Series A Is Too Late

The overwhelming majority of clients at Alpha Strategies, LLC tend to be startups and companies that have never engaged in Washington. They are relatively new to DC and are only willing to put serious resources into government relations because a regulatory matter is already threatening the existence of their company and their innovative product on the market. This has been the recurring trend at my firm over the past ten years.

In fact, it is the only kind of client I know — crisis management first, which then leads to an immediate retainer until the problem has been resolved or addressed in some manner by policymakers after an intense lobbying and education campaign. I am grateful for the opportunity, and I get to work on genuinely interesting issues in an intense regulatory and policy environment.

However, as I think about the recent outreach by startups across a variety of sectors, it seems like founders tend to "get serious" about government relations during Series A — and not before.

That is often the worst possible moment.

By Series A you already have a product thesis, a market, and a burn rate. What you usually do not have is time. A bill is moving. An agency is writing guidance. A prime is locking the procurement language. The comment deadline was last month.

The companies that get this right — in AI, crypto, defense, and health — often start earlier, sometimes at Seed, not because they can afford a full GR shop, but because the policy risk is already baked into the business model.

Three Tells That Seed Is the Right Time

Government is a customer, a payer, or a gatekeeper. If you need an NDAA line, a CMS code, a banking charter path, or export clarity, the calendar started before your first hire.

The rule being written assumes you are a platform, not a five-person team. That is the default in AI and a lot of health and fintech drafts.

Your competitors — or the incumbents you are disrupting — already have people in the building.

GR Is Part of Go-to-Market

If the U.S. government is your customer, your regulator, or the thing that can kill distribution, government relations is not a later-stage luxury. It is part of go-to-market.

The question is not "when can we afford a lobbyist." It is "when does waiting become more expensive than showing up."

If you wait for product-market fit before you check policy-market fit, you may discover the market was never allowed to exist.