– about us –

Who We Are

Matthew Dean is the founder of Scare the Bear (STB) Capital.

Matthew Dean is the founder of Scare the Bear (STB) Capital and frequent speaker on the topic of Govcon small business growth and maturity. STB focuses on non-controlling investments in, and consulting services for, lower middle market government contracting (GovCon) businesses. The approach is to bring capital plus “been there, done that” experts that focus on 12 STB valuation drivers, with goal of mentoring company leadership, reducing risk and improving enterprise maturity and value.

Prior to Scare the Bear, Matt founded and led Markon Solutions from start up in 2007 through consistent growth up to 270 employees and then a successful exit to a private equity-backed consulting company, Anser Advisory, in September 2021. As part of Anser Advisory’s executive team, Matt served as Chief Operating Officer supporting the acquisition and integration of 6 additional companies before Anser was acquired by Accenture LLP in 2023.

As an advisor to Scare the Bear Capital portfolio companies Matt focuses on improving the maturity of the business, reducing risk and ultimately increasing the enterprise value. The specific areas of support include:

  • Working with each companies leadership team to position them in demonstrating their ability to scale the business and lead the next phase of growth after an acquisition.
  • Helping implement an incentive compensation program that is consistent with how buyers want to structure compensation of key talent.
  • Developing a growth strategy to be presented to a buyer that warrants a premium valuation.
  • Working with the executive team to successfully navigate the M&A process through connections to industry buyers and experts that will support the transaction.

Sherif Wahby is the founder of BOAB Ventures. BOAB Ventures is a boutique recruiting firm focused on supporting rapidly growing companies. BOAB Ventures helps their clients with a wide range of recruiting services ranging from full life cycle recruiting support for operations and client delivery teams to executive and board recruitment.

Prior to BOAB Ventures, Sherif was the Senior Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Anser Advisory. During his time with Anser Advisory, Sherif oversaw a nationwide team of recruiters and partnered with the executive leadership team to execute on aggressive growth plans including the acquisition and integration of six companies. The rapid growth and integration success eventually led to Accenture’s acquisition of Anser Advisory. Prior to Anser Advisory, Sherif led Talent Acquisition efforts for Markon Solutions and built world class construction management, engineering management and SETA teams supporting customers in the Defense and Intelligence Community as well as Engineering teams across the globe for the Department of State. Sherif’s time prior to Markon included over 10 years of domestic and international experience running a boutique recruitment firm supporting customers in the DCMA, the Silicon Valley and the Middle East as well as four years in recruiting and business development roles with a company that was acquired by KFORCE.

As an advisor to Scare the Bear Capital portfolio companies, Sherif focuses on developing and executing integrated recruiting strategies that enables portfolio companies to successfully attract and hire top talent. Sherif and his team work to create a best-in-class talent acquisition capability that positions companies to design and adopt innovative processes and tools. The specific areas of support include but are not limited to:

  • Working with portfolio company leadership to co-create a talent acquisition strategy that achieves an aggressive growth agenda and accelerates enterprise value;
  • Enhancing the employer brand and creating a strategy for the company to stand out from its competition by implementing social media recruitment strategies that focuses on a wide array of DEI initiatives;
  • Developing strong relationships with the leadership team to gather a deep understanding of the business for planning and developing the talent acquisition strategy;
  • Partnering with internal teams to develop integrated talent strategies to attract, grow, and retain top talent from both external and internal market.

Bryan Mabry is the founder of Vehementia, LLC, an advisory firm focused on helping their clients in the venture capital, national security, cyber, and defense sectors grow with assessment, investment, and management advisory services.

After a 14-year career in government service in the US Intelligence Community and Department of Defense, Bryan has served as Director of Special Projects at a Fortune 200 firm of 80,000 employees operating in over 150 countries. Mr. Mabry was responsible for the strategic direction of operations through the identification of new business areas and non- traditional mission support opportunities to a number of commercial clients, federal agencies, and special operations elements of the U.S. military.

