Ben Schrag (NSF Program Director) presents an overview of the National Science Foundation’s SBIR/STTR program: a roughly $250M/year effort that funds early-stage deep-technology startups (about 300 Phase I and 100 Phase II awards annually), emphasizes commercialization and flexibility, and encourages first-time government applicants. He describes program staffing (≈dozen program directors with technical and entrepreneurial backgrounds), typical award sizing (Phase I+II can total about $2M), open topical scope, and the ‘project pitch’ 2–3 page intake with a typical response in 1–2 weeks (≤1 month).
Questions this video answers
About $250 million per year.
About 300 Phase I and 100 Phase II awards annually.
About $2 million (combined Phase I and Phase II).
About a dozen program directors focused on the program.
Typically 1–2 weeks, not exceeding one month.
Chapters
You. Hi, my name is Ben Schrag and I'm a program director in the small Business programs at the National Science Foundation. I'll be talking about the SBIR and STTR programs at the NSF. The NSF's SBIR STTR program has about a $250 million annual budget. We make about 300 phase one and 100 phase two awards per year. And we're focused on translating deep technology innovations into scalable commercial impacts on the nation. We have a program that is centralized, led by about a dozen program directors who focus on this program all the time. Those program directors, such as myself, have both technical and commercial experience focused on startups and technology translation. Our technical experience is typically scientific and engineering advanced degrees. And most of us have experience as startup founders or startup investors or otherwise having done technology translation. And so our program is infused with a fair amount of entrepreneurial spirit and focus on kind of an investor perspective. We try to maximize flexibility in our program. We make either grants or cooperative agreements to try to allow the startups and small businesses that we fund to have maximum flexibility to pivot their program as their company grows. And typically we make awards near the congressional maximum. Our phase one and phase two awards for most companies will add up to about a $2 million opportun if everything goes well. Our program has a focus especially on startup companies. There's some data on the slide showing that the vast majority of the companies that we fund have fewer than five employees, have been incorporated in the last five years. Almost all of them have never had a phase two award from any agency. And a majority of the companies that we fund are actually submitting their first ever proposal to the National Science Foundation. So you should understand that our program is very willing to fund companies that are new to the government and that have not done this before. Our goal is really to help companies take a first step on what becomes a big commercially successful journey with a large impact on the commercial market or whatever market the company is targeting. This slide has just a few headlines from our portfolio companies over about the last year showing that with our funding they've been able to go on and raise private sector funding and create jobs and make an impact on the market in a large way. The best things to understand about being a good fit for our program are that we are really looking for a unique and defensible technical innovation that will then translate into a competitive advantage for your firm. We're looking for firms that are that are geared toward aggressive commercialization of a new product or service that has to be the most important focus of your company. And we're looking for companies who have already started the journey of understanding their market and their customer. Typically through a process of customer discovery, we try to be very flexible and forgiving again to attract those first time applicants. And so there's a few things that you should not worry about when thinking about applying to our program. Most importantly, don't worry about topics. We fund basically an unlimited set of topics and we do not reject proposals for having the wrong topical focus. We don't worry that much about our internal interests. We're never going to be your customer. We should be, we should be basically a bystander to that conversation. But you're going to want to convince us who your customer is and why that there's a need that you can meet for them. If you're worried about budgets, don't we try to be very flexible about some of the administrative aspects of our proposals? And most importantly, you know, if you don't have an academic connection or a PhD, that's also okay. We're looking for a strong technical team, but not necessarily a specific pedigree. If you're interested in seeing more about the NSF and figuring out if you might be a good fit, the best first step for you is to submit what we call a project pitch through our website. We accept project pitches all the time, anytime around the year. They are about a two to three page ask and typically we respond to those project pitches in about one to two weeks and not exceeding a month. And the project pitch is essentially a way to give you a read as to whether we think your potential project is appropriate and may be a good fit for our program, whether or not we think it's a good fit, and invite you to submit a full proposal. We will give you feedback on whether why we think it's a good fit or why not and you'll be able to work from there. And that's all. Again, my name is Ben Schrag. Thanks for listening.
