Jim Overboom built TenderSeal in university, an AI platform that helps SMBs find, analyze, and win government tenders without the paperwork spiral.
GROWTH PILLAR: AI & Automation
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear picture of how AI-powered procurement works, how to know if a tender is worth pursuing, and how to submit stronger bids in less time — without replacing the human judgment that wins contracts.
Most businesses ignore public tenders. Not because they can't win, because the process feels impossible. Jim Overboom co-founded TenderSeal while finishing his mechanical engineering degree, after meeting a business owner in New Zealand who grew his team from four to sixty people in two years purely through government contract wins. That conversation changed everything.
TenderSeal is an AI procurement platform that helps businesses find tenders they qualify for, generate proposal drafts from their own company data, and double-check submissions for errors before the deadline hits. Jim walks through how the platform works, who it's built for, and where most businesses go wrong when they first try to navigate public procurement.
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Connect with Jim Overboom:
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Bernie (00:22)
Question for the audience, how much revenue are you missing because you ignore RFPs and tenders? Our guest breaks down how AI powered procurement turns overlooked
public contracts into a predictable revenue channel. Without drowning your team in paperwork, stress, or explain where most businesses go wrong and how to spot tender's worth pursuing and how AI supports better decisions without removing the human touch. Our guest today is Jim Overboom from TenderSeal. He is the co-founder of TenderSeal, a SaaS platform leveraging AI to transform how businesses
bid on RFPs and tenders.
He launched the venture alongside three co-founders while they were all still completing their university degrees. And driven by a deep passion for entrepreneurship, efficiency, and AI, is on a mission to help companies profit from public procurement without sacrificing their time or sanity. Jim, it's an absolute pleasure having you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Do you have a favorite quote or saying you want to share with us?
Jim (01:20)
Thanks Bernie. I would say it's the one about the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. And that just reminds me every time I see on YouTube or any big platform, I see these big entrepreneurs and big business owners and they're doing so great and know everything. And then you think back and you might get a little bit of anxiety like, shit, I'm not there yet.
then you just can realize that they have failed so many times and tried so many times before they got to the level where they are. So if you want to do that, it's nothing special. It's just repetition and doing the same and trying over and over again to get to that level. Just give some mental freedom.
Bernie (02:04)
So from your background in university, you were studying mechanical engineering and that's not where you are now because mechanical engineering and computer sciences are two different birds. What's funny in that direction? What brought you into SaaS software as a service?
Jim (02:17)
Yeah, so during my college in mechanical engineering, first of all, I love to study with all the nature science and the calculations and the machines. And at the core, I wanted to do it because it helps people. And I fell back on entrepreneurship. I fell in love with entrepreneurship and CHI-GT came out. And when CHI-GT came out, I was like, wow, AI is the next big thing.
If you're an entrepreneur, can help so many people. So I should learn something with AI and start finding the problems and solutions to help these people out. And that's where I slowly but surely went more into the direction of a SaaS startup.
Bernie (02:55)
Did you find that with your engineering background, because when you're trained in any particular science, right, they train you how to think, how to look at things. Did you apply that then when you were looking at the computer side or the programming side or the software side?
Jim (03:09)
Yes, definitely. It's like learning any new thing. In college with mechanical engineering, you need that problem solving mindset. you always get hit with stuff that doesn't work. And you always need to find a new problem or a new solution. And I have this one professor of mine that kept saying, you have the law where
Problems will always exist. And if you solve one thing, the next thing will appear. And that helps a business because it's so true. Every time you solve a problem, you put out a fire, there will always come a new one. And you just need to not give up and start finding new solutions. That helps out a lot.
