Blackdragon is the first and only of its kind company operating in the federal contracting community. We are transforming the industry with a pioneering new approach that generates competitive advantages for our clients, ultimately helping the right bidder firms win the right contracts more effectively and efficiently than ever before.
Blackdragon is more than just a company, it is a family. It is a radical movement on a mission. It is a kaleidoscopic network of networks and a team of teams that perpetually strengthens itself and boosts its own momentum. It is a liberated lifestyle where members are accountable to themselves calling their own shots and a place where career success is always being redefined with respect to work-life balance. Blackdragon is a fresh new way of thinking. We celebrate our potential for accomplishing something great because we refuse to be limited based on how it has always been done. Blackdragon is an escape from outdated, confining employment traps and tired business models that take more than they give and are no longer relevant for tomorrow’s workforce.
Blackdragon is a constantly expanding global coalition – a living ecosystem – of talented experts sharing the same entrepreneurial spirit united under one banner to capitalize on emerging business opportunities while still proudly adding value to the nation that we adore.
The founding members and fellow owners of Blackdragon are all veteran federal industry experts with extensive backgrounds that include being highly trained and robustly practiced in the art and science of winning and delivering all sorts, sizes, types and complexity levels of competitive federal contracts both domestically and abroad.
By 2014, co-founders Rob Rosenberger and John Fanguy, were exhausted by the perpetual unpleasant (and often brutal) aspects of this fiercely competitive industry that seemed to manifest into reality no matter which employer they worked for. Seeking a new path by leveraging their combined strengths and assets, they envisioned a better-faster-smarter way of creating a new type of company that could revolutionize the entire federal contracting community like never before. Thus, the concept of Blackdragon that took over a year to shape was born and officially launched as a privately held company on January 1, 2015. In addition to the founders, the company has multiple owners.
Before reaching its 3rd birthday, Blackdragon had rapidly climbed to become the largest bid and proposal (B&P) company throughout the federal industry (world?). Since then, more freelance experts (aka, ‘Dragons’) and Client users continue to join the Blackdragon marketplace each month. The more it grows, the more powerful it becomes.
We LOVE to win and that forms the basis of everything we do! Blackdragon is comprised of all types of highly motivated, competent professionals who are opportunists at heart, but we are not afraid to fail. Resourcefulness and resilience are two core values that we consider to be key elements of our DNA. The secret to our success is our collective freedom to pursue our own dreams on our own terms with people we trust and enjoy working with. There’s a feeling of pride, fellowship, common loyalty and devotion to a united cause shared by our members. We embrace every opportunity to make our clients better off than before they worked with us and we make sure they know it without question.
Dragons are passionate about what they do, proud of who they are, and are the best at what they do. At Blackdragon, we put our money where our mouth is—our success is based on our clients’ success. However, that eagerness and enthusiasm does not make us reckless or foolhardy, but rather we are so confident in our ability to get it right for the client that we put our skin in their game by sharing the risks of failure.
We only take on projects assessed to have above-average probability for success based on our expert calculations. Yes, we have declined potential work opportunities where we could have earned money from our qualified clients, but we didn’t think the investments were in their best interests. And we were right. This validates why Blackdragon views itself more like honest partners with our clients compared to traditional vendors / consultants simply providing ‘support services’. That said, we are ambitious opportunists who love a good challenge and if there is a way to make a highly motivated client successful, we are always interested in devising clever ways to make that happen.
Our Dragon network is spreading all over the world and stealthily inhabiting more offices, gaining residency across numerous functional landscapes and progressively penetrating traditional work spaces throughout the federal industry. Blackdragon is revolutionizing the federal contracting industry from the ground up.
Freelance members of Blackdragon lightheartedly refer to one another as “Dragons”. When one Dragon meets another for the first time, it’s as though each has discovered a bond with someone who understands their secret handshake. There is a sense of fraternal chemistry between Dragons. It’s a good thing.
