My understanding is that those scenarios are the exception, and finding obscure contracts that have gone undiscovered isn’t really an untapped fount of free, missed, opportunity.
That said, aggregators like bonfire etc. can get you pretty far if that’s your strategy!
Yeah it's probably true that such things are the exception. But for a startup, a chance at e.g. a $256k SBIR Phase I and then $1.9M Phase II and the modern follow-on options in e.g. the Army (called the CATALYST program and other things) -- this one exception turns the company into something real.
So because the amounts are large (compared to commercial, in terms of when a customer first buys from a small company), those cases really make a huge difference.
I have to counter yet again, apologies. :) SBIRs yes are considered grants, but I've seen the same phenomenon for e.g. CRADAs and OTAs. Functionally this is all similar: we find them often on bad gov websites, and an automated tool to track changes can greatly help many companies to win them.
That said, aggregators like bonfire etc. can get you pretty far if that’s your strategy!