# Marcus Tillman, VP of Business Development at Meridian Technical Group — read of rfp-tender-writer, May 14, 2026

> 14 years in government and commercial IT contracting, currently running a 6-person BD team at a 110-person consulting shop in Raleigh. We respond to 30-40 RFPs a year. I coach my kid's U12 lacrosse team Saturday mornings which is the only reason I stop working on weekends.

## How I got here

Googled "rfp response software small team" after our third proposal manager quit in two years. Found a Reddit thread in r/consulting where someone mentioned this alongside Loopio and Responsive. Clicked because the Reddit comment said "cheaper and less bloated than Loopio" which is exactly my problem with Loopio. The comment had two upvotes and was six months old.

## What I clicked first

The headline: "Stop losing bids to slow proposal turnaround." That is the actual problem. Not a manufactured one. We lost a $340K IDIQ last fall because we were two days late submitting. So I kept reading.

I also clicked "Watch the 30-second explainer" first thing. Got nothing useful from it being in the hero, so I scrolled.

## Where I paused

The stat block. "Early users report 3x more bids per month / 42% lower cost per proposal / 5 days average turnaround cut."

Then three paragraphs later: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet."

I read that twice. If there are no live customers, who are the early users? That is not a small contradiction. That is the whole thing. Either the stats exist or they don't. Burying a disclaimer underneath a claims block is not honesty, it's CYA.

## What I distrusted

The whole page shifts halfway through into something I did not expect. I came here looking for software to buy. I'm reading pricing of $199/month and thinking okay, that's reasonable. Then I realize they're selling me a business plan to BUILD this thing, not access to the tool itself.

The "Start free trial" button in the hero, the $199/month pricing table, the "5 team members" plan -- all of that reads like a SaaS product page. Then you hit "Unlock the dossier for $5" and "Adopt the build for $99-$199" and the whole frame changes. This is a studio selling packaged startup ideas. That is a legitimate thing to sell! But mixing the two frames on one page is confusing and makes me feel like I got bait-and-switched before I even hit the CTA.

Also: "Our AI doesn't write generic responses. It writes yours." Every AI writing tool says this. Every single one. I need one example. One before/after. One proposal section. Something.

## What would convince me

If this were actually a live product, I'd want to see one real proposal section -- not a testimonial, not a stat, just a sample output next to the source documents that generated it. Show me a 3-paragraph methodology response that sounds like a real firm, not a consultant-voice pastiche.

If this is the idea-sales frame (which it actually is), I'd want the one-pager to show me the specific differentiator that makes this product defensible against Loopio, Responsive, and RFPIO, all of which have raised serious capital. The page says "built for consultants and service firms competing against $10K proposal budgets" but that positioning needs more than a sentence.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The page says "early users report 3x more bids" but then says no live customers exist. Which is it, and where did those numbers come from?
2. Is there an actual product I can trial today, or is the $199/month price the projected price for the product I would build using your dossier?
3. What is the actual AI workflow -- do I upload our past proposals and it fine-tunes on them, or is it prompt-stuffed RAG, and either way who owns those documents and how are they stored?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The pain is real and the $199/month price point is believable for the market. But the page conflates "buy the tool" with "buy the idea to build the tool" in a way that erodes trust before I can even evaluate the product. If there's a live trial, I'd try it. If it's just a strategy package, I'm not the customer.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-14. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*