How to Launch a Startup with NASA Technology through Tech Transfer

Okay, hi everyone and welcome to the Founder Institute webinar. We've got a really, really great session for you today all around how to launch a space startup with NASA. So I'm joined here by 3 amazing people who I'll introduce in a moment. First, I'll introduce myself. My name is Ryan Micheletti and I'm head of global operations for the Founder Institute. This is live. We're broadcasting from smoldering California in the Bay Area with all the wildfires right now. So if you're not in the Bay Area, lucky you. Please give us your thoughts and prayers, but things are, you know, hopefully going to clear up soon. And for those of you who don't know about the Founder Institute, let me just give you a quick introduction and then I'll go over the agenda for today. So the Founder Institute is the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator. Since 2009, we've created over 4,500 startup companies across 200 cities And we have the largest mentor network in the world of over 15,000 mentors. So if you're a technology entrepreneur or an aspiring technology entrepreneur, uh, go to fi.co/join/nasa. You can apply to the program. We have a special partnership with NASA Ames, uh, and we have a Silicon Valley program, uh, that's going to be starting here September 15th, where we're going to help you launch your, your startup company. And so just to give you a quick overview of what the agenda is for today, I'll do quick speaker introductions. We'll do a 15-minute or so presentation from NASA. And then we really want to make this interactive. So we want to do extensive Q&A from the audience. So like I said, this is live. If you're here, make sure you say hi in the chat, introduce yourself, tell us where you're from. And then we'll consolidate your questions. So at any point, just put it in the chat. And then at the very end, we'll do a big Q&A panel. So this will last about 45 minutes to an hour or so. So as I mentioned, we're joined by 3 really incredible people. And so I'll just quickly introduce them. Kimberly Hines is the Chief of the Technology Transfer Office at NASA Ames Research Center. Kim, do you want to maybe introduce yourself and say hi?

Thank you very much, Ryan, for inviting us today. And the objective for our office is making sure that NASA investments in technology are available to the public. So this is the perfect venue for sharing what technologies are available that can seed your businesses.

Amazing.

Thank you, Kim. It's a pleasure to have you here. Next up, we have Jay Singh, who is the Senior Technology Transfer Specialist at NASA Ames. Jay, why don't you introduce yourself and say hi?

Hey everyone, my name is Jay Singh. So I help in the Technology Transfer Office, and I'll be giving an overview of the division today.

Amazing. All right. And last but certainly not least, my good friend Kimberly Menafra, who's the Software Release Authority for NASA Ames. Kim, you're next.

Hey guys, welcome to today's event. We hope that you learn a lot and ask us tons of questions. We're waiting and standing by, and we're just So excited to be here today.

Amazing.

And so as I mentioned, the Founder Institute Silicon Valley program, which starts September 15th, has a partnership with NASA Ames where we want to leverage the technology portfolio of NASA to help you build a global startup. And so really, like, if you walk away with anything today, I want everyone to know how actually pretty easy it is to work with NASA, how extensive their portfolio is and how great their team is. You know, I've been working with Kim and Jay and Kimberly for, you know, the last year or so running programs. And I got to say, like, working with NASA has been surprisingly smooth. When I think of big government organizations, you don't think of streamlined processes, but they actually make it very easy. So go ahead, dig into their website, look at some of the technology that's there. If there's any way that Founder Institute can help you, we're happy to connect you with the team. They're eager to help. Literally their job to help you. So with that said, Jay, are you ready to give a quick overview?

Yeah, yeah, I am. Let's see, share my screen real quick. Hopefully it shows up.

Okay, perfect.

So how's that?

We can see your screen. I think you're ready to go, so go ahead.

