Why I Built a Tool That Works for Agencies—Because None of the Others Did

I’ve always believed in magic, but I truly witnessed it when my team pulled off something extraordinary.

As the founder of a growing digital agency, we’re constantly on the lookout for impactful projects. Yet, every now and then, opportunities come our way that don’t quite fit. Maybe it’s not our target market, or perhaps we’re overburdened and aiming to achieve more with less.
One day, we received a lead from a strong connection. It wasn’t our ideal fit, but we had to respond. And in the midst of that casual conversation, an idea struck—a seemingly offhand comment that led to something far bigger than I ever imagined.

It all started during a meeting with my co-founder, Sudipta. I casually said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we had an automated cost estimator? Something that could generate costs and milestones in minutes based on a few inputs.”
A week later, during our usual weekly check-in, Sudipta presented me with a prototype. WHAT?! I was floored. He’d built it in his spare time, just because he liked the idea.

Later that month, I travelled to Goa in India (a place where you meet your soul, in case you haven’t been you must) and I met someone who had spent 25+ years consulting in the industry. I showed her the product and she explained to me that it is not an internal tool but a full blown product scope. I got super excited and then decided to think it over.

I then shared this with our board, they immediately saw the potential. We realized this wasn’t just a tool for us—it was a solution for agencies everywhere, especially those managing complex client demands.

Me in My Goa Look

The Breaking Point: Losing Deals Over Proposals
At an industry event, I overheard some peers discussing their proposal process. They were stuck in a cycle of endless reviews and revisions, double-checking everything to avoid mistakes. The proposal process had become so inefficient that delays and errors were simply expected.
Even worse, many had no clue how interested their clients actually were. Were these leads serious or just tire-kickers? Was all this effort even worth it?
That’s when it hit me: the entire industry was dealing with this problem, and we had a solution.
We then met with the board again and shared the product’s progress and we shared our observation and we agreed that the next big pain was automated proposal making. Since we already had the estimator at the core. We felt this was a natural extension of the product.

Later the data confirmed it. On average, it took agencies three days to generate a proposal. Three days! That’s 72 hours between client interest and delivering something for them to consider. In today’s world, where speed is everything, that delay was costing deals.

Thus, CostGPT Pro Was Born.

Our First Version

When we began using CostGPT Pro internally, the results were immediate and transformative.

Proposals in Minutes, Not Days
What used to take us three days now took just 2.5 minutes. Our AI-powered proposal builder pulled from our past proposals and best practices, allowing us to create customized, on-brand proposals in record time.

Accuracy Skyrocketed
Before CostGPT Pro, 20% of our proposals had errors. After switching, that dropped to just 3.7%. This led to faster approvals, fewer revisions, and—most importantly—more closed deals

Seamless Collaboration
For the first time, our remote and hybrid teams could collaborate on proposals without bouncing between tools. We cut our approval time from 30 hours to just 3 hours. No more endless back-and-forth!

Lead Quality Became Crystal Clear
One of the game-changing features of CostGPT Pro is its ability to track client engagement. No more guessing if a lead is serious. We could see who viewed our proposals, how long they spent on each section, and what parts they cared about most. It was like having a real-time feedback loop, helping us prioritize the leads that mattered.

Doubling Our Close Rate
After generating over 1,000 proposals with CostGPT Pro, our close rate doubled. We were closing twice as many deals, effortlessly compared to the grind we’d been through before.

Our Proposal Builder

Why It Worked for Us (and Why It’ll Work for You)
CostGPT Pro isn’t just about speeding up proposals—it’s about transforming the entire pre-sales process. With ProGenie, our AI-powered pre-sales engineer, we’ve taken it even further. You can answer client questions in seconds, onboard new team members in days, and gain deeper insights into your customers.

If your agency is struggling with the same issues, I invite you to try CostGPT Pro. We built it for ourselves, but we’re sharing it with the world because we believe it can make a real difference.

Interestingly, what started as a side project is becoming a much-needed product for everyone in our space.