Bernie (03:50)
So if i understood the story cuz we've had chats before and i think you went halfway around the world when you went Here's an opportunity what's the backstory on that something about being down under
Jim (04:02)
Yeah, definitely. During my study, I wanted to see more of the world. And I went to New Zealand for an internship, I got this opportunity at a bull farm, just working on there. But I got the opportunity to take a look at New Zealand, beautiful country. Highly recommend you go there. And there at a bar, I met a specific person that was spending
quite a bit more than the usual person at a bar would. And I was thinking, well, he got to be a business owner if you have that kind of money. And I was talking to him and ask him about his story because I just, I was trying to learn from other business owners. And he had a beautiful story of his business where he
He had his father had a business with four employees plateaued. His father sold it to someone else. plateaued still at four employees. Then he bought it again. And by just doing tenders, he, ⁓ and RFPs for the American and the States people, by just doing these tenders, he grew it to 60 people in two years. That was very like, wow.
Senders can do that to the toe business. That's insane. That was a very aha moment for me.
Bernie (05:14)
So is that an area that most businesses tend not to pay attention to? And I guess it depends on what you're doing, and know, right size, right fit. Is that something that most businesses tend not to think of when they start up and going, let's bid on something, let's bid on a job. If you're in construction, you already have that mindset, but you know, if you're making widgets or you're a restaurant, you tend not to.
Is that a weak spot for or a blind spot for some people?
Jim (05:42)
Yeah, definitely. And I don't know how you experienced it yourself, but when you start out, you're not ready to bid on government contracts. And you hear all these mentors and coaches and on YouTube and you learn everywhere and you consume this content to figure out where do I go next? And you constantly get pitched by everyone saying, I'm going to get you the new pile of leads. I'm going to do sales for you. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. Content is the new big thing.
You get all these pitches, but no one talks about the potential of public contracting. Because it's a bit tricky if you don't do it right. And it can take up a lot of time, but no one is talk about it. And many people that could benefit from public tendering have no idea that it's even an option.
Bernie (06:29)
There was something I came across in the news recently and I think it was Sweden? No, it Scotland, sorry. They've just enacted a law and I didn't verify it. But if they're procuring something, it has to be community first. In other words,
If it's in country, that's kind of a rule. Is that what you're talking about when there's like, you know, a government contract? Are there kind of things to be mindful of, to qualify? Because some people might go, you know, they might have a, they might think they might not be good enough, almost like imposter syndrome, right? And might not be good enough and whether truly are. Is that something that your software kind of meets?
deals with and are you a fit for an RFP?
Jim (07:15)
It does as well. So with our software, you analyze tenders and RFPs and the requirements. But before you start thinking about RFPs and tenders, I would also recommend going and doing your research on the country's statistics and on the country's regulations. Because as you said, many times these governments want local entities and want to support local businesses. So it might not be beneficial for you.
I just did some research a couple of weeks ago about an Indian company that might be interested in the public procurement in Europe. And I did some extra digging for them, but it's actually very tricky for them because if you're not registered in Europe, you can bid on the public procurement, but the contractor can just see your name, see that you're from a different country and then think, now I want to look at this.
at all and you can't do anything about it. They can choose to let you participate in the bid, but without any valid reason they can also just turn you down and you would just be wasting so much time. So definitely would recommend first digging a little bit into these regulations and seeing where you have the highest chance of bidding.
Bernie (08:27)
You know, having been inside from the source, working for a health care institution and watching our procurement department at work, I had no idea the amount of work it is just to set up an RFP request for proposal or an RFI request for information. And there are a couple other acronyms that are out there.
But it's almost like it's a horse race, but there are very fixed rules and everything's measured. just even looking at it from the inside, we're getting a RFP out the door. And if there are many stakeholders, it gets more complicated. And that's just pushing it out. From the flip side, is it as complicated then for the person who's responding to it? Are there certain things they have to...
speaker-2 (09:08)
If.
Bernie (09:15)
What are the rules of engagement typically for an RFP that you've seen?
Jim (09:19)
Many times there are certifications that you need to follow.
there are many things. The certifications, the country, the time investment, the question rounds, the potential legal suitability, because these contracts are pretty big and you are responsible for everything that's listed there. So make sure that it's...
you agree with what is listed there. And having these things in place is definitely can be complicated. Even figuring out which one suits you because government platforms are not always as easy to navigate.