Perfect. So again, hi everyone, my name is Jay Singh. I I help out at the Technology Transfer Office as a technology transfer specialist and a portfolio manager, so I manage all of our technologies for our marketing purposes. And what I'm going to do is kind of go over how the Technology Transfer Office can launch your startup. So as an overview of the Technology Transfer Office, we have an office at each of the different 10 NASA centers, and we're all spread out through the United States. So we're here in Silicon Valley, NASA Ames Research Center, as you can see the green dot. We also have two other centers in California, down in Southern California. And then the other ones are kind of spread across the East Coast and the South of the United States, and a couple in the Midwest. And each one of the offices and centers has different specialties. So NASA Ames Research Center We have 8 core competencies, and some of the main ones are intelligent adaptive systems. So that's autonomy and robotics, human systems integration, things like that. Entry systems. So if you ever want to take something out of the Earth's atmosphere, you have to bring it back, and we specialize in that. Advanced computing and IT systems. We have, uh, one of NASA's supercomputers here in Mountain View, which is really good for our testing and validating of any of our spacecraft, and aero sciences. So, you know, the big A in NASA, the aeronautics, that is something else that we excel at. So for this entire presentation, I'm going to go over what the Technology Transfer Office is, some success stories, licensing agreements, so you can understand what it takes to get a NASA license, the patent portfolio, how to apply for a license, and examples of those technologies, and then we'll do a Q&A at the end. So as an overview of the NASA Technology Transfer Program, we've been around since NASA started. So it was part of the NASA mandate to try to get the technology out there to the public and to everybody who wants to use the technology. And one of the things— oops, sorry about that. One of the things that we do is we can either enhance an existing product, create a new product line, or you can gain a competitive edge with the technology that you use. So there are a lot of potential quantitative measures as well to the technology— to the program, such as revenues or profits. But then there's also some really cool measures like jobs created or efficiencies to any type of job or environmental remediation. So one thing we did was when we surveyed companies since the spinoff publication in 2000, which is our kind of our flagship publication that shows the success stories of the technologies that have been commercialized, we found out that 18,000 jobs have been created, 18,000 plus. There's been at least $5.2 billion in revenue generated. $18.6 billion in productivity and efficiency. So that's pretty much cost avoided in total by companies who provided the data that we gather from. And then 30 million lives have been improved, and that comes from a majority of that comes from unique nutritional supplements used in baby formula and new materials such as surgical implants. And the other thing would be environmental impact. So things like anti-icing technologies that uses a Electroexpulsive Separation System. So what that does is it is a lightweight way of de-icing anything that goes into high altitude or goes into places that might have bad, bad and cold weather. So you can put it on a UAV, you can put it on an airplane, things like that. So that's something really cool that's come out of the program. And to illustrate all these cool benefits, we have this thing called NASA Home and City, which is a interactive website that has all 1,750 examples of how NASA spinoff technologies affect your daily life from the commercial side to home life. Here are some, some examples of the spinoffs that came out of NASA. So one of them would be remote sensing technologies to mitigate drought. NASA has a lot of satellites. They take a lot of pictures of the Earth, they gather a lot of data. So through all this data, through land satellites and other satellites, combined with evapotranspiration data, you can see how much water is needed for a crop at any given time. So NASA teamed up with the California Department of Water Resources to use that data and see when would be a good time to whether to put water on crops, when to do it, when you shouldn't do it, and things like that, which has been really helpful here in California, especially when we have very dry periods. The other one is something that you can see that it's on our Mars Curiosity Rover that's on Mars right now. There's this really cool instrument on it called CheMin, which what it does is it cores down to the surface, grabs a piece of, grabs a sample, whatever it might be, takes it, and what it does is it shakes it very quickly, and the instrument shoots X-rays through the sample, and then when you get to the— when the readout comes, you can see what type of minerals are in that sample. So that's not something that was readily available or portable. So somebody at NASA Ames created it, they put it on, you know, the Mars Curiosity Rover, sent it off to Mars, and then somebody licensed that technology and made it portable, so now you can go take it to the field. And some of the benefits of that is oil and gas, so you can analyze the minerals that the drill is encountering, saying, hey, is this something that we should keep going or we shouldn't? And the other one is pharmaceutical companies and drug watchdog groups. Watchdog groups are also big customers because they can ensure manufacturing was done correctly or to kind of weed out any counterfeits. So those are just kind of two major ones. And another kind of popular one is memory foam that came out of NASA Ames. It was created for long-duration test flights and then it got licensed out in the '90s, started putting in footwear, and then it morphed into memory foam mattresses or some sort of derivative of that, which is really cool. So these are the types of innovations that feed our portfolio, and it can be— it could be anything, anywhere from products to methods to new computer programs, systems, chemicals, tools, even fixtures. It's— it's Anything that is an improvement to or a new application to existing products or existing technology. So it can— it really ranges the whole spectrum of technology. Here are some of our licensing agreements. So the 3 licensing agreements that we have are startup license and evaluation license and a commercial license. So a startup license has no upfront costs. For commercial use of our patented technologies. Pretty much what