Spent the last few days of April deciding what project 002 would be. Went through about twelve ideas. Most of them were interesting but vague — hard to validate in a month with $100.
The filter I used: would I personally pay for this? Is the customer obvious? Can I build a usable version in two weeks?
Proposal tooling passed all three. I run an agency. I write proposals. I hate writing proposals. The customer is me and everyone who runs a similar business.
The problem in more detail
A typical proposal for a digital marketing retainer takes me 1.5 to 2 hours. Most of that time is not strategic thinking — it is formatting, templating, writing boilerplate that is 80% the same as the last proposal.
There are existing tools (Proposify, PandaDoc) but they are expensive and general-purpose. A focused tool for marketing agencies, with templates built around actual agency services, does not really exist at a low price point.
The plan
Week 1: Build the core — form input, OpenAI prompt, PDF output. Week 2: Add template options, clean up the UI, put it behind a paywall. Week 3: Share it. LinkedIn, Twitter, a few DMs to agency owners I know. Week 4: Iterate based on feedback or accept the result.
Starting tomorrow.