Artificial intelligence reduces businesses’ proposal time from weeks to minutes
Standup, part of Growth Engine Inc., today rolled out a new solution using Natural Language Programming and Artificial Intelligence to streamline and speed up the government grant response process for startups and small businesses.
The solution – Standup Proposals – harnesses artificial intelligence to greatly shorten the often-time-consuming process of drafting and submitting proposals for government funding and contracts from weeks to a process that can be implemented in an afternoon.
“Any business that has developed a proposal for federal contracts or Small Business Innovation Research grants knows how tedious and time-consuming the process can be,” said Alan Harris, CEO and co-founder of Standup. “With Standup Proposals we are seeking to make this mission-critical aspect of business easier and faster, with more successful outcomes. By deploying Standup Proposals, businesses can streamline and shorten the time spent drafting proposals which will give more time to focus on building their business and serving customers better.”
Silicon Valley Bank’s recent collapse is expected to have long-lasting effects on the startup ecosystem. Many startups are turning to alternative funding sources, including the federal SBIR program that provides more than $3 billion in non-dilutive funding annually to startups and small businesses.
Not only does the SBIR program serve as a reliable funding source, it also offers the added benefit of assisting startups in securing ongoing federal clients.
Using Standup Proposals is simple. The user uploads the SBIR Grant or RFP into the system, which uses AI and NLP to implement a sophisticated matching system to generate a proposal that aligns with the company’s saved content and the RFP requirements.
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Standup has developed its AI infrastructure in partnership with AFWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S, Department of the Air Force and powered by the Air Force Research Laboratory, and the data matching is extremely accurate for opportunities within the defense industry. The system enables companies to customize responses, ensuring accuracy and the ability to demonstrate differentiators specific to the RFP.
Over time, as the intelligence becomes more refined, the system learns from the company’s answers and, importantly, from proposals that were successful.
Standup Proposals was developed through the Growth Engine founders’ experience applying for and securing $2.3 million in SBIR awards with the Air Force.
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“Companies can devote more than 30 hours and up to nine people to produce proposals in response to a federal RFP. Once we started using our generative AI to automate our own SBIR efforts, it was astonishing how quickly we could produce highly accurate proposal drafts to pursue opportunities,” Harris said. “As we grew, we knew we had to make this tool available to others in our industry. While large companies often have large teams to respond to RFPs, startups and small businesses do not.”
The Standup team continues to innovate to refine the platform, recently incorporating APIs from OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence tool, to supplement Standup’s Department of Defense AI models and deliver a robust proposal generation solution.