Definitely not. And sometimes they don't, when I hear from people with tenders, if you want to bid on a couple different tenders, like they on the pushing it outside, they don't think about other work that you have to do as if you have all the time in the world to just respond on this tender, take the time to read everything, analyze it, create your proposal, create the questions.
then after you get the questions, immediately adjust your proposal. And sometimes that means very tight deadlines. And these deadlines are concrete. Like if you're one minute afterwards, they won't look at your proposal at all. And that can sometimes make it a little bit more complicated and take some sanity away from you on the evenings. Yep.
Bernie (10:40)
The one thing I noticed for the restrictions like the one minute later, you know, the deadline was at say 8 a.m. on a given date at this location and you're at 8.02. No, it's done. And I used to think, well, that's kind of odd. What would make the difference? it's because it's a race, right? If there's someone else competing.
they'll go not fair and then starts litigation, And no one wants litigation because, hey, you're not getting, you're not getting the RFP done and money's being spent for something that is not going to be generating more money. It's probably going to be a loss embedded in there. So your platform then helps identify these things, you know, make, make sure there's a good fit. Um, you have capacity, qualified capacity, qualified product.
So you actually have that whole, that whole checklist built in there. The other thing I noticed, having watched returns coming back from RFP as RFPs laid out, it's always good to feed the information back the way it was asked for. know, if they want to know where you live, you don't tell them at the end of the document, you tell them, they asked the question at this stage, you answer the question of the literary, right? Is, is, does your software help guide the person through that quite?
I'd throw all the information into the, into the, into the cookie better thing and make me a cookie. And the chocolate chips should be on the top. So does your software help sort that through.
Jim (12:03)
Yeah, definitely. We want it to be like an assistant. We don't want it to replace a human completely. We want it to assist you and for you to make the decisions and the AI to like find the answers because many times it can be repetitive in a proposal. Sometimes different local authorities are asking for the same thing and you can bid on all of them. I've heard from one
person that was working in a local authority and pushed it out, got responses. Someone actually had the wrong name at the top of the response at the top of their bid because they just copy pasted it. With our software, we want the people to guide through the steps, be able to fill out these forms, be able to personalize this local authority and their goals and their way of working in their ⁓ RFP.
Otherwise you could make some messy mistakes.
Bernie (12:52)
The other thing I heard from people that have responded to RFPs, it sometimes, and again, depends on how complex it is. If you're just asking, you know, if you're ordering lunch, it's not so complicated, right? But if you're ordering lunch for the year and for a thousand people, a little more complicated, right? Depending on what, you know, what the particulars are. How long does a RFP cycle normally take that you've seen? Like, you know, in other words, someone pushes out a tender or an RFP and someone goes, well, I want a bid on that.
What's the kind of the life cycle that you would normally see from aha to put something in the tube and fire it off as a response?
Jim (13:29)
It very much depends on the size of the RFP. So with a smaller one, it could take maybe a couple of months. Bigger ones up to a year, sometimes maybe. And the real length comes when lawsuits gets in place. So let's say someone won it, but then second place actually thinks they should have won it. So they start a lawsuit. So you can't start at all.
And if that happens, it just takes so much more time. Yeah, it can take some time.
Bernie (14:01)
So then I take it your software helps prevent that, provide a solid case. Now at the end of the day, you're pitching high. I've got the doggy in the window that you want at the, and it's not necessarily always by price, but it can be quality price. could be a weighted responses, right? So does your software then say, Hey, listen, you're
you are about to respond in RFP, you have a really good strong response, ⁓ really good strong capacity in one area, but it's only worth 5 % of the overall scoring. And you need to bolster the primary one that might have a 25 % weight. But right now you're kind of weak in that space, which means you think yours is premium, but ⁓ it's lacking in a complete apple to apple comparison.
