How To Make Gov Work Hip
When Army vets Al Di Leonardo and Abe Usher got together four years ago to launch a government contracting firm, sequestration loomed. The odds were against them. But getting acquired last month proved everyone wrong.
Al and Abe focused on one of the hottest tech spaces (big data analytics) and used what they learned in US Special Operations and Google to create HumanGeo, a Silicon Valley-esque startup in Arlington that builds data analytic software applications for the DOD and other government agencies. The 80-person company is now owned by The Radiant Group, a private equity firm that owns a handful of small, entrepreneurial government firms. But Al says the ownership won’t change the culture at HumanGeo, except giving it some deeper pockets to better support customers.
Al and Abe, in their fun working environment (above), spent time together in US Special Operations Command. After the military, Abe worked on Google Earth and other geospatial mapping technology. Al retired from the Army in 2011 after creating data science cells that supported senior government leaders in US Special Operations. The data science and innovation cell Al operationalized had never been successfully done before and he ended up winning Federal Computer Week’s Fed100 award in 2011, just before launching HumanGeo. Abe won the same award a few years later for his technical leadership in multidisciplinary agile software development.
One of the company’s most memorable projects was creating the Nerd Brigade last year. It connected software engineers with subject matter experts at DIA to create tailored apps to automate thousands of manual procedures. The company got its start providing social media analytics. One of HumanGeo’s first customers was the British government, which hired the team to monitor geo-located social media content in England during the 2012 Olympics. Metropolitan Police used the advanced data analytics from HumanGeo to successfully dispatch officers to high-risk areas based on what was being said on social networks.
The company has seen 40% revenue growth in the last year and will spend the next year growing its presence in the DOD. Part of the strategy is to apply the Nerd Brigade model of agile software development and cloud implementation strategies across other agencies. The company is opening an Austin office, adding to its Arlington HQ and opening an office in Charlottesville.
