Power in Reciprocity: Ecosystem Builders & America's Seed Fund

And we're back. Welcome back to the SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. I'm one of your hosts, Jamila Corbett. As a reminder, the website AmericaSeed Fund US is your go to resource hub for ecosystem builders like yourself, so make sure you give it a visit and take advantage of all the information that's available to you. Our next session features Expert leaders in SBA's Innovation Ecosystem Network and they'll be sharing the program's value and relevance to your success. Leading this discussion is Eldon Hawkes. Eldon serves as the Partnership and Innovation specialist at the SBA's Office of Investment and Innovation, a role that supports the advancement of America's Seed Fund programs. He manages the Agency's Federal and state Technology Partnership programs and spearheads outreach efforts targeting minority serving institutions. But before we get started on this panel, here's a quick video on what America's Seed Fund is and the impact of it has had over the last 40 years. Since its inception, America's Seed Fund was designed to be a gateway of equitable access to high tech innovators, growing from 40 million in 1983 into the country's largest source of non dilutive funding, the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Programs, and now provide over 4 billion each year in funding to small businesses in a wide variety of technology areas. In the 1970s, advocates began championing the National Science foundation to support the research of small businesses to advance US Global competitiveness. A pilot program was designed and run by Roland Tibbetts, an NSF program director who is considered the father of the SBIR program. The phased structure remains today this day. The pilot's success led the Small Business Administration to conclude in 1979 that all research agencies should have an SBIR program. With Congress legislating the SSBIR program in 1982, SBIR funding was critical to some of today's largest household names in industries including Qualcomm and Symantec. To date, America's Seed Fund has supported almost 200,000 awards totaling more than 6. $60 billion, resulting in economic and a national impact that can only be partially measured when we consider the massive medical and social innovations that impact our daily lives. As we continue to seed the future, the Small Business Administration is focused on ensuring that America's Seed Fund is equitable and customer centric to build a thriving national innovation ecosystem that invests in all innovators. Because great ideas come from anyone and anywhere. Through the Federal and State Technology Partnership Program and our Growth Accelerator Fund competition, we will ensure entrepreneur support organizations reach and support innovators who have been historically left out. What's next is simple. If you are an innovator, no matter the idea, no matter the technology, America's Seed Fund will be there to help you change the world. Learn more at sbir. Gov.

Hi everyone.

I am not Eldon Hawkes, but we are experiencing some technical difficulties. So again, like the innovators that we serve, we will roll with the punches. So welcome everyone to today's panel, Power and Reciprocity Ecosystem Builders and America's Seed Fund. In this panel, you're going to get to hear from a few of the Expert leaders in SBA's Innovation Ecosystem Network as they share personal insights and experiences about how their organizations work with America's Seed Fund for Mutual Success. And from there, we're going to open up the conversation to talk about tips and best practices for working with SBIR agencies. So, as I said, we have a great lineup today and I'll get right to introducing our panelists. First, let me welcome Amy Beard. Amy is program Director at senfluence, which is a program of the Florida High Tech Corridor. Sendfluence is a leader in helping to build a thriving innovation community in Central Florida. Sendfluence works with companies to build new partnerships, secure grant funding and launch new products. And now I get to welcome Maria Labravo. Maria is the Executive Director at the Kentucky Science and Engineering foundation, which is part of the Kentucky Science and Engineering Corporation where she has served over the past decade. She brings with her a background in nonprofit organizations, business planning, mentoring, proposal writing, and fundraising. I also get to introduce Matt McMahon, who will be jumping on soon from another event. There is so much exciting stuff happening in the innovation ecosystem as Director of SEED at the National Institutes of Health. There we go. Here's Matt. Matt leverages his experience in public policy, business, science and medicine to accelerate the conversion of scientific discoveries into impactful healthcare solutions. Seed coordinates NIH's nationwide portfolio of early stage product development projects and provides technical and business support, entrepreneurial training, and private sector partnership opportunities that enable innovators to improve public health and drive economic growth through cutting edge medical technology. Panelists, welcome. We're glad to have all of you here. Hopefully Eldon is able to fix his technical issues and you won't have to talk to me. But to begin the conversation, I would love it if each of you would just spend a minute explaining about your history working with America's Seed Fund, the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Programs. And so let me go in the order that I introduced you. So Amy, would you like to start?

