case? So they have that white case. So that's, is there some, who's known for that good case? So I think it's, uh, well, maybe it's

Mike Gruen: 00:01:42

not, I mean, I like their, theirs, but in Avon, um, I don't know, but they make some really good, like interesting, uh, burritos, like they mix it up a little bit. So I just like to. I like to do like Korean barbecue burrito or something a little different or the, the shrimp one, like not a traditional French toast

Rob Murtha: 00:01:58

burrito.

Mike Gruen: 00:01:59

Yeah. I mean, back in the day they had a tie, they had a tie burrito. That was amazing. I love it. That's sick. That's awesome. It was

Tim Winkler: 00:02:08

great. Yep. Breakfast burritos too are killer. Had one as well. They're a little young on potatoes in there. Yep.

Rob Murtha: 00:02:15

So hungry.

Tim Winkler: 00:02:21

We checked weather, we checked burritos. Let's move on. Um, all right. I'm, uh, I'm pumped to tackle, uh, today's topic. So if, if you've been a listener of the pod, you know, that we've been releasing a number of these episodes that are centered around tech modernization across different areas of the government. So some of those past ones have been like how to innovate and agencies like defense or. Go to market strategies for like dual use tech startups trying to break their products in the government markets. Um, today we're going to dive a little bit deeper into, you know, how engineering and product folks are actually like implementing solutions for federal government customers. Um, so we've got a couple of tech leaders with us, uh, both have been very involved in, in digital transformation and in the public sector for. A number of years, Rob, uh, Murtha, uh, CEO and founder of adjective. Rob brings a lot of experience to the table within, um, areas of big data analytics, product design, user centered, uh, design UX research, uh, private sector and government, uh, portfolios he's, he's worked with. So, um, uh, appreciate Rob being with us. And also Rob served as a. Uh, a senior analyst for the army for, for a number of years. Uh, and then we've got Ken Cato. Uh, Kim is the vice president of DevSecOps and AI at Omni Federal. Uh, Ken served as an entrepreneur in residence at the White House Presidential Innovation Fellowship. Uh, already said it, DevSecOps is, is a big part of his, uh, focus. Uh, does a lot of work delivering agile development and solutions to, um, the Navy and various other federal agencies. Guys. Thanks for joining us on the pod. Thanks

Rob Murtha: 00:04:04

for having us. Yeah.

Tim Winkler: 00:04:06

Good stuff. All right. Now, before we jump in, we always kick things off with a fun segment called pair me up, Mike, you usually tee it up, go ahead and kick us off. What do you got? All right. I'm pretty pleased with this one.

Mike Gruen: 00:04:18

Uh, teenagers and Febreze. If you have some teenage boys, you have some stuff to look forward to. So that's, uh, that, that was my pairing. The last, uh, A couple of weeks, that's been a, been trying to track down some things and Febreze has definitely come in handy. Track down the scent, like track down what's going on. Yeah, a little bit of like, what, why, what, what is this? How old are your boys? Uh, one's 17, one's 14. Is sports, are they in, uh, I think one plays baseball, right? Yeah, yeah. One plays baseball. Yep. Um, it's entirely just, uh, he, uh, second base. Oh, right. He likes third base. But, uh, we moved up to the big field and, uh, as an eighth grader going from third to first, that's a big throw. So, um, it's, you know, the pro, we're on the professional size team, so, uh, field rather. So, uh, it's a's a, he's moved over to second base. That's a

Tim Winkler: 00:05:11

teenage boys and Febreze. You just bring these kids down with. Yeah, exactly. Freeze when they when they walk in the door. Now, mostly just a bedroom. The hamper, especially the hamper. It's all that good stuff. All right. I dig it. I can I can see it. I can relate to that. I'll keep it.

Mike Gruen: 00:05:30

That's for

Tim Winkler: 00:05:30

you. I'll keep the kid train. I'll keep the kid train going. I'm going to go with toddlers and forts. Um, so like everybody has, you know, those, those childhood memories of building forts with like, um, you know, blankets and pillows, but we got this gift from my mother in law. It's called a nugget couch and this thing is, Oh dude, they're, they're so cool. There's like, they've got an entire like Instagram, like followers that just like put out these crazy ideas of like, Hey, this is what I did with my nugget couch.

Rob Murtha: 00:06:05

And they vote on the colors and stuff. I mean, it's like the colors

Tim Winkler: 00:06:09

for folks that don't know. It's like, um, so it's, it's, it's a couch. It's made out of like four or five, like big foam pieces. And it's pretty sturdy. Um, and you can just kind of put these pieces in different areas throughout, you know, throughout the space that you've got it in. So we, we put it in the basement and we've got it, uh, connected to like different pieces of our furniture that we build, like these little tunnels that lead to like a small little ball pit. So it's just been a blast, um, for my daughter and she's just, you know, getting into that phase where I think she, she doesn't quite understand what it is and she'll appreciate it here in a year or so, but I personally am having a lot of fun. I think it's, it's a way for adults to kind of get back into that childhood phase of like Fort sort of the shit. Yeah. So, um, anyways, Yeah, it's the truth, man. It really gets your mind working. Like what else can I do with this thing here? You know? So anyways, I'm going to go with the toddlers and forts and, uh, and that's it for me. Let's, let's kick it over to, uh, to our guests, Ken, but a quick intro and, uh, and, and your pairing.

Ken Kato: 00:07:12

So the pairing I was thinking about is Massachusetts and Dunkin Donuts. So it's my wife. So ordering Dunks in the DMV area of Maryland, D. C., Virginia is painful because I actually had to say things out loud, like the full name of things. In New England, I just say, large regular. That's it.

Tim Winkler: 00:07:36

That's hilarious. That's great. That's great. Yeah. I, uh, I'm a fan of Duncan too. I think they're facing a little bit of a lawsuit right now. Aren't they? Somebody's like trying to come at them for someone's trying to come at them, uh, for, uh, they're using the American disabilities act saying that they were charged a surcharge for oat milk, um, where, you know, they're lactose intolerant and they shouldn't have to, to pay that service fee. It's like, anyways, I, I think, uh, Duncan's probably just. I'm going to poo poo that, just be like, whatever here, take, take, take some money they're doing just fine. Pun intended on the lactose intolerance and the

Mike Gruen: 00:08:16

poo poo. Yeah, poo poo, poo

Ken Kato: 00:08:18

poo.

Mike Gruen: 00:08:20

I'm lactose intolerant, I can make that joke.

Ken Kato: 00:08:24

The biggest dunk related pun is their catch line, right? America runs on dunks, or dunking, and the basement of the Pentagon, there's Dunkin Donuts. And that's, that line is always like murderously long. I'm like, oh, America does literally run on dunks, awesome.

Tim Winkler: 00:08:38

That is so funny. Yeah. Uh, Rob, how about yourself, man? Quick intro and, uh, your pairing.

