The ContractRadar Journey

Most government contracting tools (GovTribe, GovWin) cost $5,000+/year and are built for federal capture teams at consultancies. SAM.gov is free but has hostile UX and only covers federal — it doesn't touch the 40+ state portals or city systems where small trade work actually lives.

So the people who are exactly who small-business set-asides exist for — roofers, electricians, plumbers, painters, landscapers, janitorial — are the worst served by the tooling. A 3-person plumbing shop in Phoenix isn't going to spend $5k/year on bid intelligence software. They want to know what's open in their state this week and whether they'd qualify.

ContractRadar fills that gap. It monitors 50+ portals (federal + 40 states + 8 cities), matches contracts to your industry and state, and emails you the ones you'd actually bid on. Free to search; $30/month for daily alerts. Mobile-first, because tradespeople work on phones.

SEO is starting to compound on long-tail industry-state queries (top 5 for "government contracts for plumbers in [state]" in several states).

The honest challenge: most tradespeople have no idea federal and state contracting is open to them at all. Awareness is half the work. If you know a contractor who keeps asking "where do you even find this stuff?" — send them my way.