Dragons can often be found proudly wearing company logo lapel pins, brandishing custom-made Dragon pens, jewelry, handling assorted items and apparel with our name embroidered on it or perhaps just sporting something that is dragon’ish just for fun. Members love exhibiting their family ties and if you look close enough throughout the next federal industry crowd, you may be surprised to find them already among you.
Matchmaker platforms help buyers and sellers connect. Marketplace platforms help buyers and sellers transact. Blackdragon is a hybrid platform embodying the attributes of both matchmaker and marketplace.
For matchmaking, Blackdragon conducts advanced analyses and modeling to identify the potentially best-fitting candidates of freelancers and bidder companies for each target contract opportunity.
For the marketplace, Blackdragon facilitates transactions by way of our suite of standardized products and services which are provided by our global community of on-demand freelance experts.
Blackdragon believes in collaborative working models, common sense and the power of understanding what it takes to out-compete everyone else for the contract win. We treat every project exclusively and provide each client with tailor-made solutions designed for their specific opportunities. Our scalable, yet systematic approach has a proven track record of success.
Once considered innovative and fresh, on-demand services are now an integral part of our consumer society making each of us a part of a larger interconnected, digital community. However, Blackdragon is the first and premier company providing a full suite of on-demand deliverable-based products and services for winning contracts and it’s working superbly.
Some (not all) benefits Blackdragon provides to clients like no one else are:
Experienced freelance experts and qualified bidder clients within the marketplace benefit from its standardized processes that increase certainty the of right facilitating deals to be won best-fitting for the matches right of bidders, the right reducing experts’ failure around risks and improving PWin for all parties.
Clients enjoy enhanced confidence in their decisions to invest in pursing targeted contract opportunities.
Clients are assured the products and services they purchase are created by the most qualified, most competent, and readily available expertise the industry can offer at that time.
Stop pursuing deals that are not good fits or deals that look attractive but have a low winnability factor. Also, bid smarter so to mitigate the chances of investing heavily only to win the wrong the contract which ends up hurting the health of company more than it helps (aka, 'poison pills').
Personalized and tailored, fixed price solutions rapidly created by seasoned, best-fitting and most qualified experts available. Stop wasting precious time and resources on the wrong employee or consultant who is incentivized to stay on the payroll despite the result of their personal performance. Focus on what matters--getting the job done right as quickly and affordably as possible. Ditch the distractions and frustration.
With a full suite of fixed price on-demand products and services available, budget planning is easier and more realistic. Carefully invest that budget in only the ‘just-right’ high quality deliverables, as they are needed.
Transactions are easier, more cost effective and tangibly better through our platform. Drop the hassles of high personnel turnover, bad fits, unreliable performers, training people who leave, verifying hours logged, unprofessionalism, unscalable expenses, dealing with lots of invoices for hourly billings, and so on.
Businesses that are familiar with hiring employees for company culture instead of skill sets — and feeling negative consequences as a result — can embrace Blackdragon’s on-demand model where meeting the client’s company culture is less important than delivering the right combination of skills at the right time to produce the right results needed for a given job.
While “company culture” is a vital aspect of some businesses’ success, the tendency to overstate one’s fit within that culture can leave some more qualified choices in the dust. Ideally, our on-demand solution-based structure can provide clients with a better fitting talent based on their skill sets, instead of their potential fit within the client’s company culture.
Blackdragon helps clients bid 2x (or more) opportunity pursuits per year within existing resources and infrastructure.
The shift to an on-demand workforce means many professionals are opting for contract and part-time that allow them to make a comparable salary while having greater flexibility in when, where and how they work. The appeal of on-demand results in projections the on-demand workforce may outweigh full-time employees within the very near future.
Freelancers prefer our platform business model for a wide variety of reasons, some of which include:
The genuine advantage of crowdsourcing is tapping into a real-time large mass of intelligence, experience, relevant relationships and in-demand talent to take advantage of emerging opportunities or to innovatively solve problems of all kinds with a rapid response at an affordable price. Enough people with the right backgrounds and sufficient time can transform into a lot of available manpower.