We make the unfamiliar fundable.
Most government affairs is played on the board as it exists. Keelstone starts one question earlier: is the government structured to buy what you sell? Then we build the function that captures what exists today and makes your case for the structure that doesn't exist yet.
If your week looks like one of these, the rest of this page is for you.
You're past the science-risk stage. Your investors want federal capital alongside the next round. But the engagement work (briefings, documentation, relationships, the public story) sits with nobody specific. Everybody owns it. So nobody does.
You're 12 months from a deployment decision. The federal and state programs that could lower your cost of capital exist, but the regulatory exposure, the sequencing, and the translation work to actually land them are not in anyone's job description.
You're growing inside a procurement pipeline that wasn't built for your tempo. Federal contracts, export controls, and state incentives all live in different conversations. Nobody's connecting them into one map of what you can win, and what could derail you.
Most government affairs is played on the board as it exists. Find the open $200 million program, write toward it, compete against seventy-five applicants who all look qualified on paper. That is a lottery ticket with an invoice attached, and from the outside it's hard to tell a firm that is good at this from a firm that is lucky.
Keelstone asks a prior question: is the government even structured to buy what this company sells? For most first-of-a-kind technology the honest answer is no. The programs were built for a different technology at a different maturity, and the office that owns your sector was designed to do something else. The science is sound. The business case is real. The door you need isn't on the building yet.
So the work runs on two tracks from day one. Track 1 captures what exists: the open program, the loan authority, the contracting vehicle, the state incentive package. Dated, reportable, legible to a board. Track 2 makes the case for the door that isn't there: a new office, an authorization, a program written for where the technology actually is, a line in an appropriation. Two to three years, and it doesn't report cleanly in a quarterly update.
Each track carries the other. Capture work puts you in the room with a real project behind you, which is the standing it takes before anyone lets you argue for how a sector gets funded. The structural work is what keeps the capture work from being a coin flip, because the companies that win repeatedly are the ones whose use case the program was written around. Your company isn't the thing that changes. The structure is.
Keelstone designs that work and runs it from your side of the table, built so your team can run it and we can step back, not out. When the case needs more advocacy muscle than your team carries, we help you hire and direct it.
The windows that matter (Energy Dominance Financing, DPA Title III, the Office of Strategic Capital, NDAA authorization language, state incentive packages) shift faster than most companies can track. The offices and appropriation lines that don't exist yet get decided in the same cycles. The companies that capture value aren't waiting for clarity. They're running both tracks.
Two modules, one product. Risk Pricing: the policy, regulatory, and political exposure that lengthens timelines or jeopardizes funding. Capital Capture: the federal, state, and local opportunities that lower cost to build or unlock the next move, split into what to capture now and where the structure has to move first.
Delivers: Board-ready memo (opportunity map, risk register, Track 1 and Track 2 sequencing, 30/60/90-day path)We install the operating system: ownership, cadence, stakeholder sequencing, documentation, and narrative, then pressure-test it against a live federal pursuit. In 90 days you go from scattered to systematic, with both tracks running.
Delivers: Live pursuit underway by Day 60A senior government affairs leader embedded in your team, fluent in your technology, accountable to your milestones. We design the engagement and help you drive it, including hiring and directing outside advocates from your side of the table. VP-level function, fraction of the cost, no hire required. When you hire your own lead, we step back to an advisory role, not out.
Delivers: Monthly exec briefing + active pipelineThe math is part of the story. The point is which of these compounds.
The arithmetic favors us. The actual point: what you build with Keelstone is the only one of these still working a year from now.
Fixed scope, light client lift. Ends with a memo a board can underwrite in fifteen minutes.
Kickoff plus three to five 60-minute interviews across your leadership team to define exactly what we're testing: which federal programs, regulatory pathways, and deployment milestones. We leave with a scoped test, not a wishlist.
We build the government environment scan in parallel: the Capital Capture and Risk Pricing modules, opportunities ranked by readiness, dollar weight, and fit, risks scored by severity and time to mitigate, and the structural read: where the owning office and its programs were built for a different technology at a different maturity, and what it would take to move them. The read you can't easily build yourself.
A 90-minute scoring workshop with your team, then the board-ready memo within three business days: what to capture now, what to drop, what structure to work on over the next two to three years, what to build internally, and the 30/60/90-day sequencing. Plus a leadership walkthrough.
Two lines from a scored map look like this:
Every opportunity and every structural gap in your map is written the same way. The final memo recommends what to pursue, what to drop, and the order. Anonymized examples. Real findings depend on your situation.