Thanks Jennifer. And thanks for the opportunity to be here. Welcome everyone. So my personal story with SBIR actually started back in graduate school when I was getting a PhD in chemical engineering. My research advisor had a startup that was SBIR funded and I also participated on an NSF goalie grant where I got to interact with a company that was SBIR funded. And at that time in my career I really had no idea what it meant and what the opportunity was. But in 2014 I took a course, a three hour course at Georgia Tech and learned all about the program and what it took to apply. And at the time I was working as a research director at a startup and was able to successfully secure some funding as a PI for the company that I was working for on an Army SBIR program. So that's how I got my start. Since then I've gone on at companies managing SBIR STTR awards about $3 million at two different startup and then in my pivot to my role as an ecosystem builder, have helped support hundreds of companies in their applications for the program here at the Florida High Tech Corridor and in our Synfluence program. So happy to be here today. And I will turn it over to Michelle.

Maria, how about yourself?

Hey, thanks for having us here. So I had no idea about the SBIR until I joined CASIF as a program manager for and I was doing R and D funding at the time. So I slowly learned about commercialization and what are the opportunities for research entrepreneurs. Right. And what does it take for somebody that is at a university to translate their findings into a commercial technology. So I've been working on learning myself about SBIR at the same time that I tried to share the knowledge forever over 12 years. And yeah, that's, that's my story with SBIR. I have, I have served in panels, I have also served as advisors. I have written my own sbirs that have, some have received funding, some haven't and I have definitely read a lot of and commenting on a lot of proposals. So all of my training is on the job, I should say.

And Matt, you might have a different relationship with the SBIR and STTR programs.

Well, I do a little bit. My, I guess my introduction to the programs probably also comes early in my career. I worked at a medical device company, a small medical device company in Southern California and we did have some SBIR support, but I think it gave me a much better perspective on the role that small business program, the SBR and STTR funding plays in the whole commercialization landscape that a small business has to navigate. After that, I came to D.C. and spent some time on the Hill, and I actually was professional staff on the House Science Committee, which has joint jurisdiction over the small business programs in the House. After I left the House, I went to nih, and NIH had a few different roles, but in all of those roles, I've been kind of helping to coordinate and understand how NIH can leverage the small business program as a way to make sure that those basic science investments that we're funding all across the entire landscape of the life sciences, how we can use the small business program as a way to push those technologies into product development and into the early stages of becoming healthcare products. And as part of that, in 2013, we started building this national network of proof of concept centers. And that network is basically sitting at the intersection of academic product development, sitting in the academic and nonprofit research setting, helping those innovators to change their mindset from doing a science project to doing a product development project. And in the course of doing that, spin out small businesses and be able to effectively make that transition to product development. So in the seed office where I am now, it's our mission to really help those innovators turn their science projects into product development projects. And part of that is coordinating NIH's $1.2 billion a year SBIR and STTR programs.

Thanks so much, Matt. And I want to bring my colleague Eldon back on. He's going to just be a voice so that his camera doesn't make zoom crash, but you will hear. I guess I'll ask the next question so it gives him a chance to get settled. But you know, I think really the theme of today's conversation is reciprocity. Right. And so where you see shared value for both entrepreneurs, support organizations like the ones that you represent Amy and Maria, and government agencies in the collaboration. And Matt just described this proof of concept network and academic institutions. So where do you see shared value for both esos and federal agencies and collaborating? And maybe Matt can start there and I will turn off my camera and hand it back over to Albin. Sorry, Matt, you can answer first.

