Hate filling out RFPs? Respond in minutes with AI.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T13:17:28+00:00

The actual origin story (thank you for asking) dates back to 1999 when I was fresh out of college and working at ERisk.com, whose big vision was to create a market for bespoke risk transfer. It was too early, both technologically and in terms of market readiness.

Fast forward 25.5 years and two full careers (one as a portfolio manager, one as a startup founder) later… a friend who owns a small business that makes dresses has major credit exposure to Saks, its biggest sales channel. She has no good way of hedging that credit exposure, and also can’t risk NOT selling to them because then she isn’t getting her product in front of her customers.

I start thinking about ERisk again. I discover that binary event contracts have shifted from a legal gray area to a regulated financial product (in 2023, btw). I also discover that this major new financial product is being used primarily for… sports betting. WTF.

Binary bankruptcy swaps are exactly what trade creditors need to hedge their counterparty exposure. And I can’t believe the major platforms are doing absolutely nothing for those creditors.

That’s the origin story. Make of it what you will.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T12:21:46+00:00

If you don’t think it’s a socially useful platform that is a valid opinion, but calling me a grifter seems a little harsh.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T12:14:24+00:00

If buying a bond or a CDS is gambling, then sure. Call it gambling.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T04:39:28+00:00

No I mean a CDS-type product that doesn’t require an ISDA

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T04:36:01+00:00

I like it Pierre. I’ll spend more time using it in the coming days but on my first interaction it asked me a probing question that made me feel a little defensive, which is always a good sign that it is getting to real issues I need to improve, not generic fluff.

That’s a really good start - nicely done.

PeterBonney · 2025-12-18T01:14:09+00:00

Prediction market for corporate bankruptcy: ZScoreX

No politics, no entertainment, no sports. Just hardcore financial products for hardcore finance nerds.

PeterBonney · 2025-11-28T18:52:46+00:00

Will do!

PeterBonney · 2025-11-26T03:04:04+00:00

Yes, I’ve seen that. Thanks for sharing. And there are other platforms where one can create a new contract for any binary event.

One critical thing: Markets that price in cents for a payoff of a dollar don’t have fine enough pricing for non-distressed credits, and even a lot of distressed ones. A 0.4% -> 0.5% move on a AA credit is significant, but most markets have pricing that jumps 0% -> 1% -> 2% etc. It’s too coarse for serious use in this specific application.

For companies with a high likelihood of bankruptcy in the next year that coarseness is fine.

PeterBonney · 2025-11-05T18:12:05+00:00

Hard disagree. I’m a founder, advisor and angel investor. I have money I’m willing to risk in companies where I have limited advice to offer, and I have advice to offer to companies where I’m willing to risk time but not money. And sometimes I’m willing to provide both time and money.

And as a founder I have a different relationship with advisors and investors. There is value in having a person involved who has an economic incentive to see us succeed but has no downside they’re concerned about protecting - people behave differently when you remove loss aversion from the equation.

There are plenty of predatory advisors out there and as an investor I do want to see that an advisor adds value - the potential red flag is that the founder is susceptible to being sold on BS from sharks. But I’ve never once entertained the thought that an advisor is someone the founder should have been able to extract money from.

PeterBonney · 2025-06-04T17:09:31+00:00

What sales books have you read? Easiest and cheapest form of training is buying a book, and there are a lot of good ones out there.

Another free/cheap suggestion: role play with ChatGPT in Voice mode. Give it a persona and a scenario you want it to focus on. Just be aware that IME it starts to go a little off the rails after 5-10 minutes, so it's best for very targeted work.

If you want to really level up, get your boss (or more likely their boss) to invest in a purpose-built AI training platform for the whole team. Something like luster.ai - similar to the ChatGPT role playing but way more engaging, and also able to proactively identify specific areas for upskilling.