Bryan was called back to federal service in 2018 where he served as Acting Vice President of the Department of Administration and Finance and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an innovative and independent US foreign assistance agency that is helping to lead the fight against global poverty.

He has served as a Director with a UK-based technology start-up and saw the company from proof of concept/angel investment raise through series A fundraise, and presently serves on the Board of an emerging technology company focused on leveraging data and intelligence via proprietary AI to support government and commercial clients.

As an advisor to Scare the Bear Capital portfolio companies Bryan focuses on helping companies find and validate market fit with government clients and the leveraging/expanding of their networks to maximize value.

Specific areas of support include:

  • Working with each companies’ leadership team to understand their government and commercial clients’ acquisition authorities, timelines, and procurement models with an emphasis on maximizing options for creative and expedited procurement.
  • Educating companies on their competitive landscape, and through leverage of a highly developed industry and government network, identify opportunities for partnership and teaming to gain market share.
  • Conducting due diligence on potential M+A targets for validation of pipeline and viability in their respective sectors.
  • Working with the executive team to explore potential acquirers or capital sources during prospective sale or fundraising exercises.

Zarrar Husain is the CEO of ITCON Services, LLC. Over the past 16 years, ITCON has been providing federal government customers with premier technology solutions, delivering enduring impact through integrity, creative problem-solving, and a focus on empowering diverse perspectives. ITCON works with federal agency clients to help solve mission challenges in the areas of digital transformation, cloud services, cybersecurity, and contact center solutions. ITCON has been successful in obtaining CMMI and ISO level certifications that provide further confidence with their clients in the quality of support the team is able to provide. Prior to ITCON, Zarrar was the VP of Federal Civilians programs for Planned Systems International.

Zarrar founded ITCON in 2008 as an IT services small disadvantaged business that has been extremely successful in executing a strategy to help transition the company into a thriving $30M revenue business solving many federal government agency challenges. Zarrar partnered with Scare the Bear Capital to bring his specific areas of expertise in support of companies looking to grow their IT services business or execute a strategy for successful graduation from the 8A program. Specific areas of support include:

  • Developing strategies that help clients successfully exit the 8A program as a mature and valuable business
  • Working with the companies’ technology teams to develop innovative solutions and services that differentiate the business from other similar businesses
  • Creating partnership opportunities within the federal civilian market
  • Supporting leadership in the formation of joint ventures to expand contract opportunities

 

Mike DeFede is the founder of Periscope Federal, which focuses on business and executive consulting for DoD and IC companies. Mike brings a unique perspective, having led significant growth at large, medium, and start-up companies alike. Trained as a BD and Business Operations Executive at Lockheed Martin’s Corporate HQ and IC businesses, Mike’s $150M+ portfolio included 20+ programs across multiple agencies. At a Mid-Tier contractor, Mike completed a full turnaround of a red portfolio increasing Award fees by 30+ points and growing the business 25%. In 2017, Mike founded start-up Intelligent Shift (IS) and ran it full-time. After rapid growth, IS sold in 2020 to gain investment and continued to grow 35% year over year.

Mike’s experience has driven business growth, whether proposal-based, organic, or M&A. As a Business Development Professional across the IC, Mike has supported over 100 Full and Open competitions in every role, from writer to Capture Manager to Account Executive. As an experienced founder, small business executive, and leader of a successful exit, Mike is now a Scare the Bear Advisor and focuses on supporting organic growth for small businesses to expand value or prepare for a sale.  Specific areas of support include:

● Working with leadership to create a business development pipeline that supports scaling the business and
is attractive to future investors/buyers
● Supporting the long-term growth strategy to present to a buyer that helps them understand the potential
to scale
● Executive coaching
● Using his network to create additional business opportunities
● Taking advantage of experience starting and growing a small business that sold at a premium to advise on
leadership and operational changes or improvement

Brandon LaBonte is a seasoned executive and technology innovator with over 20 years of experience leading growth-focused businesses in the federal government contracting sector. Brandon is the founder and served as the CEO of Ardent Management Consulting (ArdentMC). As CEO, Brandon transformed the company from a two-person consultancy into a 200+ person provider of integrated technology solutions, specializing in cloud technologies and geospatial information systems. Under his leadership, ArdentMC consistently achieved sustainable growth, mature financial reporting, created a robust business development pipeline process, and expanded its national footprint to support Homeland Security and Defense missions.