you do is NASA— you apply for the license. It's non-exclusive, so NASA waives the initial licensing fees. There are no minimum fees for the first 3 years. The announcement only applies to non-exclusive licenses, as I said before, so other companies can use that same technology in the same field. But if somebody does do that, we'll We'll try to work with them to make sure that they, they understand that. And while NASA does license to foreign entities, the startup agreements are only available to companies in the United States. The other one is our evaluation license. And so this option allows you short-term permission to explore the potential of a technology, learn it, if it fits into your business and your development goals or whatever it might be. And to see if it fits into what you want to do. And it's only for 1 year. It's a non-exclusive license. But there's not really a lot of risk there because you can just kind of take it, check it out, and run with it. You can't commercialize it, unfortunately. To do that, you'd have to go with the startup or commercial license. But it is a nice way to test out the technology. And then you have our standard commercial license, which is It's available to domestic and international organizations. It's exclusive, partially exclusive, or non-exclusive, and terms can be negotiated case by case. So that's kind of our, the standard commercial license you would get anywhere else. And then to how to apply for a license, you go to technology.nasa.gov and apply for the technology, and I'll be going over that right now. So these are the technology categories, and as you can see, we have 15 categories and ranges anywhere from aeronautics to manufacturing, sensors, materials, coatings, health, medicine, biotechnology, environment. It's— there's so many technologies that fit into these categories. It's really awesome. So NASA Ames has a little over 90 patents, but the entire patent portfolio has over 1,200. So that could be technologies from Glenn Research Center in Ohio or Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston, things like that. So I'm going to run through how to apply for technology, and hopefully it'll be easier, you know, after I go through how to do that. So this is the main landing page when you get to technology.nasa.gov. You can see that we have our NASA patent portfolio, our software catalog, and our success stories. So those are kind of the things I've been talking about, and I'll touch on the software catalog a little later. And so there's two ways you can search these technologies. You can either click on the NASA Patent Portfolio or you can use the search bar. And the search bar is pretty good because it allows you to type in keywords, but you wouldn't be able to filter by category. So there is a good and bad to it, but you can go to our patent portfolio or you can type in the keywords in the search bar. So if you click on the patent portfolio link, you get to the NASA patent portfolio. You see all these categories that I mentioned before, and again, that search bar is still there. So let's go to the health, medicine, and biotechnology category as an example, and I'll show you what it looks like. If you click on that, you see health, medicine, biotechnology, and you see a list of the technologies that fit underneath that. And one thing that's important to know is that sometimes you can think that, let's say if there's a, a something that might be in health, medicine, biotechnology, like, oh, it could be a biochemical sensor, and you can see that here, but sometimes it can also maybe show up in instrumentation or something like that. So even though you might think it's in health, medicine, and biotechnology, it can show up in instrumentation or sensors. So that's good to kind of know that if you maybe can't find it in one category, either use the search bar or just go to those other categories and kind of dive in that way. So we'll go through the biomedical, biochemical sensors using carbon nanotubes array. And once you click on that, you get to this landing page. And this has the overview of the technology, the benefits, the applications of it, and then how to apply for the technology. And so if you click on how to apply to technology, you'll go through the process, go through our, our system. If you have any questions about technology, you can contact us by clicking that link. And if you want to download the fact sheet to the technology, which has all the information that's on this page, but it's portable. So let's say if you don't have any internet, you can download it that way. And this is what the fact sheet looks like. And again, this has the benefits, the application, any publications related to it, the technology itself, and the overview of the technology. So again, just wanted to go over the license agreement types. So you have your startup license, which is no initial licensing fee and there are no minimum fees for the first 3 years. Then you have your commercial license. Which is kind of standard. And I wanted to again highlight the evaluation license, which you pretty much license technology for 1 year to see if it's useful or not without any long-term commitments. And I think that's a pretty, pretty sweet deal. And as I mentioned before, we have our free software. So if you go to software.nasa.gov, you can access our free software and you— there's a thing called a software use agreement that you have to go through to apply for it, but they're under general purpose, open source, and government purpose. Government purpose is if you have a government contract. That's something like if you're contracted, if you have a government contract, or if you work with a government agency, you probably get it that way. General purpose is some are for US only, the other ones are US and foreign, so that's pretty much anyone in the world. And then you have public. So that's open to everyone in the open source. The open source ones, you don't have to apply for them. They're all available either through software.nasa.gov or code.nasa.gov. And just as a closing slide, here are links to all of our programs. So you have your program overview, how to license technologies, the NASA patents, free software, success stories, NASA Home and City, which is that virtual thing that I was talking about where you can see all of the cool things that how NASA affects your daily life and how it's been commercialized. And the additional resources are information of where I pulled out, you know, how much, how much this affects your daily life in terms of dollar amounts or lives, things like that. And yeah, thank you so much for everyone's time, and I hope you enjoyed it. Amazing.

