Executive spotlights are in-depth Q&A’s which ExecutiveBiz conducts with numerous chief and top-level executives in GovCon.
The intimate access afforded by these interviews provides insight as to how companies are acquiring new business, what the future holds and the personal side of corporate leaders.
This past week, ExecutiveBiz published a spotlight with Bill Jaffe, co-founder of TAPE and current executive vice president and general manager.
Jaffe spoke to ExecutiveBiz about the founding of TAPE and how to position a government contracting company in the marketplace.
Jaffe said the company was started in a townhouse that was bought by selling his house in McLean.
“The founding partners had kind of spent a lifetime doing this. We understood the landscape. To an extent, the circumstances in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed. I had also worked with a number of key vendor large business folks and I knew we could get off the ground running in a successful fashion,” he added.
The industry veteran said that building relationships is the most important thing for small companies.
“Make continuous contact with people, especially with government folks. It’s important to talk to the people who have money, but as a really small business, most of your customers are really the large businesses that are going to be your primes in subcontract arrangements until you’re big enough to step out on your own,” he said.
“So, it’s really critical to go back to the folks that you associated with in former companies and former circumstances and who are now presumably directors and vice presidents and so forth on these bigger companies and renew those relationships and build those relationships as well,” Jeffe added.
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ExecutiveBiz is one of EM’s premiere websites and focuses on the news that executives need to know, including alerts on new contracts and industry reports, to conduct and acquire new business.