Brandon has testified before the U.S. Homeland Security Committee on clearance reciprocity issues, served as Vice-Chair of the Homeland Security and Defense Business Council, and fostered collaboration between government and industry. Brandon’s innovative approach combines strategic leadership, technical expertise, and a passion for organizational development to enhance enterprise value and drive scalable success. After developing a strategy for transitional growth, Brandon sold ArdentMC to a strategic buyer in 2023. 

Brandon’s role as an advisor at Scare the Bear Capital focuses on instituting technological, financial, and leadership solutions that increase market competitiveness. Specific areas of focus include:

● Implementing mature financial management systems providing the portfolio company ability to easily communicate historical success as well as future year forecasts.
● Supporting companies in securing prime contract vehicles for long-term growth including both agency-level blanket purchase agreements and government-wide acquisition contracts

● Supporting companies in scaling operations through process improvements, strategic investments, and development of integrated leadership teams
● Using Ardent as an example to support the transitioning from small-business government contractor to the large, unrestricted contracting environment
● Providing insights into federal contracting processes, procurement models, and best practices to enhance readiness for acquisition or M&A opportunities

Darren Wheeler is the founder of W Fidelis Consulting, LLC, which focuses on providing strategy, growth, and project management along with training on these topics to clients in the Services marketspace. Darren retired from the Marine Corps as a Combat Developer at Marine Corps Combat Development Command and served government clients as a technical subject matter expert. Working with both small businesses and large publicly traded companies in a variety of roles, Darren has performed in positions such as General Manager, Program Manager, and Business Development Director. Darren’s current focus areas are with Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and other government agencies in the Huntsville, Alabama market. Over the past five years, Darren was intimately involved in securing over $600M in contracts supporting MDA, and in his most recent PM role, successfully managed a $25M/year book of business for MDA with high customer marks.

Darren was also an Adjunct Professor of Management for the George Mason University School of Management. Darren was responsible for developing the courses that stood up their “National Defense Track” Executive MBA program, which oriented students on the operation of Federal procurement processes and how businesses align for successful engagement with clients in the Federal space. Darren joins Scare the Bear to share his expertise in project management and business development. Specific areas of support include:

  • Working with company executives to design focused growth strategy with addressable pipeline and associated processes for qualifying and pursuing opportunities
  • Providing capture and proposal strategies to enhance proposal quality and increase PWin
  • Developing relationships and networking strategies for entering the Huntsville market (or other new geographical/organizational markets)
  • Providing support to companies in successful project management for FFP and CPFF contracts

Jon Goldman is a seasoned AI and SaaS executive with a 25-year track record of scaling high-growth, PE and VC backed, and mission-critical technology and services businesses across commercial, federal, and highly regulated global markets. A P&L operator and growth leader, he is known for building category-leading, durable platforms that blend technology, services, and operational excellence to outperform Rule-of-40 benchmarks and deliver strong investor returns.

Jon specializes in aligning product strategy, services delivery, modern GTM motions, and operational discipline to accelerate ARR, expand margins, and build organizations capable of sustained enterprise value creation. 

Most recently, Jon served as President of Exiger’s Commercial Business, where he helped scale the company from early-stage growth to $150M ARR and through a $1.2B acquisition by The Carlyle Group. He launched and built Exiger’s Federal SaaS division, scaled the commercial SaaS business 6×, and drove significant margin expansion by operationalizing a rigorous, metrics-driven cadence across GTM, delivery, and operations. Under his leadership, Exiger earned Gartner Magic Quadrant leadership and expanded its footprint across the Global 2000, national security, and critical infrastructure markets.