Rob Murtha: 00:08:44

Yeah. Quick pairing. Um, I guess similar to Mike, like my, uh, so like, I guess teenage kids and, and, and dances. So I got two girls, 12 year old, uh, 12 years old and eight years old. Um, the 12 year old is going to like a Valentine's day dance. And it's just like, you know, I want to be a chaperone. I want to, I want to be like, what's going on. It's like a couple of towns away. It's just so hilarious. So, I mean, we're, we're in the Valentine's day season, so. You know, funny, funny little, uh, parenting wrinkle there, but I guess, you know, we gotta, we gotta get used to it. Um, and then quick intro. Yeah. You, I mean, you covered my overview pretty well. Uh, can it just for, for, you know, Ken and I know each other just from the Kessa run era. And Ken's been an awesome mentor of mine for years. I mean, I've always hit him up with any types of, you know, product challenges I've come across, you know, Um, entrepreneurial challenges, technology challenges. It's just been really fun. Life challenges. We both like, you know, know each other's families really well. So it's been fun just to like, you know, self reflect and zoom out and have someone you could rely on like that with Ken. So it's, it's great to be on this podcast with him. Um, quick background for me. You mentioned it kind of had a, had a weird pathway, grew up in the Hamptons, which was hilarious, went to art school, um, graduated during the recession in Florida, and I was like, uh, WTF. Um, I ended up joining the military. Nobody served in my family, uh, met like a hilarious recruiter out at a bar. And he was like, Oh, do you want to be Jason Moore and go the Intel route? Um, no, I ended up doing Intel and definitely wasn't that like, other than that, I didn't know anything about the military. I thought it was like Forrest Gump. I thought like, you know, someone yelled at me if I didn't clean my rifle, right. Um, so ended up, uh, had, I had like a really awesome experience. I actually wrote like a little blog on my, on my website. A website, uh, talking about like how we kind of started to introduce customer experience elements to operational stuff, not just like the tech scene, but like how, how you can wrap that around anything, not just, you know, innovation, modernization. Um, and that's kind of what we did. Like we kind of, uh, productized, uh, like our, our Intel capabilities, which is really cool. Um, just as like a team, we thought about it from like a go to market strategy. And we just had fun. And so like, you know, right, right after I got done with training, ended up deploying Afghanistan and, and had like a wild experience there, um, came back and did some stuff stateside and then ended up deploying again. And it was like a completely different setting. So it was like another, another crazy fun experience with like different variables. Um, from there I became like an IC, a trade craft instructor, um, and, and curriculum developer. Um, and that's kind of how I got exposed to product design and fell in love with like, uh, human factors and, you know, really just building experiences for people, um, that align with either doctrine or tech or whatever you're trying to kind of associate those experiences with. Um, and then from there I went to the FBI and I was a product designer. Um, built some really sick products there. We can go into that later. I'm sure we will. When we get into the DevOps stuff and then, uh, yeah, ended up at KR, met Ken, met a bunch of really cool people, had a blast there. Um, and from there I just kind of, yeah, like you mentioned, bouncing around the ecosystem, doing startup stuff, doing defense stuff, um, super opinionated about a lot of things, just having that kind of like multidimensional background where it's been like, you know, operational, um, you know, Product related stuff, you know, product team stuff where I'm like tactically in the trenches, just trying to build things that solve people's problems. So I'm just super grateful to have like stumble into this like kind of community. Awesome.

Tim Winkler: 00:11:57

Yeah. It's a tight knit community. It's so tight knit that we've definitely had like two or three other folks from Kessel Run on the, on our podcast. It's like a seven degrees of separation. Like, uh, it's, it's wild. Um, but I think what's It relevant, right? And the reason like we like bringing those folks in is because Kessel Run was a big catalyst for, you know, like how modernization can get, you know, implemented and how there's this need to fast forward things, right? Like, can't, can't just be this slow as molasses kind of transformation. I know that that is a, a very symbolic thing of trying to do business in the government. Right. But, um, I think, you know, the reality is that we're in a, We're in an interesting time right now. And, and we see it, you know, at hatch anyways, because we, we've, we've done a lot of stuff in GovTech back in the day, and then we switched to commercial product, and now we are getting back into a lot more of this, you know, defense tech, dual use tech, there's, there's certainly a major shift in the technology landscape, right, in, in government towards modernization right now. Um, but the reality is. You know, there's still a cultural and a procedural thing, a way of doing things in the government. Uh, you know, flexibility isn't really a, a word that you hear thrown around a lot. Um, but there is a way to do it and it is being done. And, and, you know, our goal with, with this episode and with some of the other episodes that we've been building here is, is to build awareness for folks that want to be a part of that, or Are building something that, you know, can, can help in one way, shape or fashion here. And so, uh, super grateful to have both of you guys on here. What I like too, about the backgrounds here, we, we hand selected is, um, you know, can kind of have a little bit more of a, like on the engineering side of things. more on that product and design side as well. So, you know, when our listeners, our audience is usually a pretty wide spectrum of folks from product design, data engineering. So we're hoping that we can hit on a few of these different levels on, on how it's done and, and some, some actual examples. Uh, before we jump in, maybe it's helpful just to hear just quick, uh, snippets of like a bird's eye view of the type of work that each of your all's firms are doing. Uh, Ken, let's start with you, maybe at a high level, just some of the work that OmniFederal is delivering and the kind of customers that you're supporting.

Ken Kato: 00:14:19

Sure. So today we focused largely on defense and intel agencies. So only about, you know, cut their teeth in this world with NGA. And since then it's gone pretty wide. We have a lot of relationship with the Air Force primarily, between platform one, customer one, stuff like that. Uh, my personal focus is on AI and AI product development these days. So I just had an idea recently to, uh, build a small form factor version of Code Llama. So Code Llama, for those who may not know, is a fine tuned version of Llama for the purpose of code generation. And why would I want to build this when I can get to the cloud? Well, that's why. Right, the, there is no authority to operate on AI instantiations today, especially open source ones, but if I build a physical computer and drop it in someone's office, AOs, authorizing officials, know how to say yes or no to those things. So my motivation there is to spend a ludicrous amount of money for an H100 GPU card, drop it into a box and literally, you know, travel with a dog and pony show. Here's my code. Let me hook up to your BS code. That's kind of stuff that I've been working on these days.

Tim Winkler: 00:15:27

Cool. Yeah. And we'll dissect some of that as well as like how it's done and the process to implement. But, uh, Rob, how about yourself? A little bit more on the adjective and the type of work you all are doing. Yeah.