Awesome, Jay. Thank you so much. Whenever you're ready, you can unshare your screen, and then we'll jump into the Q&A part of the presentation. So first of all, we're getting a lot of really great questions. So as I mentioned, if anything came up during that presentation or even from the Q&A part, put it in the chat. We'll try to get to as many as possible. One of the recurring things that I'm seeing here, because Founder Institute is global, we're in 200 cities, we've got over 200 people here. A lot of people are asking, do you have to be a US citizen? How does NASA Ames work with international companies? Kim, maybe you want to start off with, with that question.

Sure. So it is possible to have an international license agreement. The first priority is given to US companies. And so if there is a technology you're interested in, go on and put in an application. Understand that it is more complex. So once that application comes in and is vetted, there's more triage. Is this something that's highly desirable by multiple companies. If it's— if there's high demand within the US, there may not be as high a likelihood to license it outside of the US. Once that piece is digested, the— and the application is vetted, it then goes to the State Department.

So it goes—

it goes— it gets routed through NASA headquarters, and there's another evaluation process. So It is more complex. It's not a showstopper, but all the good things you said about making it easy to work with NASA, it's not as easy.

Right. So is there— so you mentioned specifically US companies. Yes. And for the founders that are on the call, part of what we do, especially now that the program's virtual, we're working with global, you know, founders. A lot of founders want to incorporate in the US. So is there a restriction at the level where the company might be a US, like let's say a Delaware C corporation, but some of the shareholders might be from Canada or Mexico? Does NASA go that deep in the due diligence?

It does. It does. There are some companies, some countries that are on a restricted list, and that varies. So there are situations where, because this is US government, there are barriers to collaboration.

Okay, great. So, Mike Slater asks, "Are there opportunities open to Canadian companies?" So, is there a difference between, like, are they part of NAFTA, are they European, or from Africa? Is there any kind of priority given outside of international?

I don't know that there's a priority per se, But again, it depends on at what period of time, and I don't have the full list in front of me. It's more of being on a restricted list.

So— Makes sense. So a question here from Dave. With the start— and this could go to you, Jay. With the startup license, what happens after the 3-year period?

I think Kim would be good for answering that one.

Sure. So the startup license, there's no fees up front. There is, there's a flat running royalty, which is part of the front-end agreement. So it's, it's, it's actually fairly straightforward.

Okay.

I want to say it's a 4.2%. Not that that couldn't vary a little bit depending, depending on what's negotiated with the whole package. But generally, there's no upfront fees, and then it's 4.2% ongoing.

Okay, great. A question here was asked, like, what's the average turnaround time for securing a license? Like, do you have, like, a timeline you might be able to share?

It depends on the complexity of the license. I would expect 6 to 8 weeks. Sometimes it's a little sooner. It depends on what we we have in our queue, but for an evaluation license, around 6 weeks, um, maybe 3 months on the startup. A commercial license, again, it depends on the terms of engagement. It can be anywhere from a 2-month window to a 2-year, depending on the complexities with the contract and legal review, both internal and external.

Great.

Okay.

And another question from Bill here. What's the approximate cost range for some of the startup or evaluation licenses? So as a founder, if you're thinking of like, okay, what's my runway look like? Are you— is this like a couple thousand dollars, $10,000, $100,000? How much is it to basically factor in, at least in the beginning, so they can go and raise money and then obviously the royalties kick in a little later?

Right. There's a sliding scale depending on need, but roughly $2,500 for an evaluation license for that 1-year period.

Yeah, so that's pretty reasonable, especially for the technology and the work that got put into it. Okay, so Ben asks, when a technology is offered into any of these buckets, there's probably a mad rush to try and commercialize them. So how do you prioritize who gets their hands on the latest, greatest, commercially viable offerings? Is there any protocol around that?

Not, you know, there's not as much of a rush as you might think. You know, it kind of depends on what the maturation level is on any one technology, and it's that meeting of a need and a solution that come together. So part of it's, you know, what it was originally conceived for may or may not be what a company would like to— how they might use it or envision commercializing it. So most instances, these technologies were developed for space applications or in part of the whole, you know, servicing of space industry. So that technology then can turn around and be used in a very different way. And so someone else, until they play with it, they don't realize what it can do. So, too.

I also like to—

Go ahead.

Oh, no, I want to wait because I want to piggyback on it. There's some good stuff in there, too, that I want to share.

