Leverage my Millions of Dollars
of SBIR Experience!
Are you serious about SBIR success? Are you interested in your share of nearly $4 Billion (SBIR.gov) in early stage, non-dilutive SBIR funding for America’s small technology businesses? Do have what it takes to write a winning SBIR or STTR funding proposal?
My company has received over $1.2 million in SBIR funding, and I’ve helped other entrepreneurs write award winning proposals worth millions more. I’ve also reviewed over a dozen Phase I and Phase II proposals.
As an experienced reviewer and the recipient of multiple SBIR Phase I and SBIR Phase II awards, I’ve created a new online course “Develop a Winning SBIR Strategy: Insights from an Experienced Reviewer” to help you learn to succeed with the federal SBIR and STTR funding programs to fund your innovative technology company.
In this new course we’ve included a lot of value added content including our all new workbook and worksheets, accounting help sheets and video (to help you figure out your Phase I and Phase II accounting!) and proposal sample documents to help you prepare your proposal. We’ve included tutorials from each of the major SBIR and STTR agencies to help you develop a successful strategy. You won’t find anything else like this. This course can help you improve your SBIR proposal and improve the odds of success! See a detailed list of features and then sign up for either our video-only course or our course plus 1 on 1 coaching with Nicole!
Sarah Lukes Best SBIR course I’ve taken [Phase I and Phase II awarded after taking this course!] I have participated in several SBIR enrichment activities through the state and university. Nicole provided more in depth information, as well as considered input and requests from attendees. A lot of the other courses out there are told in 3rd person where someone interviews SBIR award winners, but has not applied or reviewed many proposals themselves. I am grateful for the extra guidance and motivation and strongly recommend this course. |
Develop a Winning SBIR Strategy | Video Only
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Develop a Winning SBIR Strategy | Video Plus 1-on-1 Coaching
(Payments and hosting by Thinkific, a trusted leader in video training) |
As an experienced startup coach and longtime, experienced peer reviewer of both SBIR Phase I and SBIR Phase II proposals, Nicole has received so many questions about proposals for the SBIR program that she has put together this all new course to help you develop a successful strategy to use SBIR/STTR funding to develop your innovations. A key element is showing you what actually happens behind the scenes during the Review Process of SBIR proposals. This course includes insight into all the major SBIR and STTR programs, including DoD SBIR and DoD STTR, including DARPA SBIR STTR, DOE SBIR and STTR, NSF SBIR and STTR, Navy SBIR, Army SBIR, Air Force SBIR (and STTR for all services), NIH SBIR/STTR, and NASA SBIR STTR as well as DoED and other smaller programs such as NIST SBIR and EPA SBIR.
Items covered include:
- A strategic overview of the different agencies and their perspective
- Worksheets and advice to help you lay out your potential proposals and the appropriate agencies.
- The importance of the pre-proposal executive summary/submission (more than 4 weeks in advance of submission deadlines)
- Your chance to make reviewers love what you do!
- Overview of orientation that reviewers receive
- Identifying the different types of reviewers on a panel and how this impacts the process
- What reviewers are asked to do for each review (and how this impacts your proposal!)
- Why an SBIR Program Director said on an SBIR Road Tour recently that just a few things can raise your odds of being awarded funding from 15% to over 50%!
- Why the Introduction can make or break your entire proposal
- The order in which experienced reviewers read your proposal - and why it matters.
- Differences and similarities between SBIR Phase I and Phase II reviews, and why your Phase I review is really the first part of your Phase II review
- Do letters of support really matter - and how not to get them
- What is really needed in the commercialization section of an SBIR Phase I (vs. Phase II)
- Review of my list of 40 ways to improve your SBIR proposal (from mistakes I saw in actual proposals)
- The difference between individual reviews and panel summary (and scores) and what that feedback means
- How to track the progress of your proposal
- Clues that you have been recommended for funding and what to expect from your Program Director or Technical Point of Contact (DoD)
Why should you care about the SBIR and STTR programs? The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and the companion, although slightly different, Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs provided a combined total of over $3.73 Billion (SBIR.gov) in early stage, non-dilutive funding for America's small technology businesses in 2019. The programs are referred to as "America's Seed Fund" and are the single largest source of early stage funding for deep technology in the U.S. Crucially for entrepreneurs, SBIR and STTR awards are either grants or contracts rather than either loans or investment. The entrepreneur gives up no equity and has no repayment requirement providing they complete the work outlined in the SBIR grant or SBIR contract.
The programs are administered in two phases. Phase I awards help the agency assess the capabilities of the small business and is the opportunity for the business to demonstrate the feasibility of their technology approach. About half of Phase I awardees win Phase II funding to further develop their proposed innovations. Phase I awards can total over $250,000, depending upon the agency, while Phase II awards can top $1.68 million. Both phases may include enhancements and matching funds to outside investment depending on agency specifics.
VentureWrench co-creator Nicole Toomey Davis has been a long time reviewer for the SBIR and STTR programs and Enclavix has received multiple Phase I and Phase II awards. She wants more entrepreneurs to be able to take advantage of this valuable source of capital. However, the programs are government contracting programs and come with their own complexity. This new course is designed to help companies better navigate the programs and builds on the VentureWrench original course, "Improve Your SBIR Proposal."
Content includes 9 core content chapters, over 2 hours of content plus four bonus chapters to help you with your executive summary or proposal overview and another bonus chapter to help you with your SBIR accounting.