Is that something your software also helps the person that kind of figure out going, okay, this area you need to bolster. And if they don't have adequate enough, do they stop there or do they work on it? What's kind of the path.
Jim (15:01)
that's one of the things on our roadmap, where it can help you with the place qualification criteria. And they say you get 20 % for this sustainability report, or you get 40 % on price and you get
the other 40 % on just general quality. And it's divided in all of these scores. They should understand your proposal and make sure that you write it in a way that you get those, the most of those points. And what I see so far is that the points are made in the nuances. So sometimes a tender says we want XYZ, but then you know that they actually
want this other thing which could help you raise your prices, but because you address the thing they want, you score higher on the quality. And that way you get away with charging higher prices. So the AI is going to be able to help you understand your bid and analyze that with the tendered RFP that's been pushed out and then see where are the nuances, where
Where did the questions go? Where is it unclear? Where are you still losing these points?
Bernie (16:17)
You built this is, I mean, I've lived through it from one end of the spectrum and going, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and I know why. I'm going to ask one more question about RFPs before I move on. A lot of it is it's a yes or a no, right? And a yes or a no, and then wait it. Like, you know, is the yes really strong, et cetera? Like, you know, I can do.
I can supply you five widgets day and someone else can do 100 widgets a day and it's high volume capacity. So obviously that's ⁓ an objective. Is there elements that are subjective that it's almost dependent on the actual end user, the stakeholder or stakeholders, where something it's.
It's not totally measurable. Do you ever find that that is another element inside an RFP or is that totally, is that all totally removed?
Jim (17:02)
They want to make it as objective as possible. Everything is laid out with metrics and scores and everything like that. But many RFPs or tenders also have a case. So you have to go to the location of the buyer. You pitch yourself. They give you a case. You have
a little bit of time to think about it. And then you need to tell you how would you solve this problem? How would you deal with this particular scenario? And then you explain what you what you're going to do, what your company does, and how you're the perfect fit to solve this solution or solve this problem. And there's some people grading you on that on how good are you doing this? This this is fairly subjective.
Bernie (17:48)
Wow. So is that part of the process you help coaching through it, or do you bring it outside help to going, okay, you're, you're, you've kind of got step one, step two and three are coming up and step two, you need someone to help you. Cause there's some people that are really good at what they do, but they're not good at explaining it. I've talked to several individuals going, this person's a tech.
That person is a finance person. And if I speak tech to the finance person, it's like, you know, Isaac lays over, right? And so either you have an intermediary to do the pitch or you find someone that coaches you and had to, you know, express it in terms that, that for the audience, that's, that's going to be making that subjection, a subjective decision. Do you work with somebody in that space or is that something up and coming?
Jim (18:32)
Yeah, so the software doesn't, doesn't coach you on that. In any case, it helps you with reading and writing and analyzing and all of that from A to Z. However, we are talking to some big consultants and people that bid writers as well that do these this completely for other companies. And if we see that a client needs something like this or would want something like this,
then we can just connect the dots and redirect them to the right person that can help them prepare for such a case.
Bernie (19:03)
So this whole program, TenderSeal, you're doing this in university, which is a kudos to you and your crew. You're in school, but at the same time, you're building a business. How tough was that? You have exams. Engineering does have certain demands. It's almost like being in medicine. All of a sudden, once you're
Once you're in, you're all in, you know, this is, know, yeah, you like the party, but you can't do that too much without losing ground. Right. How do you, how did you manage to kind of balance that out? So you can bring it into, into play.
Jim (19:36)
So at the beginning of college, I did still have quite some free time. And that's where I started to look at these chat GPT and entrepreneurship and tried learning that. Did it on the side. It was difficult to separate your focus like that because during the day you're in college with all of your friends and it's just like the same old, old. Everyone has their same thing.
very weird that you do something online and what's this with AI and is it actually able to do something? Whoa, you can create images with it now? Wow. And you have these types of things. And then you get home and everyone gets to their side job or family or friends or start gaming for what they want or actually do their homework and try and pass the university. Sometimes that happens as well.
