3 Easy HACKS to make your SBIR grant more competitive

All right, here are 3 really easy ways to make your SBIR application stand out, and I'm shocked how so many founders completely miss this entirely. First, make sure your team section can actually prove that your key personnel can actually do the work. I know it sounds simple, but many founders just put impressive titles on their application and never really explain explicitly what those people can do in relation to your SBIR grant. And reviewers need to see this direct line between someone's expertise and how they're going to play a role in the So for instance, if you're developing a diagnostic tool, you don't want to just say this person has a PhD in bioengineering, but rather you want to mention in their biosketch, for example, published 12 papers in the field of biosensor validation, and they have the expertise to lead the experimental assays in your SBIR grant. Second, foreign collaborations might kill your proposal more than ever before. And even if these collaborators aren't getting paid. And that's because in the updated SBIR solicitations, these unapproved foreign involvement is now considered a major risk factor. now serve as a ground for immediate disqualification or rejections. Because in the updated SBIR solicitations, any unapproved foreign involvements could lead to an automatic rejection. And this is especially true for the National Institutes of Health. So if you have any international partners, you need to explicitly have written approval before you submit, not after, not pending, but before. Third, if you wait too long on your governmental registrations, this might destroy you and your application. Shockingly, the majority of SBIR applications either never get submitted or actually gets rejected not because the science or the commercialization was bad, but rather is because of administrative hurdles. For example, SAM.gov itself can take weeks in order to get the approval. And so if you're 2 weeks away from an SBIR deadline and you haven't started your registrations, you might already be too late. So start those processes now, months in advance, not when you're putting the final finishing touches to your SBIR grant. And yes, I know these 3 fixes aren't really exciting, but they can mean the world of difference between an SBIR grant that actually gets successfully approved and submitted rather than just getting automatically rejected without any further explanation. So if you're interested in learning more about how to secure non-dilutive funding as a deep tech founder, make sure you like and subscribe to this channel. It's the easiest and simple way to support us to continue making content like this. Thank you so much, and I'll see you in another video very soon.