Today we’d like to introduce you to Alfredo Ramirez.
Hi Alfredo, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born in Venezuela, but my entire upbringing occurred in Miami. I always had an intense interest in U.S. and international politics that I attributed to my family’s leaving Venezuela. This drove me to get involved in political campaign work in high school and college when I went to the University of Florida.
Through that work, I eventually began working with politically engaged nonprofit organizations like Change.org and the League of Conservation Voters (LCV). The latter gave me a job and inspired me to move to Washington, D.C. As one of the younger people involved in these campaigns, I often worked in the marketing and outreach teams. This gave me the experience to eventually begin working in the digital strategy teams at larger organizations like LCV.
There, I quickly rose to become a manager and run the entire digital program for Chispa, the Latino-organizing team of LCV. I helped create my first issue campaign: Clean Buses for Healthy Niños. This effort encouraged U.S. governors to use funds from the Volkswagen emissions scandal to switch dirty diesel school buses for clean electric buses in low-income Latino neighborhoods.
This was ten years before any of the legislation we’ve seen today and when Tesla had yet to become a household name. Though I left LCV and the campaign years ago, I’m thrilled to see it still running today and delivering clean electric school buses in places like Arizona and Connecticut. After LCV, I went into consulting, doing what I did at LCV for multiple organizations simultaneously. I worked for Fortune 500 companies, international nonprofits, and famous individuals to draw attention to the causes and issues they cared about most. These issues were everywhere, including public health, immigration, infrastructure, and health care.
After nearly experiencing burnout from this work and deciding to continue my education with a Master’s degree, I took a sabbatical that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. I managed to get some international travel before the pandemic and a short motorcycle trip across 13 U.S. national parks. During this sabbatical, and partially inspired by my work in consulting, I decided to launch my own digital communications agency: ALRAS Digital.
I quickly found success with many of the organizations I had worked and collaborated with before. I partnered with a close friend and communications professional, Betsy López-Wagner, whom I worked with at LCV. We quickly found success, working with the likes of Yale University, The Wilderness Society, National Park Foundation, Climate Nexus, and many other organizations, helping support their external programs and internal efforts related to digital and communications strategy.
Throughout this work, I was deeply involved with requests for proposals (RFPs). I read, reviewed, and wrote them, and it was always a painful experience because there was no single, correct, or best way to go through an RFP. So many people I knew found themselves with the same challenge, missing out on so many good projects or opportunities because of the insular and close-knit nature of RFPs.
A close friend and I decided to do something about it by creating Prosal, a business development platform and community for agencies and consultants of all sizes and backgrounds to find and win good RFPs from nonprofits, small businesses, and local government.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
By no means has my journey been smooth, especially in building Prosal. Like any promising startup, we’ve pivoted about half a dozen times, made expensive mistakes, and overthought things to the point of paralysis. One example of a lesson that took us a while to learn is that we initially built Prosal as a platform for nonprofits to run their RFP processes more efficiently and connect with a more diverse supply of agencies and vendors.
We did it because it made sense to us, and it was what everyone in the nonprofit space was telling us: it takes us too long to run an RFP, and we tend to work with the same people because it’s challenging to build trustworthy relationships with agencies, especially agencies run by people of color.
Despite all the things they day, when we gave them the tools to solve their problems, they didn’t jump on Prosal. We learned through experience and observing some competitors tackle the same challenge that nonprofits and their employees weren’t being evaluated based on how efficiently they ran their RFP or what vendors they hired. They just needed to get the job done, and it was an infrequent job at that.
We focused on solving for nonprofits for about 7-8 months before we realized we were going nowhere. However, when we pivoted to solve the problem for agencies on the other side, we began experiencing success almost immediately.
We’ve been impressed with Prosal, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Prosal is a business development platform and community for professional services agencies and consultants to find good RFPs and win new clients from those RFPs. We make it easy to find high-quality client leads with shovel-ready projects who are open and willing to work with someone they’ve never worked with before.
Since launching in February 2022, we’ve built a community of nearly 2,000 agencies and consultants across marketing, communications, design, and management. We’ve also helped connect them to almost $100 million in new client opportunities and confirmed wins with over $10 million in total contract value.
Unlike other RFP platforms, we know the RFP process is broken. So, we focus on delivering only good RFPs while building the infrastructure to educate organizations about the RFP process, share resources to get through the process efficiently and encourage behaviors that deliver equitable partnerships and incredible project outcomes.
Our platform is free for most people to use, with paid options for those wanting to grow their business quicker. We’re incredibly proud of our brand and how it is helping turn the RFP from something obscure and bureaucratic into a welcoming, inclusive, and reliable alternative.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
Food and nature are the two standouts from Miami. I love the fact that I can get a Michelin-style cafecito and pastelito at a little gas station window and the option to dress up for some of the best fine dining options in the world, especially sushi. Having lived and eaten in dozens of cities and countries worldwide, I can confidently say that Miami has some of the best sushi in the world.
Nature comes in the form of the ocean and the Everglades. While everyone raves about the beach and going out on a boat to Nixon or Elliot Key (I’m the first one to say yes to an invite), people forget about the other hidden gems of our city, including the mountain bike parts of Virginia Key and Amelia Earhart and the endless swamp trails of the Everglades.
If there’s one thing I can complain about, it’s the traffic. I’m not the first one too, but it’s still insane that it can take me over an hour to go 10 or 20 miles anywhere in our city. At least the construction on the palmetto is finally done!
Pricing:
- Free
- $69/mo (monthly)
- $59/mo (6 months)
Contact Info:
- Website: http://prosal.io/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfredojramirez/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/alfjramirez