Rob Murtha: 00:15:37

Yeah, totally. No, that's, that's awesome, Ken. I love your approach to it. So he's like lean and practical, which is so exciting. I love like your description there. So adjective I just launched about a year back. It was like really, um, it was actually a hilarious way that I, uh, I launched my company. It was pretty organic. Ken was there for like when I initially kicked it off, but I ended up just getting a bunch of like demand and deal flow, um, commercially and my, uh, my mentor and, and, and, and, you know, boss at the time, uh, Wes over at Clarity and other, you know, services company. It was like, dude, just jump for it. Like being, you know, you, you've always had like entrepreneurship in your blood, very supportive. A lot of people around me were like, Hey, just, you know, give it a shot. You know, cause there's been, there's been situations in the past where I've launched startups here and there that are absolutely hilarious and good segues at some point, um, from from a podcast perspective and you know, they, they either weren't successful or I didn't put enough into them or whatever it was this time. It was like, I just had a lot of demand. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to give it a shot. Don't really have a model to focus on other than like Rob as a service or, you know, startup athlete as a service, but like my crazy box of, uh, um, and I ended up just like straight up like building the ship as I sailed it a little bit. Um, and it was kind of cool. I mean, you know, since we started, you know, we've, we've kind of, uh, went, uh, you know, a bunch of different directions. And I think like the company's strategy, um, you know, is, is kind of wrapped with, with my vision of what product design could become for, you know, the, the, the, the whole market and what it could evolve to with the advent of generative AI and stuff, and also what product design can realistically become for the DOD and the public sector. Um, I think like, you know, it's, it's really hard to just lift and shift perspectives and models and, you know, you, you don't really, you have to start somewhere. Right. So I'd say the first, you know, three to five years of, of defense and public sector innovation, we just kind of had to lift and shift what was successful in the private sector. And we recruited a bunch of people that had those perspectives. Um, and then as you start to iterate, as you, you know, start to try to stitch those things into different agencies, some of them work better with those agencies than others, right? You see a lot of, you see civic tech just like blazing fast. You see a lot of these different organizations just adopting things very easily because the way that they're set up, the paradigm of those organizations naturally align with, you know, Kind of the private sector and some essence of a market that, you know, they're supporting public sector people. They have huge hundred thousand user accounts that are like putting in simulating pressure on the features and, and, and highlighting the value of like UX work and stuff versus defense, which is like. a little more industrial, a little more kind of small market segments and, and nuance to how you, how you go to market, right? It's like a little more challenging and different. Um, so it's cool to see all of those practices evolve and that's kind of what I'm focusing on it. Um, at adjective, I'm trying to figure out ways to, you know, commercialize product design, commercialize UX methodologies, commercialize behavioral psychology, and make it like super town. tangible data driven results oriented where people want to sink their teeth into it. And it's not like this, Oh, like make sure we're satisfying section 508 or, you know, some other kind of box check. It needs to become this like really rich thing that's tied to success and risk reduction.

Tim Winkler: 00:18:45

It's really fascinating, man. I, I, um, I want to talk, maybe just kind of like point this back to, uh, an overarching point that I was reading a blog that you had written, uh, it was, or a social post that you had written. It was about value creation, uh, and, and the, the importance of producing value for, for government customers. You know, when you're walking through like an engagement with, with a customer, like, how are you. You know, how do you get to the point of like where you're, you're defining what value means and like measuring this in the context of like a digital solution? Because I think that's like an area that, you know, when you talk about end users and the government or a specific agency. Um, really like, uh, outlining the specifics of the value that they'll see, like, what does that mean to you? Like how, you know, when, in that post, like what, what, what were you kind of like trying to allude to?

Rob Murtha: 00:19:40

So something like I've been really driving towards and Ken, Ken will appreciate this. And we, we talk about this frequently together. It's like, you know, what's the equivalent of a marketplace in the DOD? Like everyone has a customer, regardless of whether you're like an operational person, whether you're like an, you know, HR practitioner, a quartermaster, logistician, logistician, You know, everyone has a market. Everyone has a customer. And like the faster that the DoD, the faster that these agencies can like adopt that mindset, the more kind of value value focused people will be when it comes to any kind of allocation of capacity, any allocation of resources. So what I'm, uh, to answer your question, I, I think it's really tricky, right? Every engagement's a little different and, you know, you have to. immediately start learning is as soon as you get an opportunity to work with one of these customers. And I've had a number of engagements this year, specifically public sector related, and some of them are ongoing where, you know, it's not a one size fits all, right? You have to, I always say like model your market, like understand, you know, the elements of your market. That, um, you know, introduce, uh, incentives to the people that depend on it. And also, like, how, how can you hold your practitioners and your resource allocation accountable? So those are two things I'm very passionate about. That's always been tough to measure and implement in, in, in the government. It's just challenging. Like, how do you, How do you measure, you know, how do you manage incentives, right? When you have like very fixed policy that you have to abide by with like personnel and GS rates and like people's ranks and promotion schedules. It's all very like tied to policy. That's beyond anyone's control. There's like hacks that you can like implement, but, um, Really, it's just like, I don't know, I, the way I'd respond to that is like, it's really tied to the specific engagement. One example, I'll give you a great example. So I'm working with a customer now and you know, at the surface level, you see everybody asking for the same stuff. It's like, I want to be a DevSecOps organization. I want to be a software factory. I want to be, you know, like all of these like kind of big labels that are like, you know, there's a ton of nuance that exists below them. Um, and you get in there and you realize like just having experience in. A private industry and then, and, and be like at a software factory. It's like, well, really you're kind of more of like a skunk works, like proof of concept shop. Like you don't have the foundation to do day two ops and, you know, manage tier one, tier two, tier three help desk and solve people's problems when bugs surface and like things break and you have to get stuff back online and whatnot. And so like you start interacting with the customers and you know, the first step is like. You know, getting them to culture, you know, culturally getting them to trust you and just like listening to them and not like making them feel uncomfortable. Like everyone, everyone has a really strong opinion. Um, and everyone has a perspective and great experience to learn from. Right. I think that's something all like digital transformation, people or people supporting modernization can really continue to kind of gut check yourself with. That's. I got checked myself all the time. It's like, you know, did what I, you know, the way that I've framed advice or recommendation or the way I'm like pairing with this person, is it condescending? You know, is it, you know, how, how am I like seeing them? How am I, how am I incorporating their perspectives, even if they don't have like some private industry exposure or something, because everyone has something really useful to contribute. And, you know, a lot of the people you work with are freaking brilliant. They've been in these program office for 20 years. They've, done things with like legacy VX rails that like nobody could imagine where they stitch these things together and deploy like, you know, Tanzu, um, instantiations and they're like, you know, to these like, you know, on prem, you know, on prem hardware stacks. And it's just, they, they've cobbled together some really crazy stuff. Like, I mean, ton of talent, uh, talent all over the place. Um, and it's kind of like, you know, be self aware, you know, you know, observe the situation, um, yeah. And just always, always, always try to like, I don't know, add, add data and fidelity to the way that you understand what it's going to take to get them from moving to a place of like arbitrary activities to we're producing value for something. And if there was some form of currency in this environment, that like user group or that customer, whatever, however you classify it would be willing to pay for the activities that that program office is doing.