I was just going to say, occasionally, if it's high competition, but we really don't know what it's going to take to bring that technology to practical application, we'll let multiple licenses in parallel that are non-exclusive. So the onus then really is on the developers to make a go of it.

And just to piggyback on what Kim said, basically when we do have a new release of a technology or software, we do a huge media campaign. And that media campaign is featured on our website. I'll send Ryan the link for you guys to keep an eye out on some of the offerings that they offer to special technologies that have just been released. And our Technology Transfer Office program makes a big deal to get us to make sure we're promoting it as soon as it's ready for release on the websites that, you know, we showed you earlier. We do a more communication-wide, you know, broad announcement that gets played on a quarterly, sometimes sooner basis. But you want to sign up for the actual alerts because they're pretty impressive. So we can send you that information.

Beautiful. So another question here, and you kind of went over this a little bit in the very beginning of your presentation, Jay. So NASA has all these different space centers all around the US. And obviously being here in Silicon Valley, we work with NASA Silicon Valley. So what would you say is sort of the specialty of NASA Silicon Valley? And how do you work with some of these other space centers? Like if someone were to partner with you directly, does that then affect like agreements with other organizations or other groups around the country?

So I can talk about the, our kind of our main specialties, and then I think Kim or Kimberly can talk about the partnering with the other centers. So our core competencies, so that's kind of our bread and butter. We have 8, so I'll go over the 8 real quick. It's intelligent adaptive systems, advanced computing and IT systems, aero sciences, entry systems, air traffic management, astrobiology and life science, and space and earth science. So I know that sounds like a lot, and it's like, oh, well, how can you have all those? I think kind of our main shine ones are intelligent adaptive systems. So that's autonomy and robotics and human systems integration. So that's kind of our unmanned aerial systems, unmanned traffic management, things like that. And then our advanced supercomputing and IT systems. So we do get a lot of software that comes out of that that can help people out.

Anything else to add, or should we move to the next question?

Just to add on to the question about partnering with other centers, your— when your application for any one technology comes in, we have a concierge that is aware of where that particular— because if you do a search, it's not obvious what center it is. So yes. The people, the faces on the screen are at Ames Research Center, but as your application comes in, you're going to be connected with people from any single center. And so if there is a need for us to collaborate, all of our offices do collaborate very well. And so we can, we can pull things together on the NASA side, and there will be someone who's paying attention to that. So it's not a competition, but it really is a collaboration across the centers.

Yeah, we saw a little bit of that when we were working on our own Space Act Agreement. Speaking of which, Raj has an interesting question here. He'd love to hear a little bit more about Space Act Agreements, and I don't know if that's something you want to cover here. So example, like SAAs or RSAAs, what they are, how to apply, and then he has a follow-up question, but maybe you could talk really briefly about Space Act Agreements.

I can certainly mention it. We have both non-reimbursable Space Act Agreements and reimbursable Space Act Agreements as it applies to tech transfer. In most instances, when a company licenses the patent, there is enough information in the patent for someone to hit the ground running and work with it. Again, the technology readiness level, can vary. At times, there could be testing or further research that a company would like access to the PI. It's— one, it's not guaranteed, but where it could be useful, that's a situation where it would be a reimbursable Space Act Agreement because it would be further research that the PI does in support of that company. A non-reimbursable agreement typically wouldn't be part of tech transfer, but for— in support of some other NASA mission or need. And again, there's— that would come through partnerships. And if you go— if you Google partnerships or Space Act Agreement and NASA Ames, we can put you into— or just send us a query. Connect you with our partnership side.

Um, and that's awesome. Thank you for answering that. So, uh, an interesting question here from Alexander, um, for U.S. students who just want to test NASA technologies, um, what does that look like? Do they just sign up as a startup? Is there even like a light version of the light version, uh, that you have available for people who maybe don't have a company? Or do they actually have to have a company, get into a formal agreement, and then they can start testing the technology?

Normally they have to have a company, but in an ATLAS application, if they will simply put in student, we can figure out a way to do an evaluation license.

Okay, great. So Alexander, my advice, reach out to Kimberly Menafra. She's gonna hook you up with the application and they'll be able to help you with that. Sharon Dow asks, what is the range of licensing fees for commercial licenses from low to high? What are some average numbers?

