Neha Sahu, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Launch Girls

Many entrepreneurs want to work with the government, but before you do, you really need to ask yourself whether you're ready for it.

Do you know your “why”?

You can start with the why of ‘why you're partnering’. Is it for scale, for sustainability, for branding and legitimacy, or something else altogether? Because if this isn't clear, your work doesn't align with government priorities, and you'll struggle to make it meaningful. What we did at Launch Girls was have a very clear ‘why’. We wanted to scale and create systems change, and that meant working with the government, not around it.

Do you understand the political landscape?

It's important to ask yourself whether you know the political landscape you're walking into. This is at the national, state, and district levels if you're in a country like India. Do you understand the government's strategy and structure? What is already happening? What are the gaps? And what does the government need? At Launch Girls, before we signed our first state government agreement, we spent a year studying policies and schemes to understand where we fit and then creating organizational strategies to navigate that terrain.

Is your team ready?

Working with a government also takes a certain temperament, and we look at two criteria for team readiness.

• Institutional readiness:

  does your team understand compliance, data, and systems to be able to work with governments at scale?

• Relational readiness:

  does your team have the network, the champions, the credibility, and, of course, the ability to build these strong relationships?

We built a team that understands government systems and processes. They can build relationship capital by having diplomatic communication channels and a team that has a strong knack for compliance and procedures that these government systems love.

Tosan Mogbeyiteren, Founder & Program Director, Black Swan Tech Ltd

Are you ready to work on their timeline?

Government life cycles are super long, especially in the context of the startup experience. Our life cycles are very short, and require quick responses. If you want to deploy a solution that has wide impact and scale, you have to be prepared for the long haul. It means that conversations with the government could have 12- to 18-month cycles before anything even begins to happen.

Key takeaways

• Know your purpose before pursuing a government partnership.

• Understand the systems, politics, and people you’ll work with.

• Build a team and plan that can move at the government’s pace.