Well, sure. One of the key aspects of these proof of concept centers is that we're actually trying to build regional ecosystems. So we give funding to support these proof of concept centers, but we also require matching funds, non federal matching funds from the local environment. And that's really just a way to make sure that there's buy in and there's, there's shared Participation from the local community, from the university itself, from local economic development agencies. And so it's really that ecosystem building takes a lot of different players and we've seen our most successful centers combining industry expertise from their local environment, mentoring from local product development experts, and that funding also from areas in the region. So I think those are all critical components that, that can work together to achieve success.

Thank you, Matt. Amy, how about you?

Thanks, Eldon. And welcome back. So the number one need that we hear from our entrepreneurs and our senfluence initiative and really across the broader Florida innovation ecosystem is that funding for proof of concept or pilot projects that Matt's talking about here. So, you know, these entrepreneurs, they're out there searching for these resources and support when really their time and tal best spent on that product development and building their innovation. And then, you know, conversely on the government agency side, you know, we, we have these critical needs for speed and scale that startups can offer in terms of their new ideas, you know, new innovations to really solve problems. And guess what, they have billions of dollars in funding out there to, to support that activity, but they don't have oftentimes that direct relationship. And that's sort of what we talk about in the corridor, trusted, informed relationship with these individual entrepreneurs. And so that's where we as ecosystem builders really come in to help bridge that need, you know, speaking the language of the entrepreneur, understanding what their needs are, but then on the other hand also understanding, you know, on the government side, some of the process and requirements and, you know, and it can be complicated. So we really help educate and kind of translate and ensure those synergies between the entrepreneurs and the government agencies are aligned so that we can, you know, connect those good ideas with funding to really solve problems. So that's where we focus.

Yeah, I agree that synergy is definitely very important in that collaboration, also bridging that gap to ultimately the stakeholders and those organizations need to help. How about you, Maria?

Yeah, I'll second what Amy and Matt shared. You know, it's as for an especially, you know, I started working with mostly researchers at universities and then I moved on to the ecosystem at large. So those that have, you know, some have a lot of experience on research, but very little of experience on the business side. And then the opposite, they have experience on startups maybe, but they have very little experience on research. And, but for both groups of people, the, the learning curve and the amount of time that they have to dedicate to, to be able to just access, you know, these, these fundings to Determine, you know, what agency within the agency, what institute, in the case of the nih, what program, where are all the, how do you build that strategy using SBI funding as a tool to grow your business and not just as a funding. Right. It takes a lot of time. When I started on this journey, I said I think it takes about 400 hours to submit your first phase one and I challenge anybody to tell me that it was less than 400 hours from the minute you learn the word SBIR or SIVIR or STTR to the time that you submit your proposal. That does not include getting funding. So it's a huge investment on the entrepreneurial side. So what we try to do is learn as much as we can from, from the federal programs, from the federal agents so that we can translate and make those 400 hours. Make sure that it's all more than 400 hours. If we could cut it in half, that would be great, but at least make sure that it's not more than 400 hours.

Right?

Maria, I think what you just said, especially starting out, is very good into our next question. So I'll have you go first on this next question. We have some folks in the audience who are very new to America's C Fund. Maybe they've never interfaced with it at all or work with their startups to understand the funding availability. What would you recommend in terms of how they should get started From a practical standpoint?

From the entrepreneur side, I would say the first thing to do is find who is your, who are your resources in your community. They might be at the university level, they might be organizations like ours. We work at a state level, but not everybody works at a state level. Try to find who's your first point of contact. From an ESO point of view, I would say try to learn as much as you can about the capabilities of that entrepreneur, that researcher, that startup and see how you can start connecting them with so that they can slowly start learning about sbir. But think about the long process of a strategy, right? What's going to be, what are their needs? You need to learn a lot about the startup to find out what can they, what are their capabilities and what are the, all the opportunities that you have to think and not think about a one off, right? Okay, you're going to go, this is your first time, you're going to learn this, you're going to submit to the NSF because you know that's, that's the first goal. But think about it on a, on a long term strategy so that you capture all their possibilities and you make them think about all the possibilities and, and develop that business case for each one of those opportunities.

