This year, T-Rex Solutions marks 25 years in business. That’s impressive on its own, and even more so when one considers the context.
“To have been around for 25 years to be competing in the full and open market, and to have done that as a privately held business that hasn’t had external investments or private equity backing: That demonstrates that we’re here for the long term,” said CEO Seth Moore.
“When you look at the statistics around the percentage of businesses that fail, it’s kind of staggering,” he added. “This shows that we have staying power.”
The company isn’t resting on its laurels. Moore said he’s looking for continued growth by merging with or acquiring other companies, investing in new technologies and solutions and expanding the company’s existing business.
To drive that growth, T-Rex needs to keep winning places on contract vehicles.
“We’re focused on earning spots on some of the most widely-used government vehicles, to allow us to provide our solutions to customers across government, whether that’s in federal civilian, DOD or the IC,” he said.
In particular, the firm is looking for opportunities to help drive technological modernization. With agencies struggling to upgrade their IT infrastructure, applications, tools and services, “we’re focused on solving those modernization challenges, particularly as it relates to cloud adoption, zero trust implementation, data management, agile development and user experience,” Moore said.
There are many others in the GovCon space looking to solve those same problems for government. To stand out from the crowd, T-Rex leans into its strengths.
“We have the agility of a small business and maturity of a large, Moore said. “And we have a proven performance record on large, complex mission critical programs of national importance.”
It takes strong partnerships to tackle those very-large initiatives successfully.
“I see a lot of our competitors failing when the prime contractors try to do everything, and they’re not bringing the full breadth of the team forward,” he said. “We put our customer’s mission first, and that means we have to bring the best of breed, whether that’s a capability that we have or whether we have to find a teaming partner who can help us ensure mission success for our clients.”
In looking for those partners, Moore aims to team with companies that bring specific capabilities to the table.
“One way to find success is to find niche players in areas that are emerging,” he said. “We look for companies who focus on a particular capability and they’re really good at it, and we bring them forward.”
With support from the right partners, Moore is looking for opportunities to bring emerging technologies to the fore. He’s especially focused on helping agencies meet their goals around zero trust cybersecurity.
The move toward zero trust security began several years ago and is now essential, he said. Different agencies are at various stages in adopting it. To help every agency, regardless of their progress, T-Rex created an internal tool to assess their current position in adopting zero trust.
“From there, we can help them build a roadmap and implement that roadmap, to ensure that they are compliant with all the OMB requirements to have a zero trust architecture,” Moore said.
He’s also keeping a close eye on the emerging artificial intelligence space, where agencies will likely need support in the near future.
“AI is certainly something that we’re taking a strong look at, and we know our customers are taking a critical look at it as well,” he said.
“Like any emerging technology, you’ve got to be disciplined in your approach to adopting it, to do it in such a way that you’re ensuring you’re not tripping any ethical triggers or using data that’s not 100% accurate,” Moore added. “We’re implementing AI internally in a number of our back-office approaches, and we’re using that experience to inform how we put solutions together to help our customers.”
As he charts this course, Moore finds T-Rex’s middling size offers both a challenge and an opportunity.
“We’re no longer a small business, so we can’t compete for set-aside work,” he said. “That means we’re competing against the large publicly traded giants of the federal contracting world. They have obvious advantages over us in terms of their discretionary investment dollars, their brand awareness.”
“But having said that, we have a lot of advantages over them in terms of agility, responsiveness, and mission focus,” he continued. “All of our customers have access to me and my entire leadership team 24 hours a day.”
A 25-year veteran of the GovCon world, Moore said he takes pride in “the people and the mission.”
“Working with my fellow coworkers and building a sense of community at T-Rex is very fulfilling,” he said. “And we support some of the most important missions there are in government,” he said.
“When you think about a mission supporting the underpinnings of our democracy with the Census Bureau’s decennial census, or supporting the health of our active-duty military members through the Defense Health Agency ⏤ I can’t think of two things that are more important,” he added. “It’s really exciting and fulfilling to support those types of missions.”