And you get to work on your side business. You hop on the call, you start learning, you get to client calls and on weekends, you actually have to say no to some events and work on the Saturdays and Sundays. And maybe your family wants to go here or there. It's like, yeah, that's great, but kind of still need to finish this because tomorrow I have a deadline and the rest of the week I worked on the business. So it can be difficult.
And the more I reached the later stages of my college, the more time it took with graduating. It became more difficult and you needed to put in quite a bit more time. That's where the mechanical engineering actually got its name.
And that was really the evenings, the mornings in New Zealand. We tried raising for an investor and we had calls many mornings and that was before my job. So I needed to be at my job at 7 AM and I just had the, had the alarm at 4 45. Got in a cold shower, brushed my teeth, got behind the laptop and
had a call with the rest of the team to see what's going on. One time I actually had a call at four because the investor didn't have another time. Well, he kind of adjust to the investor. And yeah, you have these things, you get through it and it's quite a fun experience as well, but in the moment it feels difficult.
Bernie (21:50)
I can well imagine. you getting guidance or mentoring from somebody? Again, kudos to you to recognize, I see something cool. I see a problem. And the cool thing to work the problem out, right? And so you start building up. Did you work with a mentor or did the university have kind of a, you know, here in the Ottawa area, we have an incubator called Invest Ottawa?
And every major urban center here in Canada will have something akin to that. Did you work with that? How did you go, okay, I built me a box. Now let's make the box work for everybody, right? And shape it so that, know, the end user understands it. And obviously the investor also understands it. How did you kind of bring that into, into Pocus?
Jim (22:36)
So I didn't necessarily have a mentor. We did have a program on our college where you have to choose like two minors and you could really go deep into the mechanical engineering, into the the windmills, into the robotics and the hydraulics and those type of things. Or you could widen your view and collaborate with other studies. And I collaborated with a technical business study where we had the minor innovation and entrepreneurship.
And there I learned some stuff about setting up your own business, getting some capital from outside. It was college friendly. So it was like 20 bucks from many of your friends and family of the whole team. And then try and actually make a product, sell the product and get a positive ROI for your investors. That's where you learn some of the bits and pieces.
Other than that, it was many times trial and error. YouTube, you can learn a lot on YouTube. And of course the people you meet along the way, like the meetings with you, the meetings with other people, people more in the tendering field. We have some partners and clients and they believe in the product. They see young entrepreneur and think like, wow.
what did I when I was that age that I should help this should be good. And you get a lot of advice from people and that helps out. Plus I didn't do it alone. So that helps out a lot as well.
Bernie (24:05)
One of the other areas that I hear chats with, and when you're involved in a company with multiple entities and everybody has a stake in there, whether it's sweat equity or funding or a mix of that, how did you structure your legal? Are you here in Canada, you can create a company and then you can create a company and get incorporated either provincially or federally.
But also when you do that and you have multiple players, usually they're illegal agreements. You try to set up ahead of time that when everybody's in a happy state, you kind of prepare, not for the worst, you prepare. If things don't go well, one company I'm involved with is like, okay, someone passes away. What happens to the shares? And that's a case in point. Does it go to the family and does the family now have a
a say in how the business is run or they just have the shares, but they don't have a say in the business. These are little nuances, right? Did you go through that piece and did you have someone provide you that kind of that legal framework to set things up?
Jim (25:06)
So.
We are quite scattered. So two of my co-founders are India and one in South Africa. So it's, it's been all over the globe. Trying to set up a business here in the Netherlands would be a bit hard because then everyone has to fly here to the Netherlands, sign it and then fly back. So we did it in the UK. You could have a limited company there without anyone being residential in the UK and set up these things.
we had one advisor come along, along the way, and he knew some people that could help set this stuff up. And we're still like, like setting up the, the deep roots of the, of the legal, legal entities and all the rules and regulations. But we want to put most of the focus into creating a good product and being able to.
provide a solution and then when we have some cashflow reinvested in the deeper legal stuff, we're going to set that up when someone passes away because we're all like in our 20s so we're not counting on passing away anytime soon.