Understood. Amy, how about you? Where's a good practical starting point for point for an organization? Again, it's America Seed Fund.

Yeah, I'll echo what Maria shared and kind of build on it. You know, at the state level, many states have the federal and state Technology Partnership program. So look in your, for organizations that are funded through that. Their, their mission in life is to help entrepreneurs, you know, access this funding and help support. So look for that in your state, you know, and again, in your entrepreneurial ecosystem, you're looking for organizations that have that research and development or innovation kind of high science component to them. And then on the company side, you know, one of the things, and Maria touched on this too, about the 400 hours, I always suggest that the entrepreneurial team be the one to write the grant. And I know there's a lot of resources out there for grant writers and support and I think it's great to get support. But one of the things that I see in it, it touches a little bit on what Matt shared as well. You're really, you're changing this from a science project to that product development project project. And part of that is communicating the value of your innovation and presenting that business case for it. So it's really important for entrepreneurs to develop that skill set within their team and not try to outsource that and then adding to that a little bit in terms of where to start, understanding those topic areas and identifying your alignment with the various federal agencies and where your area focus and your innovation fits, if you're an entrepreneur is really the first step and that's the key to getting started and kind of opens the gate to everything else.

Understood. Very good points. Very good points. Matt, how about you?

Well, great, Great feedback from Amy and Maria. I agree with everything that you said. Leveraging all of the resources at your disposal, really understanding where you need to go. For the National Institutes of Health, we try and give as much assistance as we can and you can find tons of resources at our website and our website is seed.nih.gov so you can find tons of resources, including sample applications in different product areas and many people find them super helpful to see an example of what a high quality application looks like. Another thing is we really encourage people to find the right program officer at NIH that's matched up with their project area and we have tools to help you do that and to talk to those folks because it's kind of a misconception that those people don't want to talk to you and don't want to help you. They do actually want to talk to you and they do want to give you advice and guidance. And so our office can help connect people, can help connect applicants and companies with the right program staff. But I would say really the most important part is to try and understand what a quality application looks like and what the components are, and then find out from the program staff at NIH whether your project is well aligned with what they're looking for and then just leverage all the resources you can. We have an applicant assistance program that's designed for people who've never had an NIH award before. But we also have tons of webinars and have held entire conferences with all the sessions recorded and available that help people understand the different components of the application. So I would say the place to start for NIH is our website, seed.nih.gov and you can find links to all those resources.

Thank you, Matt. Now with this next question, I'm going to start off with Amy. Now, Matt, you have to excuse me, both Amy and Maria of grantees of mine, so I may be quite partial, I have a bias, but I'm going to start off with Amy on this one. Are there any specific examples that you have of ways that your organizations collaborated across the public private sector divide and what are some of the outcomes that you saw?

Thanks, Eldon. I'm going to use our SBIR Catalyst Award to the Florida high tech corridor last year as an amazing example of this, this kind of partnership, you know, because of the SBA's vision for the program, it was the inaugural program last year and we were one of eight groups that were selected for it. It really brought together this network of university based entrepreneurship programs and to tackle a problem within sort of the SBIR program. And that is making sure that we're getting awards into the hands of underrepresented entrepreneurs. And we specifically focused on women owned companies here in Florida. The team here in Florida, at the universities, we looked at the data, we identified companies, women owned companies, that had been successful in securing SBIR funding. We tapped into them as mentors and role models. We created a series of role model videos allowing these amazing women entrepreneurs to share their stories of how SBIR really enabled and helped them to grow their companies, to integrate into their product development strategy and to grow and create jobs here in Florida. And so around that sort of aligned goal that we all had, we expanded those connections out and started really generating ideas about what it was that we needed at the ESO level to address some of the need and the opportunity here in Florida to bring resources. And so we use that sort of focus group or targeted group to build our support into the FAST program. So we're this year a first time FAST awardee in Florida and we've built a statewide network for SBIR support with more than 40 of our ESOs here across Florida and just launched here at the beginning of October. So we're really excited to bring those resources and really support more at the ecosystem level so that we can scale some of those impacts.

