JET's senior experts are the constraint on every proposal. This engagement gives them back the hours that matter most — by turning six pain points into a working system. Two ways to get there. Same destination.
"I don't want 10 to 100. I could go to 10 okay proposals to 10 proposals that are absolutely on the mark."— James Keevy
Every problem traces to the same constraint: senior experts are the bottleneck. They're needed for qualification, pricing, CVs, and sign-off — and there aren't enough hours.
Opportunities found ~1 week before deadline. Good-fit grants get missed.
Qualification is an email chain. Not codified, not consistent.
JET loses on price, not quality. No way to gauge budget appetite upfront.
Every proposal needs CVs reformatted for the specific scope. Hugely manual.
Not enough time to research funder biases, past awards, governance risks.
Capacity — not quality — is the limiter. Juniors can't run the process alone.
Both options deliver the same capabilities: deal qualification, CV tailoring, opportunity scanning, and funder intelligence. The difference is who operates the system day-to-day — and what that means for cost, control, and what comes next.
The grants engine as the base, with custom agentic modules layered on top. StrideShift handles the build, the orchestration, the guardrails, and the ongoing operation. JET plugs the gap without adding internal overhead.
What the work involves:
Same capabilities, same quality of build. The difference: at the end of the engagement, JET owns the system outright. It runs on your accounts, your data stays in your environment, and your team operates it independently. StrideShift is available for advisory — not required for operation.
What the work involves:
Required from JET's side in both options. Neither is financial — both are about access.
Two working sessions (~90 minutes each) with James and Carla during Week 1. This is where the qualification rubric gets built — it encodes their decision-making, so it needs their time.
Access to 15–20 past proposals (a mix of won and lost) and master CVs for team members who regularly appear on submissions. Any format. This is what the validation sprint runs against.
Option B additionally requires: a designated person at JET who will oversee the agentic system day-to-day. This person doesn't need to be technical — they need to be attentive and curious. The progressive sandboxed approach means capabilities are deployed incrementally and monitored before expanding, so the risk is low and the learning curve is manageable. We train them as part of the handover.
The rubric design, the research hygiene framework, the CV knowledge base, the funder intelligence setup, the agent skills and guardrails — all of that work is the same in both options. The fork is in who runs it after that, and what that means for JET going forward.
Option A is simpler to adopt and requires no internal capacity. StrideShift operates the system. JET receives the outputs. If that's what fits right now, it's a sound choice.
Option B costs less, gives JET ownership, and creates a foundation for broader agent adoption across the organisation — but it requires someone internally to oversee it. If JET has that person and the appetite to build internal capability, the long-term value is significantly higher.
Both are legitimate choices. The right one depends on JET's appetite, internal capacity, and how this fits into the broader direction James wants to take the organisation.