Gosh, I don't really have so much average numbers. The feedback I've gotten is it really depends on what the domain, the commercialization domain, if it's medical related, if it's it related. There's usually a market assessment done to know what the value proposition is on the front end. So, um, it's not a straightforward answer there, but the feedback I get when it comes to running royalties based on companies who have partnered with NASA on licensing, um, technologies versus industry is that our running royalties tend to be quite a bit less. So there's— it's considered value-added because our goal is not profit but just to cover our costs.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, and it was probably covered in Jay's presentation, but there is this sort of federal mandate that you have to be basically make this technology available to the US public. And so could you talk a little bit about like why you exist and what the overall mission is here?

Right, so the objective really is to manage all of the information around the IP. So it literally starts with doing knowledge capture from the inventors describing what it is they've done, usually in the context of working on a mission or working on research. We do that knowledge capture, and then we vet it for patentability, meaning can— does it qualify for a patent with the U.S. Patent Office? Is there commercial potential? If it's something really obscure and it's only going to be used in deep space and there really is not a terrestrial application, we could get a vanity patent, but in reality, it may not be to the benefit of the government to pay the patent fees over time. But if we see commercial potential, we're willing to invest in the patent and then pay those fees as they come due. So that's part of the cost that we maintain. But then again, it's just that cost of doing business. We're not trying to make money off royalties, but we do try to cover our costs. To be good stewards of the government's resources. Once we have that, we then host the servers that communicate what those technologies are. Those were the sites that you saw Jay pointing out, and you can pull the data sheets for the 1,000+ technologies that NASA holds at any one time.

Great. So I have kind of two related questions. The first is, what do you see as like the biggest challenge that early-stage founders have when trying to partner with NASA or use NASA technology? Whether it's on their side trying to like integrate it or if it's on, you know, the NASA side trying to acquire the license?

It depends on whether or not you have experience with actually developing that technology and having realistic expectations. You don't know what you don't know. So even like internal to NASA, having been a hardware developer in the past, it's like you have your requirements and your expectations, but as you're going along, there may be setbacks, and you have lessons learned as you go along. Please know that if you think you have set up for startup license agreement and your timeline isn't working as you anticipated, the government is really good about renegotiating the timing of those terms to give you all the support you need. Frequently, it's on the business side of things that, again, people don't necessarily know what it takes to start a business. You might have someone who's like a brainiac in their particular technology domain and they see the potential, but they may not have the business experience. And you know, it depends on where the gaps are. So, frequently I would say a small company or an entrepreneur might not know what they don't know. So that's where Founder Institute comes in and going through the crash course in startup, you learn what all of those pieces are. And I've witnessed, on the sidelines, you guys being able to identify those pieces.

Yeah, well, I— that brings up a really good point, and I'll just kind of share this free resource with everyone. So in the chat, I just posted a link to our fellowship landing page. So basically, as part of this partnership that we have with NASA Ames, we as Founder Institute want to create more space tech companies. And some of the best founders that go through our program tend to be subject matter experts in, you know, a variety of different fields, whatever it is, quantum, space, etc. But they might— they may never have started a company before, and it's a totally different skill set. You might have some knowledge there, but we're a hardcore company building program. We're one of the best in the world. And so part of this partnership with NASA Ames is we've created a fellowship to allow select space entrepreneurs and space tech entrepreneurs to join the Silicon Valley program for free. And so if you go to that link, you can find some more information about Founder Institute. There's an apply link, but if you apply through that link, we'll select 3 winners who apply to join the Founder Institute for free for the upcoming program. And the program that we're running is global. It's going to be a combination of Silicon Valley, LA, San Diego, Singapore, as well as Switzerland and Israel. And so it's going to be a really, really awesome program. One question that I think it was Jose mentioned here, do you have any success stories of a company that's licensed technology from NASA as a startup and then they grew and became something big? And while you're, while you're teeing that up, I don't know if Kim or Jay were going to jump in. One of our companies that actually went through the program a couple years ago is building the lunar rover. So he was a— he worked for NASA for a long time, expert in space. The company's name is Ceres Robotics, and he was able through the Founder Institute to kind of fill in that business expertise and entrepreneurship expertise, as well as build a network of founders and investors. And now he's got a contract with NASA, which is very, very exciting. So NASA, do you have any— and this is for anyone— do you have any example success stories you'd like to highlight?