Tim Winkler: 00:23:32

Yeah, that's, that's well said, man. And it is interesting because you're dealing with a group of folks that, you know, these end users, um, oftentimes you said been, been there for 20 plus years, you know, that's, that's, there's value in being able to tap into that and just be like, Hey, like, let's, let's really understand like how things have progressed over this timeline. Um, we're oftentimes maybe you don't get that of it, you don't have that, uh, that advantage because somebody has been there just for a few years in that role or what have you. Um, so it is unique, I think. And when you're thinking, talking about like the government as, as that agency being the end

Mike Gruen: 00:24:07

customer. I think it's exciting that like that shift in mindset, like when I worked with the government in a number of places, there was this like sort of captive audience. Mindset of like, yeah, it doesn't have to look good. Like whatever, they'll deal with it. Like it's like, it's sort of that like mindset of like, yeah, they'll figure it out there, whatever, like they just didn't really want to put that much effort into finding that value for who was essentially their customer, but their customer had no choice but to use them in some cases. So there was sort of a, not much incentive for them to really go after that. So I think it's cool to, to sort of really stress on how important it is to think about your, who's using your product and how to get them to value.

Rob Murtha: 00:24:47

Mike, I totally want to throw something out there. You just reminded me of something outrageous and fun. And Ken's going to love this. I'm going to pass it right over to him, but Ken, you know what? This reminds me of good old faths that we never like really rolled out that we still like, yeah, so one of the things it's so funny, cause to go back to your question, how do you define success for these organizations? I think it's more tactical. It's all like kind of really understanding their user groups, their customers, kind of what their charter is, what are they supposed to be delivering? If there's like an operational community at the other end, if they're kind of I think one of the, the most interesting ways to convert an organization from like, you know, arbitrary ville to like, let's generate value for someone ville is like, You know, communicating to them that everything's integrated. Um, and that like, it really is. And, and, and it's been impossible for like, even like, you know, the joint staff level to really appreciate that this concept where it's like, if we miss spend here, you know, especially, you know, depending on the amount of money, if we don't convert whatever this kind of experiment is, whether that's like a learning case study, an artifact that can like become a product and people can absorb and learn from and, and make decisions by. Um, or legitimately, we build a platform that like does something like P1, where like, you know, they facilitate DevSecOps for a ton of different customers. Like anytime you don't convert, that money wasted is stealing from another portion of your system, whether you like it or not. And that portion of your system could be something local where it's like, you know, now, now, now, you know, chicken wings are a little more expensive and it sucks for me. And instead of like being inspired and, and excited to do stuff, I'm going to be like a sad sack and like sit in the house and like just not, not think about that thing. I should have ideated that. The government could purchase someday and build, you know, like everything is integrated. So it's like being serious about your business, right? Being serious about your program office. Even if you have like some kind of, I don't know, very, very reasonable civilian style, you know, mission set, it's still contributing to something more tactical upstream or downstream. And like, Finding ways to kind of create those threads between everyone. And it's like something that you might not think is contributing to the conflict and like Ucom whatever, absolutely is contributing to influence operations. It's contributing to just like the joy and the confidence that our service members have, whatever, like everything's tied together. Like the, the second that people start adopting that perspective, they'll start taking their stuff more seriously. Ken, over to you.

Ken Kato: 00:27:13

So the government fully, you know, is. The weird organization and that it's got the most nonlinear longest distance to a custom. So if you're thinking about delivering to like, especially like the defense agencies, your ultimate delivery should be to somebody that's really need this. But as a developer, we don't ever have that. Apparently, like customer is unique that we got to talk to for the operation basis. That was, that's what made customer successful, right? So, We're not the only organization who does this. There are plenty of large bureaucracies who does this on a regular basis. I think about, you know, people who have to lead large companies, like Len Roberts. He ran RadarShack, most successful CEO for RadarShack ever. And he said this, This thing all the time, they're really stuck with me. You either are serving a customer or serving someone who serves a customer. So with that in mind, every time I think about building anything for the Department of Defense, for the White House, any part of the government, I don't think about what I want to do with it. I can't, right? And I also don't necessarily have a customer to speak to. So that means relying on that 20 plus year folks, like, Hey, how have you done this and why? And that why is what makes it really revealing. Because when you walk into any government agency as a technologist, it's easy to be looking at it and going, okay, this is old quality tech. Sure, it's easy to dismiss it. But if you, when you dig deep, there is a legitimate reason why it's the way it is. It's not human laziness. It's not the government's bad in doing software. It's not the above. It's. A lot of really smart people that came up with the decision maybe a long time ago, maybe they haven't updated since, but there's also a risk to updating it. So again, like they still get to serve the customer mission, and that's what we tend to forget to look at. So when we look at all the program, all the technology, especially, No one asks a fundamental question, are their customers happy? Because at the end of the day, who truly gives a shit if I make the front end look shiny and newer? Like that's just changing the visual appearance. That's not necessarily improving delivery to the customer or delivering value. I just made someone shiny. Okay. I can wax a car and make it shiny, it doesn't make the car going faster, right? So I keep thinking about that. And then looking at those large companies. And looking at how they consistently deliver the same value, like when we go to large theme parks, we're almost guaranteed to have a great experience short of the long lines. But that being said, think about the ridiculous logistics, right? We're talking like tens of thousands of employees who all Understand the North Star of the theme park. The customer has to have fun. And they deliver on that every single time because everyone understands the North Star. When we go to Castle Run, the North Star is really well defined, right? Deliver software to everyone we love. When I did Black Pearl for the Department of Navy, North Star was really, really simple. I want to teach the Navy how to do DevOps, and then I frankly want to retire the program because mission accomplished. But without understanding the purpose of why we do something, which is something we often overlook, especially as a technology going into older programs. So, the thing that I always like think about is, I remove myself and go, hey, why do you do this? Like, just tell me why, and this is not a criticism, but you need to hear why you do it. And then at the end of it, that's when I get to finally start thinking about, okay, Let me buy some ideas off of you. Is this something that's going to be valuable to you? If I change this way, is this frustration bad? Like tell me what's so hot right now that you can't get away from it. So that's kind of stuff. Okay.

Mike Gruen: 00:31:02

Yeah. It's interesting. Cause like when I, again, going back to some, a little bit of my experience with the government, I, in some cases, some programs, I felt like I was just wearing like these big heavy, like Mittens where I couldn't actually touch or interact with, have the fine grain, like feedback. And I'm curious, like, as you work with, as you, as you think about that, if you were going to give advice to, you know, a company that's trying to get into the government, like, how do you, how do you sort of deal with that? Like I was blessed in some ways, like some of the programs I worked on, I did get to talk to the FBI. I got to talk to like the analyst that was going to be the end user. And in other cases, they were so distant and so compartmentalized. I just, it was just, it was a guessing game, and I'm just curious, like, what advice you have.

