Five years ago, entrepreneur David Kutcher got sick of searching fruitlessly for Requests for Proposal (RFP) to respond to. He knew that hundreds of thousands of other vendors were also wasting valuable time and energy looking for RFPs, while at the same time, organizations releasing RFPs were getting far too few responses to make bidding competitive. To solve this problem, his company created the RFP Database (RFPdb), http://www.rfpdb.com. Based on crowd-sourcing model, the RFPdb supports both RFP issuers and their respondents, and more and more businesses, government agencies, and non-profits are turning to it as a key resource. In fact, last week the site reached a milestone of 100,000 registered users, outpacing all competitors in the field.
Initially, Kutcher seeded the site with RFPs he turned up in his own search for work, but couldnt bid on himself. To encourage others to do the same, his business partner, Tom Leen, came up with a clever credit system: Members who upload RFPs are rewarded with credits redeemable for full access to other proposals. For those with more money than time, credits can simply be purchased, and it costs just $ 2 to view a full RFP on the site; there are no registration or subscription fees.
With its low cost and innovative business model, the RFPdb has grown quickly and organically, with more members posting more RFPs, and the growing member base attracting ever more project owners to the site. Because of our crowd-sourcing model, says David Kutcher, the companys founder, the RFP Database is able to offer a steady stream of new projects for everything from accounting to web development. The model is self-propagating, and membership is growing at a rate of over 2,000 new registrations per month.
The RFPdb offers listings in over 100 categories from both government agencies and the private sector, and is especially rich in opportunities in technology, construction, and PR and marketing. Its members include procurement managers from some 5,000 cities, towns, government agencies, and non-profits, as well as a host of other backgrounds, who together post an average of $ 5 billion in projects to the site every month.
RFPs are the lifeblood of smaller companies but theyre often difficult to find. The RFPDB puts qualified, serious leadsorganized logically by what our business doesright at our fingertips, says Emily Corey, owner of Write On The Wind. Its an easy, affordable way to support business growth and development and theres something new to explore every day.
The RFP Database is a creation of Confluent Forms LLC (http://www.confluentforms.com), a web design and custom web-based software development firm headquartered in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. As a small business, Confluent Forms was frustrated by the choice of either scouring the internet for RFPs or paying hefty project lead fees, subscriptions, or commissions to gain access to projects they wanted to bid on. The RFP Database was its way of creating a sustainable marketplace to enable companies of all sizes to effectively find business leads and opportunities.
For more information about the RFP Database, visit http://www.rfpdb.com or contact David Kutcher, (413) 303-9612, david(at)confluentforms(dot)com.
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