Bernie (26:09)
I, even in my age, I'm not planning to kick the bucket. So to speak and go six feet under myself or two meters, whatever the case might be, but yeah. Yup. Best laid plans.
It's a really great story. And as soon as you mentioned it the first time I it, thought, even for bidding on a job, that's really handy. even if it's not government, any proposal, that's really handy to have that. Do you find that right now as a product, as service, do you have a lot of competition out in the market? Are you like first breaking ground here or?
Or people have kind of, you know, a little bit of this, but not so much of this. And you kind of got the golden egg coming up. You figure.
Jim (26:50)
So I would say it's a bit of both. It's not a completely new market. People try to assist the bidding process for a while already before AI was even a thing. And of course, there is competition like any market. You should have competition because then you know there is an actual market for it.
So we were actually quite happy to see that there was some competition. Yes, there are some other companies that try and do this, but you always try to make your own twist and we really try to integrate AI more. So what we see so far is it's usually content libraries where you can easily, like if you have a bit and you need to, you have your checklist, you can copy paste from past proposals because questions.
come back and it's repetitive and you can just manage all of that fairly easy and save some time there instead of trying to search for everything manually yourself and then open 14 different PDFs on your browsers and like try and scroll to them, Control F to do everything like that. So it already helps save some time, but with AI, it's very good at reading and writing. You want to make it even more personalized.
more specific for each tender and at the last minute will work.
Bernie (28:06)
Would you say then that even though you're leveraging AI to refine the product and put things in the right place, you still have to read the document, right? Prior to hitting the sun button or mailing it in.
Jim (28:18)
Definitely. Like there's still some human work involved. You still need to decide the AI can do all these eligibility checks for you, do all the analyzes, analytics and everything. But some key information, you still need to go to the source and just look at it yourself. And you still need to decide, do we want to go for it or don't we want to go for it? Maybe it says, you need this.
certification, but then you know that if you have another certification that you do have, you could still bid and win. Like those decisions are still the bid specialist that has to make that in the moment, as well as your proposal. The complete proposal that you submit is your responsibility. You have to be sure that you can deliver on any everything you promise in there. So the AI can
set things up, it can make a first draft, it can make it nice, it can check your formatting, because sometimes, most of the times, because of fairness, and they want everyone to be able to put the same amount of information in there, they not only have, you have four, A4 ⁓ pages for this, but also this row distance, this font, this, like, it's everything is specified.
And you need to follow that. And with everything like that, AI can help and check it for you and you can give you a checklist so you can double check it yourself. But with the proposal itself saying we are going to do X, Y, Z for this price, you still need to make sure that you can deliver that. That's your responsibility.
Bernie (29:52)
So if you're helping them build the RFP and let's say they're successful, does your platform then kind of hand it over to another element to say, know, because it could be ramping up production. Even if you're not bidding to the government, let's say you're a major chain store and, you know, pick one in Europe, you know, something that's massive.
And all of a sudden you're making this really incredible chocolate bar and they go, ⁓ we like that. And then all of a sudden their taste tests go, ⁓ everybody likes that. I want a million units, you know, and you're pushing out maybe a hundred a week, right? A million units in a month is a bit of a distortion of reality that's happening. Is there something that, obviously you address that in the RFP, right? You know, which a capacity.
Is that something then you kind of work with, hey, it's within capacity, but you're not running at full tilt yet? Sort of like, you're driving a car at 20 kilometers an hour, now you have to do 200 kilometers an hour, which means you have to scale or move things around. Are you a component in that journey? Do you feed into other programs or do you see that as a kind of a feature and that kind of next step for tender sale?