Ken Kato: 00:31:43

The first thing I taught everybody coming into the White House Veterans Innovation Fellowship, so we mentor the new classes. The first thing I teach is ask a really, really simple question and be genuine about it. How can I help? Those words are surprisingly powerful because you have, you know, senior bureaucrats who spent decades in the government and just get in by just defending themselves, their decision, their funding. So when someone walks in and says, how can I help? And zero agenda, simple question, they actually hesitate to answer. When you ask them again, when they finally realize, I actually do want to know, they It's a long conversation. Sorry.

Mike Gruen: 00:32:25

I'm smirking. Cause I remember when we asked a similar question and we did not get the response we expected, basically the response was, I don't, you can't help me. Uh, I just have 2 million I got to spend on you. And I don't have time to explain all the ways you can help me.

Ken Kato: 00:32:41

I remember like that's still an opening. You have a long problem. So let's get this. Immediate problem solved, but as I solve it, tell me more.

Mike Gruen: 00:32:48

Right, exactly. Right. It took a lot of time to build that trust and get them to really open up and realize that we really were there to help. We didn't have some agenda. It wasn't just us trying to grab 2 million because it was earmarked by Congress. You know, it was like, we really wanted to help solve problems. So, yeah,

Tim Winkler: 00:33:06

I'm curious, just in terms of like for defense, uh, customers and specifically specifically, I guess, um, like Palantir is trailblazers in this in terms of, you know, actually getting out there and, um, sitting within users when they're being deployed, uh, what, how do you all get, how do you all get into, uh, how do you gain access to those folks that maybe, you know, might be more difficult to, you know, to tap into if there's, if you feel like there's these layers that you have to cut through. Um, is it something that you can do off of a discovery call? Does it take a little bit of time? Like, what are some of the hacks or strategies like when you're trying to, to build, to, to get into that mindset of those, of those end users?

Rob Murtha: 00:33:52

I could, I could take this one, Ken, and I'll pass it over. Um, I think there's a variety of things, you know, it's, I think it's, it's, it's, you know, I think we both have cheat codes cause we've kind of been in the industry a little bit. Um, and I, and it's, you know, I constantly have to like remind myself how kind of intimidating it might be sometimes for people just because how everything's like, it's everything's so theatrical, you know, like all these like positions and like, you know, for someone who hasn't, you know, you know, been in the military or, or kind of supported these. Program offices, you, you hear these ranks and these people and you, you start, you know, it, it becomes just, it's foreign to a lot of people. So, you know, my advice, um, what, you know, a, let me go back to Palantir where I think they did really well. Um, because you know, I was a user, I'm actually a big fan of like the company. I think they're very practical, um, and, and they've, They've provided a lot of value for a lot of people and a lot of national security capability. Just being like honest. I know they have like a wild reputation. Um, but

Tim Winkler: 00:34:43

they have a role called like forward deployed engineer, like forward deployed engineer. So it's totally around the user.

Rob Murtha: 00:34:51

Yeah. And outside of that, like startup, um, That the startup space, right. That's commonplace for a lot of these companies. You look at Sierra Nevada corporation or any, you know, Magiera space for some of the companies I worked for early on. They have a bunch of forward, like, uh, field service engineers that are embedded into like more it ops type stuff, but still it's like just, it's, it's, it's kind of a part of, part of the last, you know, 20 years counterinsurgency and Centcom is just like something you had to do because there's a bunch of kind of ragtag, you know, tactical operations center set up all over the place, but I think what. What Palantir did well was like solve, like solve problems and create value. Like, you know, people, people cite, like, you know, the, the, the ownership of data and like the price point and all these different things. It's like, they just like produce value. Like, I can't think of many mission systems that people can like turn on and solve a national security problem with like. 10 years later, you know, I don't care what anyone says. Like there's just very few companies that can actually provide that level of support and capability to people. Ken's company is one of them, like Omni, Omni federal actually build software that people use. They have user accounts. You ask them like how many people are using digital university to think of things. They can cite a user account. That's very impressive. Very interesting. Um, there's, you know, there's a handful of companies out there that can do that. And that's starting to form. Force the community to create more capabilities that are usable, tangible, can cite success metrics, those types of things. Palantir falls into that category in their level, like a million. Um, they've done really well. Uh, and then to, to go back to the go to market question, I actually, um, kind of made a post about this on LinkedIn recently, but it's like, just kind of, you know, spread around like your capability a little bit, like, like government acquisitions is so chaotic. Um, and any one. Um, acquisition stakeholder, I kind of break like the different POCs or kind of stakeholders into three categories. There's like acquisition POCs, operational POCs, um, and, and technical POCs. And so like any one of those kind of archetypes or personas are so interesting, but like you need to not just focus on one program office and it, and it, as, as humans, it feels like. It feels good from a dopamine perspective when someone's like, Oh, I really like what you have. I love your tech. Like funding's coming up. It's around the corner. We're going to like set this all up for you. And we have this money set aside. And people are like, all right, job's done. They did, you know, drop, drop all like the, uh, the shovels, dig in the trenches, fighting, looking for new customers. And. I, I, we, I think Ken would agree. I recommend the opposite, like continue to share your capabilities, continue to network with people just in case, because even if you perfectly align and logic says like, you will be selling to this stakeholder because they have this burning problem, you know, acquisition issues can side, like. You know, totally broke her volunteer plans, other stakeholders that are kind of like vying for influence and, and kind of can, can wrestle that away from the stakeholder, the funding. I mean, there's so many crazy things that can happen. It's like spread your investment from like a relationship and social currency perspective, go out and meet a ton of people. Yeah. Understand other customers that may have similar problems. If you stumbled upon like a really interesting market research signal about your capability, doing something really well for a public sector customer. Um, and then I'd say like, and then the, the, I guess the second or third one is like, um, just. Be authentic and be yourself. Like, you know, the community needs to change if they want to have like more legitimate success. It can't be this whole like hollow, um, like let's, let's put on a show and pretend we're progressing in it from a modernization perspective, or, you know, let's put on a show, use the right words and then never build anything like. Everyone's evolving. And I think that's one of the areas we're evolving in. Um, like extremely well now for, it took years for us to get there. And so they're, they want to be authentic. They don't want to have BS conversations. They don't, they don't want to talk about nonsense anymore. So they're expecting people to come to the table and just be like, Hey, I have no idea about the U S military. I love national security. I love everything. Like y'all have done for me. I'm super grateful. Let's build together. Let's make something amazing. I have this cool tech. Will it work for your mission? Too easy.