I'd love to tell you about one that I'm pretty close to. Made in Space. They actually co-locate at NASA Ames on the research park side of the facility landscape. But Made in Space was a startup, and they are basically one of the first companies to actually complete a tested 3D-printed architecture that we could very much use in, in space manufacturing one day. So 3-dimensional printers, they used them in microgravity a few years ago, and with a partnership with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, they have really come through on a many, many really cool breakthroughs for technology like this, and never been done before in space. So, you know, you can certainly see that, you know, small— there's a very small team at the beginning. I think maybe had 5 employees, and they're still quite small. If you go to their headquarters in Florida, they probably have outgrown the space that they have here at Ames. But very impressive. You can take a look at their website. But that one, we had a lot of big news around it just a few years ago when I was a part of the communication team. The administrator and our space technology team came all the way from DC to congratulate them on an SBIR that they won, a tipping point solicitation that they won for proposing such a really cool innovative tools. So something to look forward to, which I'm sure, Kim, if you want to, you can expand on how to be a part of the SBIR solicitation awareness. So just something to think about.

Oh, sorry, Kim, you're on mute.

Got it. So to piggyback on the SBIR program, the solicitation comes out once a year. And one way to use the solicitation is not only to say, hey, I've got a technology and I'm going to apply for NASA funds. But when you read the solicitation, you see what NASA subject matter experts across the agency see as the bleeding edge needs for NASA. So those— that's the problem space that is left undone, left untapped. And really are juicy technology research and development questions. And if there happens to be good alignment with what your expertise is, it's a good way to test concepts and get NASA funding. So they're not a huge labor-intensive for a Phase I.

That's a really good question because a lot of founders are like, looking for some of that, the grant money or early investors. How does your department, the tech transfer office, how did— how can they leverage that? Are there opportunities to work with the SBIR grant side of the house? Does it help them or hurt them to have a license?

I don't think it— I don't think having a license is going to give you preference. But it shows some initial investment. If you've already started down a path and done some evaluation to demonstrate it, if you— in telling your story, you have demonstrated some path towards accomplishment or verifying— doing some type of feasibility study, the SBIR— Each, each one of the subtopics will have a body of reviewers in their domain. So one domain area may not have the same priority as another domain area. So it's a little more difficult to compare apples and oranges because it depends on the technology, but there are always multiple reviewers and It's a great way to get feedback on your concepts and your proposals. Even if you don't win, you get technical feedback on the feasibility when you propose.

Great. So there's a couple other questions here. I know we're coming up to the top of the hour, so I'll try to get through some of these. Kaushik asks, how do you— how does NASA decide who the winners are amongst multiple competing licenses. So is there this like big bidding process or—

There usually is not a big bidding process on the license. You know, just surprisingly enough, you might think there's a heavy competition there, but usually there is not. It's, it, it's usually first It's usually first come, first serve. It depends on if someone is asking for a particular technology that could be used across many— that could have broad application. It may be that depending on what your ask is, you get a partial exclusive license for a particular piece of it. So there might be some partial exclusives. Exclusivity for your domain. It might be that because there is high demand and it's not realized yet, there could be no restrictions whatsoever. And in that case, everyone is given the same rights. So it's kind of a, it depends, but Rarely is it seen as a competition.

That's great to know. Eric asks, or he says, that NASA used to offer sort of like a sourcing Q&A service, uh, where you would answer questions such as, you know, which adhesive product would work best for the Fizz Underwater Project, um, and it would be answered by an expert or, or who could kind of determine like what's in the portfolio. And Kim, I know you've kind of helped with this in the past where I've sent founders your way You're like, oh, we have a technology for that, we have a technology for that. So is there such like, if they don't really know and they've kind of dug into the website, what's the best way to get in contact with an expert?

Call us. We're your conduit and we really can field questions that sometimes, you know, it's not always available on our teaser sheet or what we call technology opportunity sheet. So it's best to just reach out to us with your questions and many of them we can field right off the top of the email, but there are some technical questions we usually just check in with the inventor. And we can set something up to a limited degree, but we try our best to really handle it at an office level. So the best way to do it is just get in touch with us.

Awesome. Okay, and that contact information is on the site. I'm also happy to introduce anyone to Kim and the team. So a couple final questions here. So Brandon asked a really good question. Are there certain commercial time-based milestones that need to be achieved before NASA recalls an agreement? So they can't just like sit on an agreement, they actually have to go and make progress and show that they're actually using it?

Yes, you do need to show that it's in achieving practical application. So if you have a startup license, That's a 3-year period of performance before you're actively working and doing what, what you said you were going to do. You're in charge of setting those milestones. Like I said earlier, in the event that timing just didn't work out, there were other obstacles, you had to make use of lessons learned and choose a different approach, that's fine. We will renegotiate that timeline. But when you sign that agreement, um, in the case of a startup, um, usually a commercial license, you're anticipating in the first 12 to 24 months you're going to hit the ground running. And as you grow, um, there could be some stepping in royalty or stepping in fees. Um, but again, you set the milestones, you tell us what you're going to do, and we're going to validate via your annual reports and check-ins whether or not you have met your mark.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Um, Baba asks, uh, can someone browse through a list of licensed users to see where they might have a common interest and want to jointly work? Is there some kind of like founder to founder or company to company collaboration that you provide, or is it mainly kind of kept secret just for, for privacy purposes?

