Three months in I had eleven federal bids submitted and nothing to show for any of them. Every one was a real solicitation off SAM.gov. Every one went to a company carrying a page of past performance I didn't have.

One night I typed "how to get first government contract" into Google and got about forty articles that all said the same four things. Register on SAM.gov. Pick your NAICS codes. Write a capability statement. Be persistent.

Not one of them told me the part that actually mattered. The government buys at different dollar sizes, and the rules change at each one. I'd covered the three front doors on day one of this series, but I was still walking through the biggest one and wondering why it was so crowded.

The dollar lines that decide how to get a first government contract

Two numbers run this. The micro-purchase threshold and the simplified acquisition threshold.

As of October 1, 2025, the micro-purchase threshold is $15,000 and the simplified acquisition threshold is $350,000, both raised by an inflation adjustment the government runs every five years (Federal Register final rule). A lot of the advice still sitting out there quotes $10,000 and $250,000. That's how you spot a page nobody has touched in years.

Here's why the gap between those two numbers is the whole game. Under FAR 19.502-2, a buy above the micro-purchase threshold but not over the simplified acquisition threshold has to be set aside for small business unless the contracting officer decides there's no reasonable expectation of getting offers from two or more responsible small firms at fair market prices (Acquisition.gov).

Between $15,000 and $350,000, small business is the default and going open to everybody is the exception.

Read that again, because I had to. That's the room I should have been standing in from week one.

The micro-purchase number nobody told me applies to my work

The $15,000 figure isn't universal, and missing that cost me two weekends.

For services covered by the Service Contract Labor Standards, the micro-purchase threshold is $2,500. For construction covered by the wage rate requirements, it's $2,000. Both carve-outs sit right in the FAR 2.101 definition, under the same rule that raised the headline number.

I run facilities services. My ceiling is the $2,500 one, not the $15,000 one everybody quotes at me. Which sounds like bad news until you realize it means nearly everything I'd actually want to bid already sits inside the set-aside band above it.

The numbers, in one place

Micro-purchase threshold: $15,000 general, $2,500 for services under the Service Contract Labor Standards, $2,000 for construction under the wage rate requirements.

Simplified acquisition threshold: $350,000.

Required to be advertised on SAM.gov: contracts over $25,000.

Triggers a prime's small business subcontracting plan: $900,000, or $2 million for construction.

The contracts you never see on SAM.gov

This is the one that stung. Agencies are required to advertise contracts over $25,000 on SAM.gov (SBA). Under that number, no such requirement.

So there's a whole layer of small buys that never lands in any search you run. Somebody at the agency needs a building stripped and waxed, they've got a purchase card and a deadline, and they call a company they already know about. If you're not in front of them beforehand, you don't lose that job. You never find out it existed.

Two things put you in that conversation. Your profile in the Small Business Search database, which is what agencies use to go looking for small firms and which builds itself off what you entered in SAM (search.certifications.sba.gov). And the agency's own small business office, usually called an OSDBU or an OSBP, whose actual job is finding companies like yours.

I emailed the small business office at an installation forty minutes from my shop. Got a reply in two days. Two days, after three months of not doing it.

How to get a first government contract as somebody else's sub

The other way in is under a prime who already won the work.

Large contractors above a certain award size have to carry a small business subcontracting plan. That trigger moved to $900,000 in the same October 2025 adjustment, and $2 million for construction. Those companies have subcontracting goals they're graded on, and they need real subs to hit them.

SBA runs SubNet, where primes post subcontracting opportunities for small businesses (subnet.sba.gov). GSA publishes its own directory of large primes carrying those plans, and SBA keeps a directory of them as well.

Subcontracting doesn't feel like winning. Thinner margin, and somebody else's name goes on the contract. What you get out of it is past performance you can point at next time, which is the exact thing I didn't have while I was going 0 for 11.

The free help I skipped for three months

APEX Accelerators, formerly the PTACs.

They counsel businesses selling to federal, state, and local government, help with registrations, and check whether you're eligible for certifications (SBA; directory at apexaccelerators.us). I avoided it for months because free help usually turns into a pitch with a nonprofit logo on it. It wasn't that. The counselor I finally sat down with found two problems in my SAM profile before the hour was up, and I'd been bidding with both of them live.

What I do differently now

I check the dollar value before I read a word of the requirement. Over $350,000 and not set aside, I'm probably not the answer, and there are better places to spend a Tuesday night.

Under that line, I read carefully. And I spend at least as much time getting in front of the buyer as I do writing the response, because the small stuff doesn't get won on paper.

Still working out how much of my week that's worth, honestly. Four guys and a truck means every hour I spend emailing a small business office is an hour I'm not on a job. I don't have a clean answer for that one yet.

The first contract is smaller than you pictured it and closer to home than you pictured it. That's most of what I've got so far.

See what's already open against your NAICS codes

If you're registered, the free SAM.gov Autopsy reads your profile and shows what's currently open for your codes, plus the gaps in your registration. No account, no card.

Run your free SAM.gov Autopsy →

Takes about 90 seconds. You'll need your UEI.

Marcus is a stand-in, not one specific guy. The thresholds, rules, and programs in here are real and sourced below.

Sources