Ken Kato: 00:38:36

So. One of the things that I do is to explicitly put into the contract that I put the sponsor on the hook to organize users I can speak to. So when I go to do user discovery, user interviews, it's their job to get me the users I can speak to. So versus trying to hunt and peck for the right people and trying to find the answers and all that stuff. Now the sponsor has to participate. And it's two fold, right? So one thing is that they're there to go on the same ride. They're there to learn how we do things, all that stuff. Also, they also get to see first hand from their own end users that they might not regularly speak to. And they actually hear first hand account like, Oh, this doesn't work the way you think it does. Like we saw a lot of that in KR days and so the product in Omni Federal Digital University is a great product and I'm not saying it because I'm in Omni Federal, generally speaking, the sentiment from every user I spoke to was like, I love this product. I wish I could use this instead of the current like, you know, scripted Air Force training. So DU, as we call it, this university, has been like the go to learning platform for any digital stuff. So coding, all the stuff, we cover all the stuff. There's another online platform that the Air Force uses that no one likes, right? There's a lot of users saying, I don't like this, here are the problems, why? Here are the problems that DU solves. So, you know, we have a lot of personal accounts, but let's say we do a new project, like AI stuff, it's all greenfield. So, I don't have any use to speak to, even speak to the CDAO's office, there's a lot of questions around what it is, like, I'm in a tech field right now with basically no use cases. We have novel technology that's been democratized, but what's next? So, I'm now trying to answer questions about what's next, and the only way I can do that sanely is just talk to people and go, hey, what do you expect to get out of this? If I build you a private, you know, instance for a language model, what do you think you're going to do? And then start to discuss the, you know, the actual use cases of AI. And this is no different than doing DevOps, like, um, I would try my best not to grow my eyes when I say this, but it got pretty gross when people said, I want to buy acquired DevOps. I'm like, it's not something you buy. The really gross part is the. You know, the defense services industry saying, yeah, we're going to sell you a DevOps. I'm like, Oh, that's just super fast. So that's the kind of stuff I'm not into doing. I'm not into this whole bullshit marketing just to be able to meet a demand from an app shop. And what often happens is that you have acquisition professional in the government making tech decisions, not because they want to, but because they have to. And it's also. Their job to write out this contracts get everything in place and they get the feedback from their own internal source, right? So they get their text folks, but they're not available. If they're not there to answer these questions, they have to go on the internet. So you now seen these pretty wide array of contract languages, especially around like AI and any virtual technology where without defined use cases. So the danger now becomes, no matter how authentic I want to be and how I want to help people, the true help I can actually lend to the government is to tell them, hey, Take a step back. Don't rush into this. You don't have to just because you feel like you have to compete on the global stage and I understand that

Mike Gruen: 00:41:59

that's exactly everybody

Ken Kato: 00:42:00

else is feeling the same thing. So let's, you know, let's take a much more concerted step together.

Rob Murtha: 00:42:07

Dude, I totally have a thought in there. I just want to, I want to jump in and just say like, absolutely can like that. That I think is one of the most. Um, like forward leaning things, um, that, that the government and these program offices can do. And it's really hard to do because it's tough to admit like, Oh, I don't understand something or whatever. But we saw it a lot through like the DevSecOps era. Like we talk about like it being commoditized now. It's something adopted. It's something we're like using day to day kind of, a lot of organizations are still implementing it because it is challenging with all the policy barriers they have and whatnot. It's like a new way of doing things. But you're starting to see the same stuff with artificial intelligence where it's like, you know, Cringe Fest 9000, where it's like, everything's generative AI. There's no nuance. There's no understanding. There's no difference between generative AI and, you know, predictive AI. And, you know, what's a regression like model training and like, what's, you know, all these, like, uh, like how is a dirty algorithm relate to an artificial intelligence and automation strategy? There's like so much value and details everywhere where people can use artificial intelligence to solve. real problems. Um, I call it like practical AI, where it doesn't have to be this like strange kind of like, you know, commercial interpretation of this white paper or something. It's like, no, you can start small. Like you did with DevOps, you know, like KR, like, you know, start deploying what, like essentially like really like Gucci web forms, you know, to in a production environment. And that's a definite, that's a, a first test case, um, of, of success. We could do the same thing with artificial intelligence, like. They it's, there's actually approaches called like lean AI and stuff where you leverage the same, like lean methodologies to approach experimentation. And it's what we need to do if we, if we want to realize it fast.

Tim Winkler: 00:43:42

Yeah. One of the things that you kind of hit on too, Ken, I think is just like, sadly, there's a lot of. Bad players out there that are just selling snake oil, right. Because there's money in it. And it's like, Oh, well, you know, if we can just get it through this one program office, whatever, like, yeah, well, they see, they see, uh, you know, they see, uh, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but they don't see the value and they don't really care to like, make sure that it's being implemented or roll it out. So we see a lot of, I've seen a lot of companies just. It's almost like a facade, like, well, I'm really sure what the hell you're doing, but you have this relationship with this, you know, this one agency and it's, it's, you know, it comes back to the root of like, what we were first started talking about is like, you know, making sure that that value is there and that you're, you're, you know, that's what you're delivering at the end of the day. Um, I think Rob might, might've had to sign off, but at the, at the end of it, um, you know, I think can, it sounds like what you guys are doing at OmniFederal is, uh, you know, On a very different scale than what a lot of these other maybe, you know, consultancies might be, might be rolling out. Um, one of the things that I think comes to mind for me, uh, when I think about, you know, Some of these preconceived notions of government is, you know, we've got meetings upon meetings upon meetings, right? So it's like, how do you overcome these, these older habits, like during an engagement with, with some of the, you know, some of the partnerships that you've had, or some of these engagements that you've had, what is it that. You know, from a cadence perspective, I'm just generally curious on like, how often are you and checking in? Like what's the level of engagement that you all take when you're, when you're trying to implement something?

