An interview with Paul Fenton

What led you to start BidEquity?

After two decades personally running major programme pursuits across Defence, Emergency Services, Justice, and central government — including the Emergency Services Network (ESN), Royal Navy Project Selborne, the Ministry of Justice's electronic tagging programme, and Transport for London's Cycle Hire scheme — one pattern became impossible to ignore.

The system is far less effective than people are willing to admit.

Organisations were deploying significant cost, time, and senior attention into pursuits — often without a clear view of whether those contracts were winnable in the first place.

What stood out wasn't just the inefficiency. It was the tolerance of it.

In any other part of the business, this level of investment would be challenged. In competitive pursuit, it's normalised.

At some point, the question becomes unavoidable: if we applied the same discipline here as we do elsewhere, how much of this activity would we actually continue?

The answer is: significantly less.

What problem are you really solving?

This is not a pursuit problem. It's not even primarily a growth problem.

It's a capital allocation failure — with wider consequences.

Large suppliers to government are spending tens — sometimes hundreds — of millions a year competing for revenue, with conversion rates that would not survive scrutiny in any other investment decision.

We call the resulting metric Pursuit ROI — and at typical mid-tier suppliers it runs at roughly 1.1x on a margin basis, barely covering cost of capital and materially below any other hurdle rate the same firm would impose on an investment of comparable scale.

Yet that spend continues, largely unchallenged, because accountability is diffused, success is episodic, and failure is absorbed.

The result is a system that rewards participation over performance.

But there's a second layer to this. The cost of competing doesn't just create inefficiency. It shapes the market itself.

How does the cost of competing affect the market?

At the scale of major government programmes, the cost of mounting a credible pursuit is significant.

For established suppliers, that cost is absorbed as part of the operating model.

For challengers, it's a constraint.

Which means that, over time, the market tends to concentrate — not necessarily because incumbents are always better, but because they are better positioned to absorb the cost of competing repeatedly.

In practice, that leads to fewer credible challengers sustaining participation at scale, less diversity of approach in later-stage competition, and reduced competitive tension over time.

This isn't about procurement rules or intent.

It's about the economics of participation.

And that's rarely addressed directly.

What do most organisations get wrong?

They optimise for activity, not outcomes.

More pipeline. More pursuits. More effort.

But the reality is: a significant proportion of pursuits were never winnable. Effort is applied too late to materially change outcomes. And every pursuit is treated as a one-off rather than part of a system.

There's also a structural bias toward optimism.

Teams want pursuits to be winnable. Leadership wants growth. So weak opportunities progress further than they should.

By the time decisions are challenged, most of the cost has already been incurred.

The result is predictable: high cost, inconsistent performance, and very limited learning.

How is BidEquity different?

Most approaches focus on improving the output — the proposal.

We focus on fixing the system that determines which pursuits should exist, how advantage is created early, and how consistently the organisation applies its best thinking.

Four things distinguish what we do.

Encoded Experience. Two decades of personally executing major programme pursuits, encoded into a platform that structures the entire pursuit lifecycle — calibrated effort models, dependency maps, archetype configurations. Knowledge a tool cannot manufacture.

The Diagnostic. A forensic, evidence-based probability of win — not a CRM number and an instinct. It exposes optimism bias, corrects for rebid complacency, and gives leadership a defensible basis for pursuit investment decisions.

The Compounding Data. Every pursuit run through the platform builds a living dataset of how the organisation actually performs — actual effort versus estimated, probability trajectory versus initial qualification score, which workstreams compress, which dependencies fail. Each pursuit makes the next one sharper.

Aligned Commercial Model. We put capital at risk alongside the client. On Core and Command engagements, we are Paid on Award — fee at risk against the pursuit outcome. On Verdict, we operate on a fixed fee from £2,000. The principle does not flex: we back our judgement with our own money.

Together, those four things remove optimism where it isn't supported by evidence and replace it with structured, accountable decision-making.

That's where the performance gap sits.

Where does AI actually add value?

AI is not the differentiator. It's the enabler.

The platform is AI-enabled, not AI-led. The real shift is from a process that is fragmented, person-dependent, and inconsistent to one that is structured, repeatable, and intelligence-led.

AI allows us to standardise analysis, accelerate early-stage thinking, and reduce the volume of low-value effort.

But the value is not speed.

It's consistency — and better decisions earlier in the process.

The four differentiators are what make BidEquity distinctive. AI is what makes them deliverable at the cost of competing we deliver them at.

What impact do clients actually see?

The first impact is usually a change in behaviour.

Organisations become more selective. They stop defaulting to "yes" on opportunities that don't stand up to scrutiny.

That leads to fewer pursuits, earlier decisions, and sharper focus.

Which in turn drives a 50–60% reduction in the cost of competing, better use of senior capacity, and more consistent execution.

Over time, conversion improves.

But the immediate impact is control — which is often what's missing.

What does this mean for challenger suppliers?

It changes the economics of entry.

If you reduce the cost of competing and improve how opportunities are selected, you reduce the risk associated with participation.

That allows organisations to compete selectively but credibly, sustain investment across multiple pursuits, and enter markets they would previously have avoided.

In effect, it becomes possible to compete more effectively without the same level of sunk cost.

Why does that matter more broadly?

Because competition is not just about process — it's about participation.

If the cost of participating at scale is too high, markets tend to concentrate over time.

Not by design, but by economics.

Improving how suppliers compete has a wider effect: stronger participation, clearer differentiation, and more robust competitive outcomes.

That benefits both suppliers and the public sector.

Who is this really for?

This is for organisations where competing for revenue is central to growth — and where the cost of competing is material.

Typically: consultancies, technology and digital providers, BPO and outsourcing firms.

Especially those operating in complex, high-value public sector environments.

In those contexts, small changes in how you compete have disproportionate impact.

What's the long-term ambition?

To change how organisations think about competing.

From an accepted cost of doing business — to a managed, disciplined investment system.

And in doing so, to contribute to a more effective and competitive market overall.

Final thought

There is a widely accepted inefficiency in how organisations compete for major contracts.

It persists because it's familiar, not because it's effective.

And it has consequences beyond individual firms — it shapes who is able to compete in the first place.

Most organisations will continue to tolerate it.

A smaller number will decide to change it.

Those are the organisations we work with.