{"id":2042,"date":"2025-04-13T13:49:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T10:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scale.co.ke\/blog\/?p=2042"},"modified":"2025-04-17T14:38:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T11:38:22","slug":"how-we-turned-our-every-tender-loss-into-the-procurement-platform-africa-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scale.co.ke\/blog\/how-we-turned-our-every-tender-loss-into-the-procurement-platform-africa-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"How Losing Tenders Helped Us Build the eProcurement Platform Africa Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2013, we were just getting started in business.<\/p>\n

Young. Ambitious. Fired up by the promise of the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO)<\/strong><\/a> program; a bold initiative that set aside 30% of public procurement for youth, women, and persons with disabilities. People just like us.<\/p>\n

We believed this was our moment.<\/p>\n

In fact, we believed in it so much that the very team behind what would later become Scale<\/strong> volunteered to build the\u00a0AGPO portal<\/a> for the Government of Kenya – entirely free of charge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Because we believed in opening up opportunity. We still do.<\/p>\n

Soon after, we found our first tender. We went all in.<\/p>\n

But we didn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n

\"Brian
Before Scale, this was procurement\u2014manual, messy, and painful. Before Scale was a platform, it was a lived frustration for Brian, Comark & Marvin (Scale Co-founders). That frustration became our why.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So we tried again. And again.
We responded to hundreds more tenders\u2014each time holding onto hope.
But the results were always the same.<\/p>\n

Not then. Not a year later. Not even three years later.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Million Lessons from a Million Little Things<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We weren\u2019t failing because we lacked ambition.
We were failing because the procurement process was stacked against the unprepared.<\/strong><\/p>\n