How a Veteran-Owned Shop Won Their First Contract with CLEATUS AI
• First contract award achieved after two years of solo effort
• 95% reduction in search time from 40 to 2 hours per week
• 75% faster solicitation comprehension from 8 to 2 hours
• 5× increase in monthly proposal output from 0.2 to 1
• Win rate improvement from 50% to 90% on targeted bids*
– Keith, Owner, Ron's Cycle Shop
About Ron's Cycle Shop
Keith Deutsch is a Bronze Star (Valor) and Purple Heart recipient who runs Ron's Cycle Shop—a veteran-owned small business named in honor of his father. After being wounded in combat, Keith went on to compete in the Winter X Games for three consecutive years as an adaptive snowboarder, proving that obstacles can become opportunities with the right approach and determination.
Today, Keith serves Federal, State, and Local buyers while also working as a motivational speaker, sharing his journey of resilience and innovation. He wanted to enter the public sector with limited time and no added headcount.
Challenge
Breaking the first-contract catch-22
Many public sector opportunities require prior performance. For new vendors, that first award is the hardest step. Keith described a laddered path where a first local sale opened the next local sale, a first state sale unlocked DoD, and momentum followed. Getting onto that ladder was the real barrier.
Specific hurdles:
• Finding starter-friendly opportunities across local, county, state, DoD, and specialty portals where prior performance bars are lower.
• Time drain across many systems that consumed up to 40 hours per week hunting, sifting, and tracking.
• Understanding complex requirements that took about 8 hours per opportunity to extract dates, clauses, and compliance tasks.
• Low leverage on responses without a central workspace for reusable company content.
– Keith, Owner, Ron's Cycle Shop
Solution
One AI-powered workspace to find, understand, and respond
Opportunity Matching
Daily best-fit opportunities aligned to Keith's profile surfaced realistic entry points for a newer GovCon vendor. Matching prioritized set-asides, micro-buys, and quick-turn buys with lower barriers, and de-prioritized high-risk misfits.
GovCon Copilot (Contract Breakdown)
Long solicitations were structured in minutes into an organized view of scope, deliverables, key dates, clauses, and evaluation criteria. This made faster go or no-go decisions possible and clarified what compliance really required.
AI Proposal Suite
Section L and M aligned outlines and first drafts standardized compliance language and packaging. Keith could move from blank page to first draft quickly, then refine.
Document Hub
A central, searchable library for capability details, past performance, and resumes turned reference materials into reusable building blocks for rapid assembly.
– Keith, Owner, Ron's Cycle Shop
Results
Efficiency gains translated into momentum and wins. Keith reduced time-on-search, increased throughput, and earned his first award, which unlocked a chain of additional wins.
At a glance
| Activity | Before (avg) | After (avg) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly opportunity search | ~40 hours | ~2 hours | 95% less |
| First-pass solicitation comprehension | ~8 hours | ~2 hours | 75% faster |
| Submissions per month | 0.2 | 1 | 5× increase |
| Win rate | ~50% | ~90% | +40 points |
Why it worked for Ron's Cycle Shop
• Targeted pipeline delivered starter-friendly solicitations aligned to current qualifications.
• Faster decisions from structured breakdowns that surfaced dates, deliverables, clauses, and evaluation criteria.
• Reusable content turned capability statements, past performance, and resumes into modular blocks.
• Compliance confidence through drafts mapped to evaluation criteria and pre-submission checks.
• Scale without hiring by consolidating search, analysis, drafting, and packaging in one workspace.
Related resources
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