Thank you, Amy. How about you, Maria?

Well, I have, you know, the curious examples and I have a ton of examples from the small ones that are, you know, just pointing entrepreneurs to the appropriate, you know, agency and program officer and the program officer responding to their sort of their request to, you know, our organization is a non profit, so KCC is a nonprofit, not, not affiliated to the state of Kentucky's government. But we do work closely with the government and to with the state and we receive funding from them for SBIR outreach. So for example, receiving the FAST award and we've been very lucky and we're grateful for having received the award many times over the past 15 years. We've been able to grow our, our know how and basically provide a long lasting service around SBIR for the state of Kentucky. So I would say, you know, those, they go from the small examples to, you know, the very important funding examples like the FAST award.

Right, right. That's a very good point. How about you Matt? I'm very, very interested in seeing where you're coming from with this from the NIH perspective.

Well, you know, I'm going to actually move to the other end of the spectrum because I mentioned a little bit about the Proof of Concept network and sitting at the interface between academic product development, academic research and product development. But on the other end of America's Seed fund is another problem, especially in the biomedical space because you can do early product development and feasibility testing within sbir, but it's really expensive and it takes a long time to get biomedical products actually into the healthcare marketplace. So you can think of the America's Seed Fund as just contributing at the front end of that process. But one of the things we've done at NIH, and this is part of our public private partnership effort is we've set up relationships with the Angel Capital association with a bunch of investor partnering meetings like Bio and Resi and JP Morgan. We take those companies that we've supported through the Small Business program and as they reach the end of their awards, we train them up to go out and pitch at these meetings and we have relationships with these meetings. So we purchase a bunch of slots for our SBIR funded companies to present. And it's a way to really try and help those companies transition across that gap into successful private sector development. Because we don't want to just take projects up to the edge of a cliff and then send them out into the wild on their own. We want to try and prepare them to take those next steps and build the relationships with the funders, the investors, the venture groups that are really going to be necessary for them to make it all the way to the end of the road. So I think you need to kind of help out at the beginning of the Pre America Seed Fund, but also at the back end too. And so we've been working pretty hard to make that happen and we've seen some good returns as a result.

That's excellent to hear. Madam. Keep this last question starting with you. What do you think are some of the biggest hurdles today between government agencies that have funding and are looking for solutions and small businesses that have viable technology solutions? How can esos help?

Well, I think Maria touched on this a little bit with the just the barrier to entry for America's Seed Fund is significant. There are a number of agencies that have been super innovative in ways to make it easier to access the funding available through sbir and sttr. NSF has some innovative programs on that side. Dodge nih, we're really constrained by law, by legislation to have two levels of peer review and to use grants and contracts and cooperative agreements for our awards. But I think trying to figure out how to really streamline those barriers to entry, make it easy for people who don't have experience with the program to submit applications and rapidly get feedback about them is really going to be critical to making this resource more accessible to people who haven't used it before.

Thank you. Amy, how about you?

I would echo what Matt shared and then add on to that this idea of, you know, esos being that connective tissue and really building that trusted, informed connection between the entrepreneurs and the federal agencies. And so when you have an ESO that understands the value proposition that the entrepreneur has to offer and then also, you know, how to connect that into the federal agency needs, it reduces some of those barriers and it makes it a little bit less intimidating for the entrepreneur because they have someone walking alongside them to get through some of the fear and the intimidation and the mindsets that might prevent them from being successful, of just thinking that this might not be for them. So I think esos really learning the process and being able to guide entrepreneurs can be a huge help. And then I would also add that it's really important that federal agencies, esos, all of us are really reaching into those communities that don't know about this opportunity or the support that's out there. So making sure we're including women, people of color, veterans and others. These communities have so much to offer to the science and technology of tomorrow. And so we need to make sure that we're getting funding into their hands if we really want to see those new bold ideas come to reality. So that's another challenge. I see just kind of continued effort on outreach into those under served communities.

