The Govly Guide to Finding Product-Market Fit in Regulated Markets

Finding product-market fit in regulated markets requires a different playbook. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Govly founder Mike Weiland revealed how they cracked the code in government contracting by solving their own problems first.

Starting with Internal Pain Points Instead of extensive market research, Govly emerged from direct experience. “Govly grew out of that company because we needed software to help manage our own internal operations,” Mike explained. This internal origin gave them deep insight into the market’s real needs.

Understanding the Market Structure Their advantage came from intimate knowledge of how government contracting really works. “There’s always answer. You might not like the answer, but there’s always a process,” Mike noted. “There’s not really a motion like it’s governed by so many rules and regulations. But once you find the rules and regulations and you learn how to navigate that, it’s very powerful.”

Identifying Hidden Opportunities They discovered a massive opportunity in private contract vehicles. “Tens of billions of dollars a year gets sold just in the IT space to the federal government through these contract vehicles,” Mike shared. Most importantly, these opportunities weren’t visible on public platforms like SAM.gov.

Solving Communication Bottlenecks The team identified a critical inefficiency in how opportunities were shared: “I used to email it to a subcontractor and they would email it to a distributor and they would email maybe technical questions to the manufacturer and then emails would eventually come back up. And that process was incredibly inefficient.”

Building the Solution Their solution was comprehensive: “What Govly did was put everybody on a singular platform as a way of facilitating collaboration and instantaneous communication and being on the same page at all times,” Mike explained.

Creating Network Effects The platform’s value grew as more participants joined. “By nature of doing that, we also opened up the ability for crimes to navigate and network with new subcontractors,” Mike shared. This network effect created additional value beyond the core functionality.

Validating Product-Market Fit The strongest indicator of product-market fit came from user dependency. “We’ve become not necessarily a nice to have product, we’ve become a business critical product. People depend on us every day,” Mike emphasized.

Results and Growth This deep market understanding led to impressive growth: from $360,000 in ARR at the end of 2022 to $1.3M in 2023, with projections of $4M for 2024.

For founders targeting regulated markets, Govly’s experience offers valuable lessons: deep industry knowledge matters more than traditional product development frameworks, and sometimes the best validation comes from solving your own problems first. Their story shows that in complex markets, product-market fit often comes from understanding the industry’s unwritten rules and hidden inefficiencies.