NAICS codes, award history, and certifications—your competitor's SAM.gov profile reveals more about their strategy than they realize.
Every company registered in SAM.gov has a public profile. Most treat it as a compliance checkbox—register, renew, forget. But to someone who knows what to look for, your competitor's profile is a strategy document they published without realizing it.
Combined with publicly available award data from FPDS, you can map their revenue sources, predict their next move, and find the gaps they haven't filled.
When a cybersecurity firm quietly adds NAICS 541715 (R&D in physical sciences), they're not updating paperwork. They're signaling a pivot toward research contracts or SBIR opportunities in adjacent domains.
NAICS codes are strategic declarations disguised as administrative data. Track a competitor's codes over six months and you'll see their growth strategy unfold before they announce it.
Pull a competitor's contract awards from FPDS. If 80% of their revenue flows from a single agency, that's a concentration risk they probably worry about in private. One budget cut, one leadership change, one reorganization—and their core revenue stream shifts.
It also tells you something useful: the agencies they've locked up might be the hardest to crack. But the agencies they haven't touched? Those are the markets they're leaving open.
Companies with 8(a), HUBZone, WOSB, or SDVOSB certifications have access to set-aside contracts you can't compete for directly. But that's not a dead end—it's a teaming opportunity.
A mentor-protégé arrangement or joint venture with a certified competitor can open doors that years of solo bidding wouldn't. Sometimes the fastest way past a competitor is to partner with them.
Forget what their website says. FPDS entries show what a competitor has actually delivered, described by the government. If their past performance skews heavily toward one type of work, adjacent areas are where they lack proof points.
That gap between what they claim and what they can prove? That's your opening.
Run these searches quarterly on your top five competitors. Over time, patterns emerge—shifts in strategy, emerging vulnerabilities, new market positions—often before the competition itself recognizes them.
The data is public. The insight comes from paying attention.
Outrider aggregates public federal data into competitive landscapes—so you can track competitor activity, spot market gaps, and position where others aren't looking.
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