Request for Proposals: NYC Life Sciences Innovation Infrastructure RFP

talk in 15-20 min.

how to connect for conference call?

in the meantime:

My initial thoughts:

After listening to the info session I feel confident that BWoB you can totally win an award with this program as a nonprofit BS2 facility provider.

Winning this can be straightforward if you focus on submitting a professional, practical, compliant proposal.

key ingredients:

- rational mission that fill an unmet need

- convincing explanation of the need

- how filling this need furthers the goals of the NYCEDC goals

- evidence that others are not providing this

- demonstration of how you will fill the need

                - products and services

                - qualification for service provision

                - implementation plan

                                - immediate, growth, long term phases

                - financial plan

                - risk mitigation plan

                - measurable success metrics
- management team

It will be hard enough to write a proposal for a focused mission. Adding to that would be impossible.

Problem:

This takes a lot of work and skills in writing, some financial accounting, market research, etc.  I don’t see that BWoB has sufficient people with the time/experience/interest/ needed to put this together by the deadline. This is a common problem faced by other applicants.

Possible solution:

For this reason there are companies out there that do this for a living. Yes, you can hire someone to write your proposal – not to formulate WHAT you want to say or make decisions about financing. They just do all the writing and formatting. They also thoroughly read the RFP and other materials to make sure the proposal in in alignment. But you would need to raise the funds to pay for that. And you would need to do this very quickly. You only have a month. That’s very little time.

i called the google meeting number and inpiut the pin but said no meeting is happening

The outcome said 18:00 sorry for any confusion

just got this

was in another meeting and now have to do other stuff. I will be available again at 9:30 PM.

• i think it would really help in anything we do to maybe be a little less reliant on only indirect communication through layers of tools. Sometimes calling someone directly is the most efficient thing to do which btw used to be the only form of communication other than in person. it works great. So for anyone in the future that needs to communicate with me immediately my number is 30578679625. just call me. for millennial that can't bring themselves to do that you can always text me.

regarding my last comment about how to win this, I should have added that I am very interested in contributing as much time as i have to writing the proposal but I would need to see that we have others involved enough to pull it off properly and make everyone's efforts worth while,

plenty to talk about. pleat let me know if we want to meet tonight and how to connect.

You were with us in spirit at our meeting. I revised the outcome to summarize.

I appreciate your thoughts about "direct" communication. You may have overlooked or missed the reasons I want to use Loomio as the default for organizational communication. The group description is the most concise way I have been able to express those thoughts at this point. They are primarily rooted in allowing for as many people to sit at the decision making table as possible and supporting a robust system of divergent thinking. However I also recognize the need to form working groups with a high level of alignment and purpose. We will be forming such a group to work on the RFP.

You phone number has a strange amount of digits. Can you check if it is correct? No need to share phone numbers so openly. You can always call the BwoB number and it goes to me (although I am not always available to pick up).

I communicate over text and phone using Signal with Vik and Ibrahim. We can set norms of communication at our next meeting.

From RFPs like this it's pretty clear what sorts of things NYEDC likes, big labs and infra projects. Bery much a "build it and they will come" mentality, which is not how anything works, but OK:

https://lifesci.nyc/news/new-york-city-seeks-proposals-100m-life-sci-hub

Compare their persective to paul graham's, who in this case I think has it right (though I'd argue he misses the forest for the trees when it comes to NYC):

http://paulgraham.com/pgh.html

http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html

Email I want to send to the EDC:

Hi NYEDC,

I have a few clarifying questions regarding the space that we propose for development as a part of the Life Sciences Innovation Infrastructure RFP.

Does the nonprofit respondent need to own the space they wish to develop into new lab space, or can the space be leased?

Does the space need to be controlled (owned/leased) by the nonprofit before submission of the proposal, or can the space be acquired (owned or leased) after an award is made?

Does cost to purchase/lease a space count as infrastructure costs?

If there is a general neighborhood that we want to focus on developing our space in, but no single location has been locked down for development yet, can we still submit a proposal focusing on the programming and services to be offered to the NY life sciences and startup community through our project while detailing requirements for the location in our search?

Thank you!

Regards,

Vikram