A government buyer wants me to run a free pilot or PoC. Should I say yes?
Say yes only with a written scope, a fixed end date, and a named path to a paid tender if it works, otherwise you're donating engineering to an unfunded experiment forever. Free pilots are how the public sector de-risks, so use them, but cap the free work and make the success criteria explicit in email. The real trap isn't doing it free, it's a pilot with no budget line behind it: before you build, ask which scheme or budget head funds the rollout. No budget behind it means it's a demo, not a deal.
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This is the sharpest playbook for the exact thing your government buyer is asking for: define numerical success criteria upfront (query time under 24 hours, cost cut by X percent, not vague "efficiency gains"), keep scope tightly defined so you don't become a free professional-services arm, and cap the pilot at 2 to 3 months. It also names the escape hatch you need with a public buyer: a well-scoped pilot converts because you deliver the metric, they see the impact, they pay, so a pilot that can't convert is a scoping failure you can catch before you build.
This is the budget-head check the answer hinges on, made concrete. It gives you a compatibility table with an explicit red flag to look for before you build: budget marked "TBD after the PoC" means it's a demo, not a deal, versus a green light of "confirmed and ring-fenced" budget. It insists you get payment terms in writing and find a champion with actual budget authority, not a rotating innovation team, and lands the line you need in your head: a pilot without a funded owner is a science experiment with no funding round.
The authoritative, government-hosted explanation of exactly what a DPIIT-recognised startup gets in public procurement. If you want to know your real rights before you bid, this is the primary source, not a blog's interpretation of it.
