I kept losing fixed-price bids after scope changes on calls. Here's what we built.

I want to tell you about the call that broke me.

Client was happy with the proposal. Ten minutes before we wrapped up, she said: "Actually, what if we move the reporting features into Phase 1? We need that earlier than we thought." Reasonable request. I'd handled that question a dozen times. But I had a spreadsheet with 400 rows, nested IF formulas, and three cells that had been wrong since Q1 I'd just never had time to fix them.

I said "let me get back to you tomorrow."

We lost the bid.

It was the fourth time last year I'd said some version of that. Not because I didn't know what a scope change meant. Because I couldn't show the answer. A recalculated timeline, updated risk profile, revised delivery date - in the room, while the client was watching. I didn't have the tool for that.

I rebuilt the estimate that evening. Three hours. By the time I sent the revised proposal, the client had moved on.

What I eventually understood: the problem wasn't the buffer. I had a buffer. It still wasn't enough most of the time. The real problem was that my estimation was a single number dressed up as a plan - it didn't account for uncertainty in any structured way, and it couldn't update live.

PERT estimation has existed since the 1950s. Three-point estimates for each task, weighted by probability, aggregated across the project using real statistics. It gives you an actual confidence interval: 85% chance of delivering within X hours, not "I added 20% and hoped."

Nobody had built a tool that did this and connected it to a live, draggable timeline you could update while a client was watching. So we built it. That's AxioPlan.

We're at launch stage. We use it on our own client projects today. I'm sharing this here because if any of it sounds familiar - the "let me get back to you," the evening rebuilds, the bid you lost not because your price was wrong but because you couldn't answer fast enough - this is exactly what we built it for.

Happy to answer anything.