i saw this tweet from dylan field this morning and it piqued my interest. with the massively renewed interest in defense startups and the recent push for american dynamism investing, what if there was an entirely new category of venture scale businesses that had been right under our noses this entire time?

the department of government efficiency (or doge for short) is a proposal, or a concept, or a figment of elon musk's imagination that has become a major talking point online. almost everyone i know in real life and almost everyone i follow on twitter has a problem or set of problems with how the united states government is run.

even if these people dont live in the united states, they still have problems with it, which is understandable - the united states is notorious for poking into other countries' business.

all of this made me think about the opportunity for entrepreneurs to capitalize on the massive inefficiencies present within every part of the government.

the proposed department of government efficiency would be run by vivek ramaswamy and elon musk, and its wikipedia page claims it wouldnt be labeled as a federal executive department (like the department of commerce or the department of energy), as that would require the approval of congress. instead, vivek and elon would work to "streamline" the united states' federal government and "reduce inefficiency" - on its own, it sounds like a good idea.

there are people who could come up with hundreds of examples of government inefficiency that create stress in our daily lives or make routine processes unbearable. a few examples i could think of include:

filing your taxes

going to get a license renewed at the DMV (or referred to as the BMV occasionally)

budget and spending reports presented by the pentagon

within every major company there exists bloat, and bloat isnt easily fixed because its a symptom of itself. your company is preparing to go public and file for IPO, you have to hire a bunch of lawyers, legal consultants, and other teams whose sole purpose is simplifying this process. you scale and grow operations internationally, requiring new legal teams and different hires in the human resources department. your team becomes massive, and this requires more workers across every area of work who cant easily be removed, as to remove them would be an admission of lack of scale.

elon is notorious for firing a larger number of twitter employees after the acquisition, claiming the company was bloated or some combination of words that led others to understand twitter employees werent really getting anything done.

its very difficult to examine the united states government and get a full picture of how it works. there's the federal level, state level, and local level - all of these have different responsibilities, budgets, internal hierarchies, and rules to follow. within all of these also exist a large number of government programs, companies, contractors, offices, and everything inbetween. you would be incorrect to assume the vast amount of government-sponsored work being done is valuable or time wellspent - its impossible.

i believe the department of government efficiency is a step in the right direction, and potentially a massive positive for the future of our country. im not sure its wise to have vivek and elon run it, but on the flip side, im not sure who i would put in their place to run doge. even if a project or undertaking like this doesnt work out, its worth a shot. it isnt going to be as bad as people are letting on.

i dont think its wise to eliminate a bunch of government spending programs and use this money on whatever the department of government efficiency decides on. they arent going to remove federal funding for social security programs, health insurance, cancer research, or other initiatives that are a net positive.

instead, a lot of their work might focus on improving workflows within - and between - these governments orgs and streamlining approval processes, legislation proposals, internal databases, or anything else that might contribute to slow progress. or at least, this is the impression ive gotten and what id like this program to look like.

dylan field's tweet stood out to me because it made me think about the more recent trend of american dynamism investing across the venture capital industry, and the obvious opportunity we've seen in defense tech and the proliferation of startups building for the defense sector. there was a good report by leo polovetz about deep tech investing that highlighted the opportunities available for defense startups, particularly in their capability of securing government funding and frequent contracts.

here's a quote:

"To take defense as a concrete example, this site lists awarded defense contracts. The DoD awards multiple 8-9 figure contracts daily. Any startup that captures just a few contracts of this size is basically a $1b+ company."

the department of government efficiency's work and increased awareness of bloated, old-fashioned government systems will spark a new type of venture-scale startup in the coming years. just like we've seen the capability for massive, venture-scale outcomes with companies like anduril (and maybe palantir, if u consider it defense tech), we will see a growth in interest for startups that simplify more "boring" government operations and bring our public sector back into the present year 2024.

im not sure what these startups would be called, but they obviously fit into this category of american dynamism, even if theyre a bit more boring. a16z has written some very good reports about integrating AI into existing software, or leveraging the capabilities of AI to introduce entirely new workflows that improve efficiency at every part of a business' stack - here, here, and here are links to some of these reports.

in my opinion, the department of government efficiency's progress will reveal a lot of these inefficiencies at every part of the government and introduce entrepreneurs to a new type of opportunity, where they can treat optimizing the government's processes as they would any traditional private business.

is it a bad thing to combine free market, private sector, capitalist ideals with our government? maybe it is, but id argue its more of a positive than watching the government's tech stack rapidly fail to adapt to changing times, or watch our government continue to get leapfrogged by private sector innovation.

the largest example of this leapfrogging we've seen comes from elon and spacex, with comparisons to the former's rapid pace of advancement and NASA's failure to do anything representative of a growing shift in trust from public sector government entities towards private companies.

this could use more detail, but i needed to post something and this was nagging at me. thanks for reading.

addendum:

i realize that i forgot to include a few other comments and so im adding these at 9:32pm november 25th.

there was a string of tweets from zhil that reminded me of an economics class i took a semester or two ago, concerning local and state government tax law. it sounds very boring, and ill be honest, i passed the class without ever attending an 8am lecture but thats only due to my genuine fascination for the material. i did very well on exams.

zhil's tweets highlight the growing discrepancy between reality - where local governments exist - and the idealized version of reality that democracy relies on, the one where we are supposed to believe that everyone is acutely aware of whats going on within their town or community and takes this energy to the polling booth. the reality is that mostly no one pays attention to local government functioning, local political issues, or even thinks about how little they know about this subject.

zhil argues for the "necessity of government simplification (Musk's DOGE) for democracy" under the assumption that 99% of people are unaware of anything local governments are supposed to do - this can be extended up to state and federal levels, but most people are at least aware of what the federal government does, as its kind of common knowledge.