For companies bidding on government and enterprise work that can't justify a full proposal shop. We're the team — agents do the heavy lift, a senior human owns the judgment. The cost and speed of software, with the judgment of a consultancy.
Don't build an AI tool that joins the 95% that fail. Don't hire a consultancy built for Lockheed. Rent the team that already operates both.
One senior operator and a fleet of agents. From the inside of AWS Public Sector, Anduril, and NICE Actimize.
Every AI proposal tool assumes you already have a proposal team to run it. Your whole problem is that you don't. So we're not selling you software — we're the team, and the software is our engine.
01
Agents do the lift
The compliance matrix, the shall-statement trace, the first full draft — the mechanical work that's most automatable and most often missed.
02
A person owns it
Win themes, the read on whether to bid at all, the final pass. Judgment is the scarce part, and it's never shipped on autopilot.
03
You get a submission
End to end, in outcome — you hand off the pursuit, you get back a compliant, finished bid. Flawless compliance is the floor, not the feature.
The orphaned middle.
Every option is built for someone else. The heavy consultancies serve billion-dollar primes. The AI tools serve shops that already have a proposal team. Build-your-own joins the 95% of bespoke AI that never ships. The firm in the middle fits none of them — and that's exactly who we're for.
Small & mid contractorsAlready bidding, with a real pipeline — too small for Shipley, too thin to staff a proposal shop.
Pipelined startupsDefense- and gov-tech firms with RFPs in front of them and no capture function.
Not — enterprise primesIf you've got a proposal department, you don't need us. That's Shipley's lane.
Not — pre-pipelineIf you've got no bids to write yet, there's nothing for us to run. Come back when there are.
What you can check.
This market is full of providers paid to sign you, not to win — with success rates engineered to sell. The honest version is rare enough to be the whole position.
An honest noOur free Workbench tells you when not to bid. We turn away work we don't think you'll win.
A defined winWhat counts as success is written into the agreement before we start — not left vague.
No lock-inA flat subscription — pause between bids, cancel anytime. Your content is yours, and when you outgrow us we hand you a transferable corpus to take to any tool or hire.
You know who's writingA named senior operator, not an offshore mystery. No success-rate theater.
Productized, not per-hour.
A flat monthly subscription in the gap between cheap software and expensive labor — tiered by how deep you need us, pausable between bids. No day rates, no per-seat fees, no lock-in.
Ready
Always-on
from ~$2.5K/mo
The proposal infrastructure you'd build if you had a team — a maintained knowledge base (boilerplate, past performance, current resumes, win themes, templates), the opportunity radar with a biweekly digest matched to your NAICS and set-asides, and a warm line on Slack, Teams, or email with in-day response. Advisory and bid/no-bid reads. Not the writing — that's a pursuit.
A bid, on demand
Active pursuit
~$6–9K/mo
Everything in Always-on, plus a live pursuit you switch on when you need it. One response at a time — RFI, RFP, RFQ, DDQ — run end to end: compliance matrix, outline, win themes, draft, color-team review, submission-ready. Switch it off between bids and drop back to the Always-on baseline. Only pay for the team when you're bidding.
Your shop
Embedded
~$12–15K/mo
Everything in Active pursuit, run as a standing function with capacity reserved for you. Multiple pursuits in parallel, no queue. Priority turnaround, room held, and we surge with you on the must-wins. A weekly working cadence — the closest thing to an in-house proposal team without the headcount.
Add-ons · bolt onto any active engagementCapture — the advisory and shaping layer before the RFP: capture plans and campaigns, win-theme and competitive analysis, gate-review support, plus the shaping documents we write — white papers, capability briefings, presentations, and RFIs built to shape the requirement. You own the customer relationships; we build what moves them. Scoped per engagement.Graphics & production — action captions, org charts, infographics, and visual design beyond submission-ready. Per proposal or on retainer.
Onboarding builds your knowledge base v1 — waived when you prepay 3–6 months. Figures are starting points, set by depth and concurrency. A success bonus is available only where it's legally clean — grants and the EIC, not federal contracts.
Free tools. Use them first.
Before you pay anyone, run the gate yourself — an honest bid/no-bid read, and a live radar of open federal funding you could win right now. No signup. This is the front door, not the business.
We're taking a small first cohort. Drop your email and we'll set up a real bid/no-bid on something you're chasing — and tell you straight whether it's worth your cycle.
The Workbench.
Two free tools. Run the gate, and scan what's actually open. No signup to use them — this is the front door, not the business.
Should you bid?
the gate · bid / no-bid
What are you chasing?
Past wins in this space?
Where's the technology?
Deadline?
What's open right now
Live federal funding from grants.gov — real open solicitations, today, closing soonest first. Pick a track.