"It's really good for us because we can identify new technologies and processes in these small companies, put money in their pocket and go to market," said Mark Gembicki, managing director of BearingPoint's critical infrastructure program, who keeps an office at the incubator. "CIC is a way of vetting those companies in more detail and giving a company like BearingPoint assurances that the technology is good, the management is good."
In less than a year, CIC grew from occupying one floor of its Annapolis office building to three, and it's now home to 14 start-ups. Unlike the incubators with foosball tables and keg parties that became ubiquitous during the late 1990s, CIC is a mostly serious place with entrepreneurs who have cycled through earlier companies and careers.
While CIC's residents are all in the security sector, their missions vary widely: PharmAthene is a biotech firm creating treatments for anthrax. UTrue Inc. sells technology to help protect large cargo containers. Lighthouse Communications Services is developing GPS systems for cellular devices. Real User Corp.'s technology is a replacement for computer passwords. Users are asked to remember a set of photos of human faces, then pick out the familiar images from a random series of faces in order to log in. (Real User's highest-profile customer is the Senate.)
Alon Moritz, chief executive of Moozatech, said he spent six months making regular trips to Washington in an attempt to catch the eye of government buyers.
"It's a profession in and of itself, trying to sell to the government," Mortiz said. "Since I moved in here, the amount of interest from government agencies, if I could measure it, has gone up 1,000 percent."
CIC has a partnership with the National Security Agency and meets regularly with research and acquisition officials from the Department of Defense. Glaringly absent from the incubator's list of sponsors is the one organization all of its companies want to serve -- the Department of Homeland Security.
Elstner says he hears "loud and clear" the complaints of private-sector companies finding it difficult to sell to the Department of Homeland Security. The center's strategy is to first develop a working relationship with the people at the agency and prove that CIC has something to offer before asking the department for formal or financial support.
"That's part of why this place was built -- to address the frustrations of the private sector as the public sector gets into gear," Elstner said. "Have we gotten any DHS money? Not yet. Do we want to? You bet. Do we think we will? Absolutely."
Ellen McCarthy writes about the local tech scene every other Thursday. Her e-mail is mccarthye@washpost.com.
