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New Year, Same Mission

December 20, 2019 / Dcode

Some see 2019 as an ending. As the year comes to a close, so does a decade. But at Dcode, 2019 was a year of new beginnings and big wins!

If you’ve taken a look at our website this fall, you’ll have noticed that we’re ending 2019 with a new look to reflect our team and company growth. So buckle up, because we are about to run through all of our highlights from throughout the year.

Eureka! New Government Offerings

We debuted new offerings for government leaders. Dcode Advance is our three-day training on how to navigate procurement and bring emerging tech solutions to government missions. Dcode Eureka is our one-day executive course on a specific tech area like AI or 5G.

Over 350 people from across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community completed Dcode Advance (formerly known as DETEC) training this year. We’d like our whole government team to go ahead and give themselves a pat on the back for that.

We tailor Dcode Advance to government applications, helping non-technical government leaders learn about implementation, in a timeframe that busy government executives can easily make time for. As a result of Dcode Advance, we’re seeing tech solutions being implemented, and over 100 active minimum viable products (MVPs) are currently in progress!

Dcode also ran the tech scouting for the AFWERX Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) Challenge. The challenge aimed to solve real government challenges in six to 18 months, using commercial technology with military applications, and seven of the 30 finalists were Dcode alumni: Trifacta, ThoughtSpot, OmniSci, CryptoMove, DataRobot, ChromaWay, and Hivemapper all scored invitations to a demonstration day as finalists.

What are the innovation goals in your government program office for next year? Find out how Dcode can help here →

Guiding Tech Companies to Victory

Our tech team continues to help emerging tech companies navigate and succeed in the federal market. This year, 22 companies graduated from our acceleration program, Dcode Accelerate.

And while the Dcoders on our tech team was running cohorts for AI, cybersecurity, and health tech, they found time to launch a new offering — Dcode Launch, a three-day mini-acceleration program designed to give companies a way to gauge the federal market and make critical government connections. The first Dcode Launch cohort was for space tech companies during the 70th International Astronautical Congress.

Dcode has now grown our alumni portfolio to almost 100 emerging tech companies, with 141 contracts won across 60 federal agencies. We call that a win!

Learn more about Dcode Accelerate here, and if you’re want the chance to meet the tech companies in future cohorts, email us at programs@dcode.co

Alumni Wins

Speaking of our alumni tech companies, they had some big wins this year as well. Some highlights include small business innovation research (SBIR) wins, massive raises, and recognition on top 100 lists.

Infinite Composites, Thresher, Enview, CryptoMove, HAAS Alert, Unearth, and Slingshot all won SBIR grants to further their products and services in the federal market!

Dcode alumni companies Gravitational, Trifacta, Fieldwire, Unearth, Shape, ThoughtSpot, CircleCI, Sitetracker, Pathmind (formerly Skymind), Expanse, and Contrast Security all closed major funding rounds and raised millions from top venture firms. Shape Security was also acquired by F5 for $1B!

As far as other major wins go… Saviynt launched a new private access management (PAM) offering. ChromaWay landed a massive contract to pilot land registries on blockchain with the Inter-American Development Bank. Contrast Security launched on the AWS marketplace with DevOps Competency Status. Tamr announced a strategic partnership with In-Q-Tel to accelerate its entry into the intelligence community, and Figure Eight was acquired by data annotation company Appen.

Check out our awesome alumni portfolio here

Expanding Reach with Industry Partners

In addition to our amazing community of alumni tech companies and government leaders, we worked closely with our industry partners to host new events. With Booz Allen Hamilton and the Consumer Technology Association, Dcode hosted an educational event about emerging tech with the Office of the CIO at HHS. We also had our first-ever Health Tech Innovation Symposium in partnership with Microsoft, Deloitte, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

We teamed up with AWS to host a lunch and panel for our Dcode Launch cohort of space tech companies during the International Aeronautical Congress, which brought together space tech companies and government leaders to learn more about the innovation happening in the commercial space tech industry.

Deloitte also supported our accelerator cohorts by hosting companies at 10 different events. Deloitte also hosted a roundtable with VCs and government agencies to facilitate better communication about innovation in the government.

As always, we hosted events to bring the entire Dcode community together. Our Summer Mixer, sponsored by MACH37, Justworks, and Verizon 5G Labs, was a celebration of the culmination of our cybersecurity cohort. Microsoft sponsored our Winter Social, bringing our community together to look ahead to our AI programming in 2020.

Next Up

2019 was a big year, and we’re looking forward to 2020 being even bigger and better. We have a full schedule with our AI and Big Data cohorts kicking off in February and government trainings focused on AI planned to help agencies understand how AI might improve their missions.

2019 was a year of growth for Dcode offerings, and a year of growth for Dcode as well. The staff tripled this year (and we’re not done hiring!), and the close-knit, passionate, and friendly culture that makes Dcode such a great company has only grown closer with new team members thanks to monthly culture squad activities and an extremely active praise channel in Slack.

The team at Dcode are the backbone of all our offerings, and 2019 has been a success because of visionary leadership, dedicated team members, and a passion for making the government better.

Join our community in 2020, and subscribe to our monthly newsletter to keep up with all that we’ve got going on. We’re excited for what’s ahead.