Jim (31:01)
Yeah, so that's not something that's in there as of yet, looking at your capacity and seeing if it uses all managers, like looking at your complete management system, which employees are free to work on this and who's not. And like, it's not doing that yet. But as you're suggesting it, it sounds like pretty cool idea. So maybe if people want that and get the feedback that, hey, look,
we heard this in the podcast or this just an idea that I had, then we can definitely look into integrating something like this and how are we going to do that? Because we want to base this off actual marketing. It started as we want to find an actual problem that people have, people face, and want to make a solution that actually helps fix their problem. Because there's so many stuff that fixes problems that don't exist. And we don't want to be one of those.
So definitely if people come to us say this is a big issue for us, we'll look into it.
Bernie (32:02)
Well, excellent. Actually, that's good from getting that information from your customer base. When you look at this whole process, we've talked about, hey, here's a cool platform. This is what it does. Here are all the positives. This is what we've done. Were there any elements, any steps along the way you're going, ⁓ jeez, I wish we did that different, that you would, if you're looking back, reflecting, whether it's...
Whether it's the software, whether it's the AI component, whether it's the AI sitting in the cloud somewhere else, AI sitting in the cloud in your box, to how you structure it. You talked about incorporating in the UK because it's a little easier. People don't have to fly in from across the globe. Are there any elements that you go, geez, I wish we did differently?
Jim (32:44)
Well, of course, in the beginning, you make mistakes. We're talking to everyone. need to find one solution and one problem. So definitely would do that differently. Yeah, it's, it's along the way you learn so much more about business. If, if you would do it again, you can do it in so much less time.
because there are many inefficiencies you think I should structure this that way, but in reality, it's just always the time and you should do something else. Yeah, you definitely have these things, but I would say from the beginning of all, I think we shouldn't only look at ourselves and our own business and our own people, but try and...
get a more experienced business person in earlier on and try and find this advisor, mentor that could guide us in the road of like, hey, that roadblock you're trying now to bang your head against the ball very hard, you know that one? Let's not do that because it's never gonna work. Just take the left and that route would clear the way. I would look at that too.
Bernie (33:53)
things I observed when I was working in the healthcare institution, we had to have a project done. And the scope of the work had to be written by an engineer. And I looked at the person going, how do you price this? is it by hour are you sitting on looking at a map? And some of them based it on the overall project. So the project was worth a million dollars, there might be five points, a five point fee. When you're working with a company, is it
Is it they just have access to the software and they have a subscription and it doesn't matter the size of the contract? Or is it amount of time? Is it in the AI space, there's something about tokens, right? And if you're doing heavy in graphics and audio editing, it eats up a lot of tokens, right? How do you base your pricing? Is it like, here's a flat fee for Joe Schmoe.
But if you're a national corporation or an international corporation, for you, it's going to be a bit more because there's more of you, more to you, and you're going be applying for other things, not necessarily within country, within a given space. How do you structure the pricing?
Jim (35:02)
Yeah, you said the magic words, tokens. We actually, we translate these usage tokens back to the user, but to not make it too complicated calculations, all of that on the user side. We have a chat with you, see what do you currently do with your systems.
because AI can't fix broken systems. So it's just automating what you're already doing. So how many tenders do you do? How many RFPs are you searching? Do you have this go, no-go? How many do you upload? And then we see, we calculate how many tokens you need and recommend a subscription for you because it's the system and the...
process of a tender and RFP is almost around the globe, super similar. It was mind blowing for me how similar it is across the whole globe, like Asia, Africa, New Zealand, Europe, America, like everywhere. But the size is for each tender different. One tender is two PDFs and it's
maybe sub 20 pages. So with 40 pages, you're done. And at the backend in AI, that's not a lot of usage, a lot of tokens. So it should be cheap. But the other company was saying, yeah, we do maybe 10 tenders each year, maybe a little less, but these are tenders of a thousand pages, 2,000 pages. That's massive usage. So,
We'll look at what do these companies actually use, how many tenders did they do, and then see what's relevant for them. Instead of just charging everyone like 2K to cover all the averages, we make sure it's tailored to what's your usage so you don't pay too much.
