Joining GovDash

I joined GovDash because they offered me the opportunity of a lifetime: to design and build the system and tools I’ve wished for my entire career.

I very accidentally started my career in GovCon almost 20 years ago this month. I was only 19 years old when I supported my first proposal (we won!) which means I’ve spent more than half of my life working with the government and companies that sell to the government.

I love this industry. It’s more than a career, it’s my community.

Our industry has been working with broken tools.

Over the last two decades, I’ve had the unique opportunity to work in roles across the GovCon lifecycle. I’ve run capture, built teams, and created solutions. I’ve written and managed more proposals than I can count. I’ve managed contracts onsite at government agencies, and was even a contractor myself at one point.

Having experience across the lifecycle has helped me understand this foundational truth: every single action and reaction in the GovCon lifecycle is interconnected and dependent on a previous action. Here’s a high level example:

1. Delivery teams create past performance as they actively support customers and meet requirements.

2. Capture teams use past performance to determine what opportunities to pursue. Once opportunities are identified, they gather intel and formulate solutions that solve customer problems.

3. Proposal teams use both past performance and capture/solution data to write a proposal that clearly communicates the value of the solution.

4. Once awarded, the Delivery team implements the proposed solution, and the whole process starts over again.

Delivery, Capture and Proposal teams have to work together in lockstep, and data must be available across the lifecycle. This is a universal truth - it’s true for every single company that sells to the government, no matter how big they are or what they sell. Seems straight forward, right?

Unfortunately, very few companies are able to operate this way because of one major roadblock: the systems and tools available to GovCon only focus on one step of the lifecycle. This leaves companies to piece together systems of disconnected tools that don’t talk to eachother. A pipeline tool, an opportunity search tool, an AI proposal writer, a system for tracking contracts and deliverables. What does this look like? Simply put: it looks like chaos!

Data is repeated across systems, is impossible to maintain and takes considerable time and effort to wade through.

Capture data is scattered across chats and notes and PowerPoints. Solutions live in the brains of SMEs, and progress is hard to assess in the months leading up to an RFP. Visibility into past performance is limited, Proposal teams spend valuable time trying to find information when they could be spending that time creating better proposals that speak to evaluators.

I could go on forever, but I’ll stop with this: we have been creating processes around broken tools that create data silos. This results in generic proposals that don’t win.

This has only gotten worse.

Before GovDash, I spent an entire year testing AI proposal products, looking for one that not only delivered on sound proposal writing, but that would solve this problem and help my team manage the data chaos.

We've all seen these tools popping up on what seems to be a weekly basis, but even with so many in the market, I struggled to find one that delivered what we needed: an AI proposal tool that worked in Word and went deeper than referencing a document repository - one that ensured compliance, while prioritizing capture and past performance to create compelling content.

Quality proposals depend on quality capture and past performance, but I couldn’t find a single tool that took that into consideration. Without built-in solutions to manage capture and contracts, these tools were one more disconnected system to add to the pile of disconnected systems we were already struggling to maintain.

GovDash is the Solution

The solution GovCon needed didn’t exist — so we built it ourselves. We are empowering teams to work together across the lifecycle, and focus on actions that increase PWIN by tearing down data silos and automating tedious tasks with AI.

This is just scratching the surface, but here are a few of my favorite features:

Capture:

• Opportunity search and suggestions based on your company’s past performance

• Automated tools that perform gap analysis on requirements, identify risks, and make recommendations based on real-time data.

• Capture tools that guides BD teams through asking the necessary questions, compiling intel, building compelling solutions, and completing call plans.

• A connected pipeline that provides visibility on progress, and measures opportunity health based on completion of capture plans and solution maturity

Proposals

• A system that works in Microsoft Word, so that you never have to leave your working document.

• AI proposal writing that is informed by more than boilerplate - it prioritizes capture data and your relevant past performance and metrics to write a first draft that’s actually good.

• Automated RFP shredding and compliance matrix creation that considers every instruction, evaluation criteria and task area.

• Proposals that are generated and created in your company template.

• Graphic creation for quick mockups

• Automated creation of Gate Review decks

Past Performance

• A single source of truth and master record of past performance

• No more data entry - you upload documents and GovDash extracts critical data and connects it to the correct past performance contract automatically

• Beyond the PWS - our system tags and catalogs delivery artifacts like CPARS, personnel resumes, deliverables, status reports and success metrics for a comprehensive record of past performance

I am so proud and grateful to be part of this team. GovCon is my community, and we deserve tools that make our jobs easier, not harder.

If you’ve ever worked with me professionally or through ProposalTeam, you know that building this system and solving these issues has always been my dream. My role at GovDash is to do just that - while bringing you into the conversation.

Can’t wait to tell you more, listen to your challenges, and continue to build GovDash around your needs. Let’s do this!