Bypass the ambiguity of working with government and get a foot in the door with a customer who is invested in your success.
STIR improves access for doing business with government by making it easier for innovative technology companies to find project opportunities and win government contracts.
Whether you have zero or 200 government customers, innovators at any stage can apply.
1) Challenge Sourcing: Governments identify challenges and solicit solutions through the City Innovate digital platform.
2) Proposals: Innovative technology companies review opportunities and submit short, 1-2 page proposals to one or more challenges.
3) Selection: Governments review applications and interview top candidates then select one or more innovative technology company to partner with.
4) Scope of Work: Governments and innovative technology companies team up to co-develop a scope of work with objectives for the collaboration period.
5) Collaboration Period: Vendors selected will collaborate with their government partner to create a structured roadmap. This can include: user research, design, build, and testing over a multi-week proof-of-concept (POC) period. More established vendors can skip over some or all of these steps and go directly to a demonstration.
6) Contract: Projects are expected to go to contract if the objectives of the scope of work are met and if there is a positive working relationship between team members.
of innovative technology companies participating in STIR were founded by women or people of color
raised by STIR innovative technology companies in venture capital
in technology spend by governments participating in STIR
“STIR makes my job as an investor easier. I know STIR graduates have engaged in deep customer discovery, built a great product solving a real government need and achieved the ultimate validation: securing a contract.”
"As a small startup, it would be hard to gain a city’s interest, let alone have them interview us. ThroughSTIR, we got a chance to apply to and be interviewed and eventually selected by a city. Everything was well organized from the application phase to interview phase to announcing the final selections.The assistance rendered during and post residency by STIR was also helpful."
“As a growing startup, we're always on the lookout for investment. Part of our appeal to investors was our work with San Francisco through CI and the potential it has for other cities.”
"Hands down CI is the best way to work with governments. Not only did we close our first contract in North America but the introduction and referral was essential for us to win our implementation with a great city like San Francisco."
