Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern access to and use of The Bid Company, a bid intelligence platform for public-sector procurement (the "Service"), operated by Istari Strategy Consulting ("Istari Strategy", "we", "us", or "our"), based in British Columbia, Canada.

By creating an account, or by accessing or using the Service in any way, you agree to be bound by these Terms on behalf of yourself and, if applicable, the organization you represent ("you" or "Customer"). If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The Bid Company monitors public-sector procurement portals, aggregates and scores opportunities against a Customer's stated capabilities, and provides tools, including Smartflow and Ask Istari, to help a Customer research, draft, and assemble a bid response. The specific features available depend on the subscription plan the Customer has selected.

• You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep it current.
• An account belongs to one organization ("workspace"). Colleagues who sign up with a matching work-email domain may join an existing workspace automatically, subject to administrator approval inside the product.
• You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping your credentials secure.
• The Service is intended for business use by organizations bidding on public-sector contracts, not for personal or consumer use.

• Startup and Standard plans are billed monthly in advance, in Canadian dollars, until cancelled.
• The Marketplace plan is priced per contract rather than by seat; a success fee applies only where an introduction we facilitate results in a win, as described at the time you select that plan.
• You can cancel a monthly plan at any time; cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and we do not provide partial-period refunds except where required by law.
• We may change plan pricing on a going-forward basis with reasonable advance notice.

You agree not to:

• Use the Service to submit false, misleading, or fraudulent information to a government buyer;
• Attempt to circumvent a procurement portal's own access controls or terms of use;
• Scrape, resell, or redistribute aggregated procurement data as a standalone product;
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the Service's underlying models or source code;
• Use the Service to send unsolicited communications in violation of Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) or any equivalent law; or
• Interfere with the Service's operation or attempt to access another Customer's workspace.

"Customer Content" means the documents, requirements, proposal text, contact records, and other material you or your workspace upload to or generate within the Service. You retain all rights to Customer Content. You grant us a limited license to host, process, and transmit it solely to provide and improve the Service to you, as described in our Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for having the necessary rights to any content you upload, and for ensuring it does not contain information you are not permitted to share with us (for example, another party's classified or confidential material).

Smartflow, Ask Istari, and related features use large-language-model technology to summarize documents, extract requirements, suggest scoring, and draft proposal language. This output is a starting point, not a finished, verified submission.

You are solely responsible for reviewing, verifying, and approving any AI-assisted content before it is submitted to a buyer. We do not guarantee that AI-generated summaries, extracted requirements, fit scores, or draft answers are complete or accurate, and a missed or misread requirement, certification, or deadline in a live procurement can have real consequences. Treat every AI-assisted output as a claim that needs your own verification against the source documents before it goes out under your organization's name.

The Service integrates with third-party providers, for example Google or Microsoft for sign-in, and one or more artificial-intelligence providers that process Customer Content to generate the outputs described in Section 7. Your use of those integrations is also subject to that provider's own terms. We are not responsible for the availability or conduct of third-party services we do not operate.

The Service, including its software, design, and any content we provide that is not Customer Content (such as aggregated procurement listings we compile), is owned by Istari Strategy or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property law. These Terms do not grant you any rights to our trademarks or branding.

Either party may terminate an account as described in Section 4. We may also suspend or terminate access if you materially breach these Terms and do not cure the breach within a reasonable period after notice, or immediately where necessary to protect the Service or other Customers. On termination, your right to access the Service ends; Section 12 (limits on liability) and any other provision that by its nature should survive will continue to apply.

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available." Procurement data is drawn from public portals we do not control, and portal outages, formatting changes, or delayed postings can affect what the Service shows you. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any bid opportunity, score, or AI-generated output will be accurate or complete. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Istari Strategy will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits, revenue, or a bid opportunity, arising from your use of the Service. Our total liability for any claim arising out of these Terms will not exceed the fees you paid us for the Service in the three months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, without regard to conflict-of-law principles. Any dispute arising from these Terms will be resolved in the courts located in British Columbia, Canada.

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make a material change, we will provide notice, for example by email or an in-product notice, before the change takes effect. Continued use of the Service after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

Questions about these Terms can be sent to [email protected].