You know, it has— it's not that it's proprietary per se on what companies have license. It's not typically been released, but I have heard headquarters talking about a desire to post that type of information. So I can't promise it right now. It's not there, but I know that that is something that's being considered.

So, okay, great.

I think it's more of a Google search to see who has self-advertised because many companies, as soon as they do have some type of a NASA agreement or a license agreement, are very proud of it. So if you, if you do a Google search, you might, and for your domain or technology area, you may find who, who else is out there in the same trade space you're interested in.

Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, NASA has a really great brand. If you have a partnership with them, they probably will be talking about it. So that's a good point. Made with NASA technology. So Max asks, in the presentation it was mentioned that NASA is also open to ideas. How do they verify the feasibility of these new ideas?

In terms of new ideas, I think you're looking more at the way to vet those would be through the other programs and solicitations. When there's RFIs, If you look at Inspires, anyways, there are multiple paths to work with NASA. And so there are two Kimberlys out there now. So, sorry. I'm sorry, looking at the screen, it's a Zoom thing, virtual meeting. In terms of— there's not really a mechanism for just pitching an idea cold call. And so what you want to do is nominally look through what the existing solicitations are. So if it's a science, technology, or the space technology mission directorate, if it's more NASA— I'm sorry, more Space-based technology, small sats. Again, it depends on the particular challenge or request for information. There's usually some type of a solicitation or an idea generator on the streets that you can propose to.

Awesome. And I'll do a last call for questions here. There's still a couple more, but last call. Is there any community, where founders and entrepreneurs can discuss more or create a team to work with NASA? I'll take that just to start. So that community is Founder Institute. We have a community, we actually have one of the largest communities of founders in the world as the largest company creator. So I definitely recommend, you know, if you're looking for co-founders or team members, going to webinars or live events whenever that comes back into play. Play, joining programs, talking with people, being open about what you're working on and your ideas. That's the best way to find these collisions that happen when you're looking for these team members. So I definitely recommend that. But maybe there's something on the NASA side. So is there like a community forum or is there some kind of group that's out there?

Not that I know of particularly. Kimberly or Jay?

Well, there are communities of practice, working groups that you can certainly join depending on what your interests are and what type of company, plan, or business that you're trying to develop through your experience going through Founders. For instance, the small sat community is huge at NASA, especially at Ames. We even have a small sat systems virtual institute. A lot to say, so we nicknamed it S3VI, I think it is. So hard to say. And you can actually join a lot of their groups, their working groups, and they are all about bringing the right people together and including them on how to move forward in this amazing emerging industry. And they're like that all over, intelligent robotics groups. But, you know, it's one of those things where if you have an interest, like I said before, just come to us and we can try to introduce you, especially especially with the growing industry of unmanned air vehicles and traffic management. There are working groups for that that I'm aware of, and they're open to the public, even though a lot— a core of that working group is instituted through the Ames community or NASA community as a whole. So we encourage you to let us know what you're interested in, and we can probably find some type of networking that you can be a part of.

That's a good point.

Sorry about being double. I don't know how I'm double, but I had to like—

I had to like restart my computer. So, yeah, I wasn't taking the question in quite the same way because I was aligning it with startups and was like, well, that's not what NASA does. But when it comes to the technology side, of course, there is the Virtual Institute for SmallSats. There are virtual institutes. There's other— collaborative consortiums around technology interests. And, you know, typically you'll find other, like, academic partners or other, other companies that are up and running in that area. I will be honest, I don't see as many startups got something new trying to break in, in those spaces, but they're certainly not excluded.

Okay, well, uh, we're coming to the top of the hour here, so I think this is a really good time to, to wrap it up. So I just want to thank the mentors and thank you to all the founders in the program who, uh, asked some really great questions. If you have further questions around Founder Institute, we run tons of webinars, probably more than anyone in the world. You can go to fi.co/overview to find out more information. And if you look in the chat here, we'll send a couple follow-up emails with some more information. Kim, Kimberly, Jay, thank you so much. This was awesome, and I look forward to doing this again with you soon.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. It was great.

Thanks, guys. Stay in touch, please.