Ken Kato: 00:45:27

Great question. Uh, so when I built Black Pearl for the Department of Navy, you know, it was, it wasn't like it went from zero to build day one, I got there. And so when I got there, it was part, it was detailed. There is a white house fellow and the expectation is that we'll be doing by husband, the way things live with that might be. I also came with having just left Casa rock. So having had, you know, had the hand and building out the infrastructure there, there's a lot of natural questions. And the literal question that was asked to me was, can we do a Casa run? Like everybody. And I have to tell Secretary of the Navy, CNO, DCNO, CIO, CTO, all the same thing, I don't know. Like, what do you mean you don't know? I'm like, well, without knowing what the Navy is doing, I'm not going to come in and make an assumption that you're not doing it, or that you are doing it, it's amazing, I don't know. So I'm telling you that I don't know that I need to go to Discovery. And I wound up finding this O5, my friend Jason Thurst, who helped me, my friend Devin Brand. Devin was the pimp who was also in the Navy with me. Travel across the Navy and just go dig in. Find out what people are doing. So when you look at Super Hornet, right, how is software being developed on Super Hornet? Well, the answer lies in China Lake. It's a very long, awful trip to go to China Lake. If we're talking sub development, well, there's the Virginia class and the Columbia class is near my neck that was in the East Coast, so we went to talk to those folks, like, bit by bit by bit to get that knowledge. And then after that, I was finally able to check back in to the original stakeholders. CIO. I'm ready, and I think here's where I can, I think I can help. I think I want to build a paper concept platform so that you can just go on it, do development, do communication, practice doing actual stuff, and bring that back with you. Like, I want to build everything open source and just give it to you, but there's no money involved. But even that, there is still money involved, right? The hard truth is that government employees make money and they still, their money has to come from somewhere. So I wound up having to, you know, identify new stakeholders and champions. And the person I found, he had me start looking into contract renewals, because I was waiting after, you know, the Point to be able to say, Hey, Congress, give me money. So I had to go look on the couch missions, but where I found it was licensed renewals. It's a licensed renewals is that weird murky war in it, where a lot of people overplay the numbers to make sure they can buy all the things we need to do. And if that's true in private industry, that's also got to be true in government, right? And that's exactly where I found this. So I found a couch question for that money. And I actually, Was able to build, deploy, and run BlackQuery, year one, for, I tell you what, you guys have been in this business, no one else, if I had to build a DevSecOps program, how much do you think I spent, whole program?

Mike Gruen: 00:48:26

Mike, you would, you gotta guess? I mean, I, whatever, I guess it's gonna be so off, I have no, I mean, for, for that size, I don't know, I have, it's, Um, uh, yeah, I wouldn't even be able to hazard a guess, honestly, just, uh, you'd call it

Ken Kato: 00:48:50

millions, tens of millions,

Mike Gruen: 00:48:52

probably tens of millions, like somewhere, and

Ken Kato: 00:48:55

that's another thing I wanted to change your mind on and the government, it doesn't have to be that expensive, but it is 400, 000.

Mike Gruen: 00:49:04

Impressive

Ken Kato: 00:49:05

operation. Thank you. But that's also like me and a couple of people have been put hands on keyboard, build out everything. No licensing involved. And for the license stuff is calling in favors, right? Version of the Red Hat. So I called in favors to friends over Red Hat. Like, Hey, how do I get a dev license? Like, Oh, here's

Mike Gruen: 00:49:23

that.

Ken Kato: 00:49:24

So just being creative about that kind of stuff. And then that's You know, that was the initial part of like, how do you launch a new product? And so the answer to your question about how often you check in thereafter, all the time, because once you build a program like that, I have to go down and pony it, right? Now it's going back to the same tool registered to discover who's doing DevOps in the Navy. Now let's go back through this same group of people and go, here's the thing, does this help you? Yes, no, if it doesn't, tell me how it does help.

Tim Winkler: 00:49:53

Right. Yeah, you bring up a good point, Ken, because it's like, uh, I was talking to somebody the other day that's pretty deep into, into defense tech space. And One of the biggest things that he was an advocate for was finding agencies that don't have colors of money. So it's like, you know, everything in the government's got to have, you know, this been tied to this thing, which makes it really hard to innovate if they can't find that correlation of like, Oh, well, I don't know what, what was this? Was this really R and D or? Or, you know, was this operation and maintenance? I don't know what, what's my line item here. So there's, there are, there are few, uh, agencies in defense that are kind of like this, uh, almost like a, uh, sandbox for innovation, defense innovation unit is one of them, DIU. Uh, where they have colorless money. So they do a lot of work with commercial startups in terms of, you know, experimenting with this technology here, or like, Hey, let me see what I can see, how I can maybe prototype with this technology from this one company here versus having to find a line item to connect it to and make sure that it's, yeah, but you know, it's, is it in the budget? Um, so it is really tough. And I think that's one thing that a lot of folks don't really understand or maybe not realize when they come from a commercial setting into a government setting is that. There are these colors of money. You can look it up. What does it, what does government color of money mean? And it's got to be tied to, you know, one of these buckets. Um, so when you kind of, you know, describe like how to get something across, you know, uh, across the finish line, that just, You know, it's not, it's not a matter of spam, but just like, just once you get a taste of the value, I think that's, it's a really interesting perspective. When I, when I'm coming from like a world of like a lot of commercial startup and innovation, that's moving very quickly. And let me just give you a taste of it. You can try it and then we can scale it. So not how it works traditionally, uh, when we're talking about, you know, big Big implementations here.

Ken Kato: 00:51:52

Now, to your point about speed, like a little funny, you know, adding to it about building out Black Pearl, like, the story officially in the Department of Navy is it took, I want to say, 45 days to launch it.

Tim Winkler: 00:52:03

Wow.

Ken Kato: 00:52:03

And to build all that stuff, right. Which is still fast. But here's the actual truth. That's me and my friends took a long weekend to actually write and AWS. So, you know, that's four days. So I spent the other 41 days getting back on the CNO's calendar to tell the guy I was done.

Tim Winkler: 00:52:23

That's funny. Um, yeah, that's, that's a pretty, uh, that definitely puts perspective in terms of like the amount of time to value.

Ken Kato: 00:52:33

Now, on the Congress money parcel, when you're talking DIU, and I remember them from the days where they had the X and it was still experimental, right? So KR came out of the IUX model back then. So, you're talking OTA, other transcriptional authority, and that's another, like, really hairy topic in government. So, Or I'm not sure how familiar your listeners are to OTAs and different mechanisms. Maybe just

Tim Winkler: 00:52:55

quickly spell it out because it is an area that I think is, um, comes up a couple of times through the Castle Run former episodes. Okay.

Ken Kato: 00:53:02

So let's touch the high level OTA, other transactional authority. It is a perfectly legal way for the government to buy something. Usually it's technology. It's called other transactional authority because it is a fully legal authority to buy stuff. It's other transactional also because it's not traditional. Acquisition. So FAR, Federal Acquisition Regulation, and DFAR is a defense supplement. It's a very scripted, structured way to buy something. It's pretty gnarly to get through. OTAs, you don't have to. So you are now legally not obligated to have to do all the DFARs and FAR stuff. That's what's sexy about OTAs. But here's the problem. Most ag shops have no idea how OTAs work. So even if you find an ag shop going to do an OTA, they make you jump to the hook like FAR and DFARs because they don't know the difference. So even though you can find colorless money like an OTA funds, you still up against people who still manage money the same way. Uh,

Mike Gruen: 00:53:59

gotcha.