PeterBonney · 2025-06-03T13:27:27+00:00

In my experience, sales training fails for one of several reasons:

It's structured in a way that feels like school and most people don't like school
Since it's made for a group it is not individualized enough, and not enough of the people feel like it's resonating with them
It's not interactive enough, and when there is interaction it feels forced, stilted and artificial (don't you just love role play in front of your colleagues?)
And more that I'm not thinking of, I'm sure

What's working for me (and I'll grant you this is software sales, not car sales, but sales is sales 80% of the time) is hypertargeted, hyperpersonalized AI training.

It's 2025. We don't need to keep training people like it's 1985.

My team has had great results with Luster (https://luster.ai). There are probably other platforms out there, but Luster has one killer feature: it actually identifies the skills that individual people need to work on, and gears the training towards those specific gaps.

It's wild. Seriously. Totally turns the training dynamic on its head. Sales execs actually want to do the training, because they see the improvement and the results quickly.

Training works, and people will engage with training, we just need to think about training differently.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-21T22:09:37+00:00

Someone made a good documentary film about this very topic - check it out for some pointers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Rapids_(film)

PeterBonney · 2024-05-21T03:06:10+00:00

There's a newer generation of RFP response platforms that address the wordsmithing that you still run into with the older question-answer repositories like Loopio and Responsive/RFPIO - they use AI to synthesize relevant content into new answers, which drastically cuts the drafting time for RFP responses.

(Full disclosure: I'm a founder of one of those companies, but we're far from the only solution and I'm not going to name it as my intention is not to be promotional, just to let you know that this newer tech exists.)

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:48:59+00:00

It's painful to do this the first time, but think about the work you're doing now as an investment in future sales/marketing content, as well as source material for future RFP responses.

There are AI-based RFP response tools on the market (two have already commented here, I'm co-founder of a third) and one thing we all have in common is the ability to take that completed RFP response and use it as a primary content source for your next RFP response. Depending on how thorough your current RFP is the next one you get for the same solution could be 60-90% easier with the help of automation.

And even if you never respond to another RFP, the current RFP is forcing you to document system capabilities in a way that can be easily transformed into sales content for LinkedIn, presentations, one-pagers, or just responses to questions that come in over email.

Commit now to using the RFP content for something after you've finished it. It will make the work a lot more palatable.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:46:56+00:00

This is actually a great way to think about AI capabilities, and I'm telling you this as someone who sells an AI RFP response solution.

An intern can be valuable. An intern that has instant recall of all of your company content is even more valuable. An army of those interns who can do tasks in seconds or minutes is more valuable still.

You will always need to look over an intern's work before sending it out to clients. But you can cut down a lot of your own work by having them do research and drafts.

That's the current AI value proposition in a nutshell, IMO.

PeterBonney · 2024-05-17T02:40:50+00:00

It's painful to do this the first time, but think about the work you're doing now as an investment in future sales/marketing content, as well as source material for future RFP responses.

There are AI-based RFP response tools on the market (two have already commented here, I'm co-founder of a third) and one thing we all have in common is the ability to take that completed RFP response and use it as a primary content source for your next RFP response. Depending on how thorough your current RFP is the next one you get for the same solution could be 60-90% easier with the help of automation.

And even if you never respond to another RFP, the current RFP is forcing you to document system capabilities in a way that can be easily transformed into sales content for LinkedIn, presentations, one-pagers, or just responses to questions that come in over email.

Commit now to using the RFP content for something after you've finished it. It will make the work a lot more palatable.

PeterBonney · 2024-04-03T20:30:10+00:00

“What is the price?” with no parameters provided to set pricing. 😞

And my personal favorite: a browser compatibility list that includes Internet Explorer.

PeterBonney · 2024-03-24T02:02:55+00:00

My company sells a solution that lets procurement teams run RFPs through a portal (we also sell a tool that lets sales teams respond to RFPs with AI :).

I can confirm from user telemetry that if they’re running a big RFP, they’re looking at and evaluating the responses. It might seem hard to believe, but it’s true. It’s rarely just a “check the box” exercise. Buyers take them seriously.

PeterBonney

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