Earlier in his career, Jon built and scaled new business lines across multiple organizations, including launching the investigations division at ISN Corp, serving as Chief Growth Officer at FCi Federal, and driving a 5× expansion of Altegrity’s tech-enabled BPO business while leading large, globally distributed services teams. He has played pivotal leadership roles in numerous acquisitions, integrations, divestitures, turnarounds, and successful exits.

Jon’s domain expertise spans AI analytics, agentic AI, national security, risk and compliance, supply chain resilience, and large-scale digital transformation. He is known for translating complex mission and market needs into trusted, operationally sound technology and services platforms, and for building GTM and delivery engines that consistently drive customer value at scale.

Today, Jon advises founders, investors, and operators on scaling mission-critical businesses, modernizing GTM and services motions, expanding into federal, regulated, and global markets, and leading the transformations required to build resilient, high-value technology and services companies poised for long-term growth.

 

Adam Lurie is the CEO of Knexus, a technology solutions provider delivering AI enabled capabilities to the Public Sector.  Adam joined Knexus following the acquisition of the company in 2023 and is responsible for the company’s overall strategic direction and execution.  With a 20+ year background as a government solutions executive, Adam has a proven track record of building and growing businesses through the deployment of innovative technology.

Prior to Knexus, Adam was the President of Exiger Federal Solutions, the Government focused business unit at Exiger.  Under his leadership, Exiger Federal Solutions launched their Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) products and the business grew over 10x in a 2 year period.  Adam joined Exiger via the acquisition of Convergent Solutions where he was the Chief Executive Officer.  Leading Convergent from its acquisition to a private ownership group, strengthening the business operations and eventually selling to Exiger, Adam has unique expertise in understanding all facets of running and growing federal businesses successfully. Before his appointment at Convergent, Adam served as an executive at CSRA, GDIT and Haystax Technology, delivering double-digit growth in his business areas focused on solutions in the Continuous Evaluation, Background Investigation, Personnel Vetting & Insider Threat arena.

Prior to Haystax, Adam was the Vice President of Government Solutions at Social Intelligence Corp. Adam launched the federal business of Social Intelligence and ran it until its acquisition to Omniplex World Services in 2016.  

Adam serves on the Board of Trustees for the Intelligence and National Security Foundation (INSF), a non-profit focused on strengthening the role and value of intelligence for our nation’s security. 

Pete Seegers is a respected retired Big 4 advisory consulting partner with over thirty years of experience in building sustainable diversified practices for three of the Big 4 firms. He has established brands, developed teams, and delivered high-value profitable multi-year transformational results turning projects into accounts and account in to Sectors from green field accounts to over $300M multi account Sectors. He has extensive experience in buy and sell side public sector merger, acquisitions, and integrations across private firms as well as public companies. 

Peter has extensive experience in assisting senior administrators in the public sector by leveraging and applying commercial business practices to achieve mission modernization and readiness outcomes. He has successfully consulted on business solutions and processes for more than seventy-five federal, state, local government, higher education, and not-for-profit organizational engagements, including strategy consulting, customer experience, digital, the continuum of analytics and data in the cloud, and unit costing for mission effectiveness and efficiency.

Prior to EY, Peter was a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP where he held significant leadership roles in the creation of PwC’s Public Sector Practice. Peter’s career also includes leadership positions at Unisys Corporation and KPMG (BearingPoint), where he grew and managed competencies, programs, and accounts. His educational background includes a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from George Mason University and participation in strategic seminars at INSEAD in Singapore and MIT Sloan School of Management in Massachusetts.

