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Bid No Bid Decision Matrix
The tells that a requirement was written around somebody else, read out of the solicitation itself, with the cost of answering it beside them.
A bid/no-bid matrix asks you to score win probability from one to five. That cell is the whole decision, and every template on page one leaves it blank for you to guess at. River fills it from the document instead. It reads the solicitation for the structural tells that the requirement was shaped around a company that is already inside, then prices your response from your own hours and rates rather than a score out of five.
The tells are structural, which is what makes them readable. A specification built around one manufacturer's feature needs a written justification behind it, so either that justification is on the record or the spec is doing something else. A fourteen-day window on a complex non-commercial requirement sits under the floor the rules set. Each finding names the paragraph it came from. None of this is a hunch about anyone's motives. It is what the document says, measured against what the rules require.
Built for the bid manager and the sales lead deciding on Monday whether to spend the week. Reach for it when the solicitation has just landed and nobody in the room has read past page ten. When the answer is bid, the RFP response pack takes the same document and builds the compliance matrix from it. The rest of the template library and the tool index cover the work that follows a yes.
Three tells that are written into the document
Start with the specification. Federal rules say agency requirements shall not require a particular brand name, product, or a feature peculiar to one manufacturer. The exception is narrow: the feature has to be essential, and market research has to show the alternatives will not do. So a requirement naming one vendor's console, one vendor's file format or one vendor's integration is either backed by a justification somebody wrote down, or it is a requirement drafted by whoever already sells it. Both are findings, and they lead to different decisions.
Then the clock. Agencies must allow at least a thirty-day response time for a proposed contract action expected to exceed the simplified acquisition threshold, with commercial products and services carved out. So a fifteen-day window on a hundred-page non-commercial requirement means one of two things. Either it was procured as commercial, in which case the shorter clock is lawful and the tell is elsewhere, or the schedule was built for a company that has already seen the requirement. The tool checks which, and says so.
Third, the conversation you were not in. Exchanges between agencies and industry before proposals arrive are encouraged, and their stated purpose is to let potential offerors judge whether they can satisfy the requirement. That is the sentence worth reading twice. If a sources-sought notice, an industry day or a draft solicitation went out and you were not in any of it, somebody else spent months shaping the requirement you are now reading cold. The brief says which exchanges happened and whether your name appears.
How it works
Paste the solicitation
Drop in the RFP, the attachments and any amendments. Partial documents work and get flagged.
River reads it
Specification, schedule, evaluation criteria and the record of who was talking to whom beforehand.
Price your response
The hours the requirement actually implies, at your rates, against the other bid you would drop.
Take the decision
Bid, no bid, or bid on stated conditions, with the reasoning a pipeline review will accept.
What you get
- Every finding names the paragraph and page it was read from, never a general impression
- A specification checked for features peculiar to one vendor, and whether a justification exists
- The response window measured against the floor the rules set for this kind of action
- Evaluation weighting mapped against where you are strongest and where you would be stretching
- The cost of responding computed from your own hours and rates, not scored one to five
- A third answer beside bid and no bid: the conditions under which bidding makes sense
Common questions
What does it need from me?
The solicitation itself, or as much of it as you have. Attachments and amendments matter more than people expect, because the disqualifying requirements are often in them. It also asks what contact you had with this buyer before the document landed, because that answer changes the reading of everything else in it.
Does this only work for government bids?
The tells are sharpest in public procurement because the rules are published, so a claim can be checked. Private RFPs run on the same physics with less paperwork: a specification written around one product, a schedule nobody outside could meet, and a buyer you have never spoken to. The findings are the same, the evidence is thinner, and the brief says which is which.
Isn't calling an RFP wired just an excuse for losing?
It would be, as a feeling. As a finding it is a paragraph number. A named product with no justification on the record, a fifteen-day window under the thirty-day floor, an experience threshold only one company clears. Each one is a line in the document you can point at in a review, and none of them requires a theory about anybody's motives.
What if the answer is bid anyway?
Plenty of wired-looking bids are worth answering, and the brief says on what terms: the price you would need, the partner who closes the gap, or the requirement to challenge in the question window. When you commit, requirements extraction is the next step on the same document, and on public work the form obligations that reject a bid before it is read are their own pack.
How does it price the response?
From the requirement count and your own numbers. It counts what has to be written, asks who writes it and what they cost, and multiplies. Then it names the other live bid those people would come off, because the real cost of a marginal pursuit is the bid you stopped resourcing. Doing that across the whole pipeline, week by week, is its own pack.
Can it replace our existing scorecard?
It fills one in. If your firm already runs a weighted matrix, hand over the criteria and the weights and the assessment lands in your format with evidence in the notes column. What changes is where the scores come from. Blank cells scored from the room become cells scored from paragraphs, and the threshold stays yours.
Bid No Bid Decision Matrix
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