Ken Kato: 00:53:59

It still comes down to the application of professional knowledge about it. And OTAs are pretty out there. There's a lot of people who really don't like them. And we're talking even congressional representatives who really don't like the idea. It's not for lack of transparency and any above. It's just the, Lack of commitment and money. Because OTAs are so flexible, people hasn't been handing them out regularly. So there's, because there's no legal enforcement. There is, but there isn't. So that's OTAs in a nutshell. Castle Run, but there is a way to use, you know, Colorado money in a smart way. So Castle Run, we have 3, 600 money. So 3, 600 is just, you know, R& D. So as long as we could fit into the software R& D, that's just that pot of money, it's really flexible to be able to move around. So there is a way to do it, but it also means getting an application professional who understands this field well. Like it's the same difference as hiring a really well seasoned CFO, especially a CFO who understands international trade laws and taxes. Because when you run a business, it's not the, it's frankly not the business itself that will kill you. It's the taxes. Especially when we start making international money. So how do you reconcile international income into the United States? Having a seasoned CFO to answer that is great. Same difference in the government having a seasoned acquisition professionals who actually understand OTAs is super critical.

Tim Winkler: 00:55:18

Yeah, that's good intel man. And I think that's probably an area we could really dive deeper into on an entire episode, just because, you know, I think there's a lot of folks that have figured it out. Some that are still trying to figure it out, but I think there is a lot that can be done in terms of navigating those waters and, and, uh, you know, how to innovate by. Yeah, pulling on the right strings.

Ken Kato: 00:55:42

I could think of two people would be perfect for you to talk to. My buddy, Russell Long, he runs Long Capture. He came out about, he's a former contract officer. And my friend, Tori Cush is over at Sage. Tori was the main, like, act person for Castle Run. So, she's the one who defined Agile Acquisition. Another person would be Max, DIU, formerly at Castle Run. Same thing, right, the Agile Acquisition. Like, those are the folks who speak to you about that stuff.

Tim Winkler: 00:56:05

I'll have to, that's what I love about, man, this is, and that, in my opinion, it kind of like defines the space. It's like, everybody's always willing to like pass forward a name or two or three of somebody else. It's, it's doing something in some area. I mean, it, it really is a theme of, of, uh, you know, uh, work, working in tech and government or defense, what, what have you, it's truly a very networking driven space, man. Yeah. And, uh, I love that. I think it's, it's, uh, it's also shows your passion too, like willing to like, Hey, like pay it forward. Also, like, I want to keep the conversation going because everybody seems to be on the same thread that, you know, we want to help innovate. We want to do it. Like, how do we, how do we build the ecosystem? Like, here's some people that you might want to talk to. Um, so I, I appreciate that and I, I will, I will take you up on that. I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, connect with you offline on it. Um, all right. Well, in the essence of, of time, I am going to just kind of transition us down to, uh, to our, our final segment here. I'll, I'll have to tap Rob at a later date here to get his, uh, five seconds. Scramble, but. Uh, we still have you on, on the hook here, Ken. So Mike, uh, go ahead and, uh, and lead us off with the, with the five second scramble segment. Uh, for the new year, a little

Mike Gruen: 00:57:20

change. I get to actually participate. So, yeah, so, uh, I'm going to fire some questions off at you, uh, and try to answer as quickly as possible. Uh, it'll be a mix of, um, uh, company and personal questions. Um, So, uh, here we go, uh, explain OmniFederal to me as if I were a five year old.

Ken Kato: 00:57:42

We build tech that people really, really want to use. That's really, really critical to their success. So we like to go out and find out what it is that you want to use and we build it for you because that's where our passion is.

Mike Gruen: 00:57:57

Uh, what type of technologist thrives at, uh, OmniFederal?

Ken Kato: 00:58:03

A wide range. Uh, what kind of technologists thrive? Really, people who are willing to just dive in and really dig into a problem. Not just a surface, cure a problem, space, and then I'm going to go make something. Really, really dig in to really understand the customer, the end user.

Mike Gruen: 00:58:22

Uh, what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Ken Kato: 00:58:26

When I first joined the fellowship, I was told to, uh, that every fellowship class has a crisis and I was prepared. I was not prepared for a pandemic though.

Mike Gruen: 00:58:38

Uh, what's the most important skill you look for in a new hire?

Ken Kato: 00:58:42

The ability to explain complicated tech in a really simple way. Like as if you're going to explain to my mom or grandma, that's the kind of people I like to talk to because well, I'm You don't have to sound smart to be smart.

Mike Gruen: 00:58:55

Uh, what do we have to look forward to, uh, coming, uh, at OmniFederal?

Ken Kato: 00:59:00

We're really excited to start thinking about how to get DEU into the hands of other users and to other missions. We're super excited to start building out an internal product launch structure so that we can start moving towards a product centric organization as well. I am personally interested and very excited about building different AI and ML related capabilities. Thanks.

Mike Gruen: 00:59:22

What was your dream job as a kid?

Ken Kato: 00:59:25

To be a motorcycle cop.

Mike Gruen: 00:59:28

That's a sweet answer. Love it. Yeah,

Ken Kato: 00:59:32

I knew it, but yeah.

Mike Gruen: 00:59:35

What's the largest land animal you think you could take in a street fight?

Ken Kato: 00:59:39

Ooh, largest land animal in a street fight, my god. That's a great question, man. I think I'm pretty comfortable with a cat. I think I have a good chance, but I don't, I love my fur babies. You know, we have, I would have to run away because I'm not going to hurt the fur baby.

Mike Gruen: 01:00:03

What was your favorite cereal as a kid?

Ken Kato: 01:00:06

Uh, funny thing. I didn't really experience Syria until I moved to the United States when they did recent peanut butter puffs all the way.

Mike Gruen: 01:00:13

Oh, awesome. That's cool. Um, what's a charity or corporate philanthropy that you're a, that's near and dear to you?

Ken Kato: 01:00:21

Oh man. Uh, donate to Spookstock. Uh, I have a bunch of friends who run the organization. Uh, they give money to phone Intel officers, totally worth it.

Mike Gruen: 01:00:30

Um, and we'll get that in the show notes, right, Tim? Yeah. Cool. Cool. Um, and then finally, if you could live in a fictional world from a book or movie, which world would you choose?

Ken Kato: 01:00:41

Oh man. But because we're talking horror early in the night, that's when my brain's like, that's not a good space to live in. That's not a good idea. Uh, world to live in. Let's go with my childhood. I mean, I would love to be able to have an actual like world where like the Gundam mechs are available. Cool. Right. Versus a car. Yeah. Give me that any day of the week.

Mike Gruen: 01:01:03

Awesome. Well, thanks so much.

Tim Winkler: 01:01:05

Good stuff. Uh, all right. Well, that's a wrap. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna close on that note. Thanks again for joining us. Ken and Rob, you guys have been a great guest. Uh, uh, thanks for keeping, keep keeping on, on, on moving that needle. Uh, when it comes to digital transformation and the public sector, uh, it's a long road, but, uh, you guys are walking it. So appreciate the work you're doing. For joining us on the pod.

Ken Kato: 01:01:28

Thanks for having me. This is great. Thank you again.