Bernie (36:47)
Yeah, I quite, because you have the mechanical engineering background. Sometimes someone puts out a tender, I want X number of widgets, but I want to know how it works. You know, it's like software can work differently. If you're doing a chemical process differently, if you're building a circuit board or a mechanical device, do mechanical drawings, those type of addendums that usually get requested. Does your system kind of
look at that and going, uh, compared to everybody else, that's pretty sharp compared to everybody else. Uh, you need a little more work, you know, get rid of the crayon markings and go, go to, you know, AutoCAD drugs, right? Do you provide that as, as part of the surface, uh, service to the, uh, to the customer?
Jim (37:29)
So far, we don't have that yet in the proposal creator. We have it where when analyzing, it can find all the graphs, get information out. If your pages is like a screenshot, copy paste it into page, can read it. And the images, can see drawings, it can understand, but it doesn't yet recommend you on, hey, your drawing kind of sucks, or this is top notch.
It's not based on that yet because it doesn't have that context on it with different drawings and it doesn't have the context on this makes a good drawing, this makes a bad drawing. You should train something, ⁓ train the model on that first.
Bernie (38:12)
So someone uses this platform, the ROI is, is it just money or is it time or is time and money and accuracy? Where is the return on investment for someone to do this? Again, having, having lived at one end of the spectrum and going, my gosh, my gosh, my gosh, how do you guys do this every day in and out? And not get paper cuts, you know, all over the place, right? What, what, what savings this
TenderSeal provide a company at the end of the day.
Jim (38:39)
It's all of the above. It's time because you can do it much faster. It's money because you spend less time and that saves quite a bit of money. And with the management system, we want to integrate. You also don't have to have five different softwares and then get it from there and get it from there. Ask your coworker to ask their boss to send a document over to you.
And it's accuracy as well, because if you have to read 300 pages, you might not know if this one screw has to be 12 millimeters or if it has to be 16 millimeters. Like it's very possible you would not still know how many millimeters this one screw needs to be, where the AI can double check your proposal and,
and double check for duplicates and try to find those mistakes. So with the little mistakes, it can help you say, hey, you have a page too many. Hey, here you said it needs to be painted red, but actually at page 43 of the questions, at question 200, like the third question round, sometimes it is like that. They say it actually needs to be a different color. You should integrate it like
Those little things, it will help you with accuracy as well.
Bernie (40:01)
Jim, what areas do you serve in the universe? Are you just serving Europe? Are you serving that side of the hemisphere? you serving globally? Where are you at with your company?
Jim (40:10)
We're focusing on Europe at the moment. We're doing more research in the Middle East because we see the government there is pumping a lot of money into projects. So there's big, big opportunities to tender there and do networking in the U.S. as well and North America to more integrated in their systems. So that's a bit where we're at.
Main mode, the main focus is Europe.
Bernie (40:41)
And if someone is listening to this podcast, how do they get ahold of you?
Jim (40:44)
The best way is on LinkedIn. You can just search my name, Jim Overboom or TenderSeal and find me through there. Send a connection request. Maybe put a knack 4 business at your message so I know you come from this podcast. And then we can have a chat.
Bernie (41:00)
Jim, I want to say thank you so much for being our guest today and to our Knack 4 Business listeners, taking in this information. This is really, this is cool. It's university startup. It's almost like, other platforms that start up in a university and they see, know, it's got more legs than, know, what they were studying for in the, in the courses. And Jim spotted an opportunity where people were missing real money because they didn't know.
that procurement is another avenue, another way to promote and sell their product and their services. So that's what, it's the genesis of TenderSeal. So reach out to Jim, if you want to look at leveraging AI, try and investigate it, even if you're in North America, if there's enough demand for it, you're going to have them knocking and providing you services. take it from a person that's used on the other side of the fence from an RFP process.
It's handy, it'll save you a lot of heartache and