Alissa Redding is the co-founder of Intelligent Shift, LLC. Intelligent Shift is a firm focused on technical delivery and change management. After rapid growth, the company was sold in 2020 and subsequently grew 30% year over year. Alissa has been part of executive deal teams where she supported both buy and sell transactions. She has also led the successful capture strategy and/or served as the capture executive for 20+ competitive pursuits. She has managed profit and loss portfolios of $100M+ in annual revenue and oversaw organizations of 300+ employees. She transformed an at-risk program into a fully staffed program with sustained growth (20% year over year) and positive momentum. Alissa developed and led coaching and mentoring programs for employees at all levels in the organizations. She has developed and sustained cooperative working relationships through trust, pride, and commitment. Specific areas of support include:

  • Taking advantage of experience starting and growing a small business that sold at a premium to advise on leadership and operational changes or improvements
  • Working with company leadership teams to develop and/or improve corporate culture. This in turn drives engagement and better financial results
  • Conducting due diligence on potential M&A targets for validation of pipeline and viability in their respective sectors
  • Working with leadership to create a business development pipeline that supports scaling the business and is attractive to future investors/buyers

Bryan Ware is a highly regarded technology leader and innovator, having started companies, patented technologies, raised venture capital and private equity, and served executive roles in government. Bryan is the Founder and CEO of GraySpace Technology, a technology company serving the national security community. He was previously the Chief Development Officer of ZeroFox, following their acquisition of LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a leading cyber intelligence product company, where he was the Chief Executive Officer.

Bryan served as the first presidentially-appointed Assistant Director of Cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), leading the 1,000-person, $1.25 billion organization through a period of intense volatility and aggressive interference from nation-state adversaries. At CISA, he developed the agency’s first five year strategy and plan to modernize its sensor and computing infrastructure, transform the way the agency delivers services, and scale the agency to protect US critical infrastructure. Prior to his operational role at CISA, Bryan was an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and served as the Secretary’s advisor on cybersecurity and emerging technology matters.

Bryan co-founded an artificial intelligence company, Digital Sandbox, in 1998 which he led as CEO through multiple rounds of venture capital investment until it was acquired in 2013 by Haystax. After serving as CTO of Haystax for several years during which he helped the company acquire leading cloud technology and cybersecurity companies, Bryan took over as CEO in 2016 until its acquisition in 2018.

Specific areas of support include:

  • Ensuring companies have stable technical strategies that are attractive to investors
  • Utilizing a network of contacts in the cybersecurity and technology world
  • Advising as an artificial intelligence subject matter expert

Bryan Carruthers is an entrepreneurial executive and board director with more than two decades of experience building, scaling, and transforming consulting and advisory businesses. He has a proven record of driving organic growth, leading successful M&A strategies, and creating long-term value across the infrastructure, environmental, and engineering services sectors.

Bryan’s experience includes Founder & CEO of Anser Advisory, a nationally recognized capital program management consulting firm, which scaled to over 1,200 employees under Bryan’s leadership. Anser became a top-ranked ENR firm before being acquired by Accenture in 2023, where it was integrated into the Infrastructure & Capital Projects practice. Bryan then led Accenture’s Infrastructure & Capital Projects North America business (~1,500 professionals), driving growth across multiple industries while overseeing the integration of acquired firms into a global consulting platform.

Bryan currently serves on the Board of Directors for Verdantas, a Sterling Investment Partners portfolio company with ~1,900 employees, providing governance and strategic guidance on growth and M&A. He is also the Co-Founder and Investor in Budget4Cast, a SaaS platform for project budgeting and forecasting, further demonstrating his ability to identify and grow technology-enabled solutions supporting capital programs and consulting services.

Specific areas of support include:

  • Mergers & Acquisitions — Significant experience in identifying, structuring, and integrating acquisitions, with a track record of leading multiple buy-and-build strategies and executing a successful founder exit to a global firm. Over 20 transactions completed with three highly successful exits Advisor Summaries
  • Consulting Firm Growth — Expertise in scaling professional services organizations from founder-led to institutionally scaled, including building leadership teams, systems, and processes that enable sustainable growth
  • Strategic Governance & Leadership — Active in board service, providing oversight and strategic input on growth strategies, financial performance, and cultural alignment