Understood, great points. Amy, Maria, how about you?

So I'll touch on scalability of what we do. It is, you know, technology is ever evolving as a startup. You know, you're here one day and you may be completely out of the picture in a year. So as an ESO and as, as an agency, you're constantly trying to build your, your community and grow but that community is not static. So you know, today you're like, you learn about somebody's capabilities, a company's capabilities and then in three months you find out there's an opportunity. But that company may not, may no longer be interested or may not be ready now because it's, and it's happened several times to me it's kind of frustrating, but it's very frustrating. But this, this, the scale that, the, our ability to scale the services is, you know, it's something that we've been trying to poke at with different, different ways and we still haven't found the right combination of tools.

Understood. That's always an issue. You know something eos all the time have talked about really making that connection while you know, it's an important but really finding ways to really meet that connection and get the entrepreneurs from point A to the right agency. It can always be a bit of a pain, I'll say. But I want to, we're drawing on time so I want to thank everyone so much. Thank you so much for our panelists today. It has been a delightful session. If anyone would like to get in touch with you, how can they reach And I'll start off with you, Maria.

I think our website is right there on my back background. Otherwise just mariasdc.com and I'll put it.

On the chat thank you Maria how about you Amy?

We're floridahtechcorridor.com and my email address is Amy Beard. It's a funny spelling on on Beard. So I'll put it in the chat as well@floridahcorridor.com thank you Amy.

How about you Matt?

Great. You can find us@seed.nih.gov and you can find me individually@mmih.gov.

Thank you man. And don't forget we do have a breakout session. But right now, for those of you who maybe not may not be familiar with America Seed Fund, we are very excited to announce that we're launching a new self paced online course specifically designed for busy entrepreneur support organizations like yours. We'll be rolling out early in the new year and if you like to be notified when it's ready, sign up using the link in the chat. Now we have a short video overview that will play for you.

Welcome to America's seed fund the U.S. small Business Administration is pleased to announce the launch of Navigating America's Seed Fund, a guide for Entrepreneur Support Organization. This free online course is designed to help organizations and community leaders who work with entrepreneurs to develop a base of knowledge about the small business innovation research and small business tech transfer programs. This self paced course is a tool to help educate and empower entrepreneur support organizations across the country to act as ambassadors on behalf of America's Seed Fund. Completion of the course will allow you to feel more confident in a draft addressing frequently asked questions, identifying companies that might be a good fit for SBIR STTR funding and supporting local high tech small businesses through the application and award process across any of the 11 participating U.S. government agencies. The overall program consists of three separate courses, each with a unique curriculum. Each course is designed to be completed in about one to two hours. At the end of every section there is a quiz to check for understanding and links to additional resources as well as a downloadable PDF presentation. Ideal for sharing information with members of your local innovation ecosystem. These courses are not for individual companies or entrepreneurs. They are only available for those that provide support and training to the small business community. If you are someone who works with small businesses, sign up today for the Navigating America's Seed Fund course.

All right, thank you Eldon, Jennifer, Amy, Maria and Matt. Let's give them a round of emoji applauses. I'm really excited for the upcoming Navigating America Seed Fund course. Don't Forget to visit AmericaSeed Fund US to get involved with the ecosystem and sign up for various updates. We just shared the link and in the chat to sign up for that update. This has been such a great day so far. Let me know in the chat what's been your key takeaway. If you share, I'll give you a thumbs up on your comment to let you know that I've read it. We all know the value of collaboration and we want to ensure that. We set aside time for you all to connect with each other and to hopefully make some new friends or build on the ones that you've already made. Right here in the chat. There are four breakout sessions happening from now until 3:30pm Eastern. It's an opportunity to dive deep into a topic area, share your thoughts and participate in some interesting conversations. To join, just look at the tab on your screen that says Breakouts. You're going to click that tab. I like that sound. Then click on which breakout session you are most interested in. I'll meet you back here on the Main Stage at 3:30pm Eastern to continue with the program.

See you soon.