Fifteen years in and around the federal government, first as a consultant on DoD, NASA, and Missile Defense Agency work, then as Director of Government Affairs at DOE/NNSA directing engagement on AUKUS, counter-UAS, nuclear security modernization, and plutonium pit production. 30+ person team. Eight authorization and appropriations cycles. Three administration transitions.
Then in the private sector, heading government affairs at a global critical-minerals producer and a transatlantic deep tech company. Built government affairs functions from scratch twice. Positioned over $800M in federal and state capital. Led the GA work behind a $1.2B advanced manufacturing facility siting.
Now, through Keelstone, I run that work for several companies at once. The part I'm good at isn't the technology. It's reading where the government's structure assumes your technology is and where it actually is, then building the function that captures what exists now and works, on a multi-year arc, to move the structure toward where your industry is headed.
Most companies cobble together a lobbyist, a grant writer, and a prayer. I build the operating system that makes the lobbyist optional, the grant writer occasional, and the prayer unnecessary.
Sectors are illustrative. So is geography: US-based, or entering the US market from Australia, the UK, or Europe. If the institutions that need to evaluate you weren't built to understand you, the work is similar.
The same translation gap that holds back first-of-a-kind technologies also holds back the places competing to host them. Federal program officers, state economic development teams, and corporate site selectors work from default playbooks that quietly favor regions already on their radar.
Keelstone runs a smaller, selective community practice for rural and suburban municipalities, counties, and regional partnerships competing for advanced manufacturing siting, federal funding, workforce capital, and infrastructure investment.
The work is positioning, not grant-writing. Who are you? What do you actually want? What would you say yes to? Once those answers are clear, the federal, state, and corporate conversations all get easier.
We take a small number of community engagements per year: typically municipalities or regional partnerships under 75,000 residents, outside primary metro markets, competing for investment they're structurally underrepresented in.
If you're a community competing to host the kinds of companies on the other half of this page, the conversation starts the same way.
Primarily, companies pioneering first-of-a-kind technologies: fusion, advanced nuclear, critical minerals, semiconductors, defense tech, novel manufacturing. That includes international companies entering the US market, where the gap between the technology and the government's structure is usually widest. We also work with a select group of rural and suburban communities competing for the investments those companies bring. All of them face the same problem: the institutions that fund, permit, or invest weren't built to evaluate them.
A lobbyist is one tool, and a good one when there's a defined ask and a door to walk through. What's usually missing is the system that decides which asks matter, when to make them, what documentation supports them, and whether the program you're chasing was built for you at all. We build that system, and when the work needs a registered advocate, we help you hire and direct the right firm from your side of the table.
Grants don't move when nobody owns the system. Winning one in isolation rarely makes the next one easier. The work that compounds is the positioning underneath. A grant writer inside a real system is a force multiplier. Working alone, they're a lottery ticket.
You can't scope an in-house hire until you know what the function should do. Hiring before scoping is how organizations burn a year and a senior salary. The Diagnostic and Build Sprint scope the function. Most clients hire in-house 12 to 18 months in, often into a role we helped write. We don't leave at that point. We step back to an advisory role and the function keeps running.
The windows that matter are already inside your build cycle. Federal program cycles, regulatory pathways, and state incentive packages don't wait for your hiring plan. The structural work runs two to three years, so it has to start before the program you actually need is being written. A few weeks of Diagnostic work now is the difference between a real pursuit this quarter and a missed window next quarter.
Treat that as a risk question, not a values one. Roughly four thousand political appointees turn over with each administration, and much of what they promised leaves with them. Offices, authorizations, appropriation lines, and career staff persist. A strategy built on appointee relationships is an unhedged bet on an election. We build the part of the position that survives it. Three administration transitions at DOE/NNSA taught me which parts do: the offices did, most of the appointees did not.
Twenty minutes. We spend it on your situation, not a pitch. You'll leave with at least one concrete next move, whether we end up working together or not. If we're a fit, the next step is usually a paid Diagnostic. If we're not, I'll point you toward who is.
What's moving on federal program windows. Where regulatory pathways are bending. What we're seeing inside first-of-a-kind sectors most readers don't have a window into.
One a month, on the third Wednesday. No spam, unsubscribe any time. Read the latest memo.
You don't need another meeting about meetings. Tell me what you're trying to win and I'll tell you what's missing.
A 20-minute working call, not a pitch. We'll cover your situation, the windows that matter, and at least one specific next move. You leave with something useful regardless of what happens next.
Not a pitch. You'll leave with one concrete next move.
