All about SBIR/STTR Resubmissions: Step-by-Step Guide to Secure Grant Funding the 2nd Time Around

If your SBIR grant didn't get approved the first time around, is it worth considering a resubmission? In this video, I'm going to explain why you should consider trying again, and I'll walk you through my own step-by-step approach on how to prepare resubmitted SBIR applications to improve your chances of getting funding the second time around. Hey guys, welcome back to this channel. I'm Stacy Chin from keeper equity.co, and our mission is to help startups secure non-diluted funding. We specialize in science and tech startups by helping them to secure federal funding from programs such as those from the SBIR and the STTR. If you're interested in learning more about those programs, I'll leave a link to another video in the description below. We also advise other private, public businesses, as well as NGOs, on their non-dilutive fundraising strategy by helping them to navigate through the complex grants and contracting landscape. So there are several reasons why you should consider an SBIR resubmission. First, a rejection doesn't always mean that your grant lacks merit, but rather there are areas for improvement. The reviewer's feedback offers insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your proposal. So by addressing the reviewer's comments, applicants can improve the competitiveness of a resubmitted application. I'm aware of, of many startups who have gotten awarded after the, even the 4th or 5th time around. Remember, persistence is the key when trying to secure an award through the SBIR program. So to prepare a submitted SBIR grant, applicants should read carefully the reviewer's critiques from the initial submission and then make any necessary changes to address all the weaknesses. In these resubmissions, applicants Applicants are typically required to include a 1-page summary to directly respond to these critiques. And in your resubmitted application, reviewers will be evaluating how well you've addressed those critiques in your original application. Depending on the agency, sometimes the reviewers may have access to the reviewers' critiques from your first application, but they may not have access to the application itself. Also, it is important to note that you might receive a completely new set of reviewers compared to your first application. And while our goal was to secure a better score on the second attempt, sometimes it isn't always guaranteed. So to help you prepare for your resubmitted SBIR application, I'm going to walk you through step by step on how I approach my resubmissions so that you can increase your chances of securing non-diluted funding the second time around. But before we jump into it, I have one huge favor to ask you. We recently learned that 80% of you viewers have not yet subscribed to our channel. We're trying to get that down to 60%. So if you found any of these tips helpful, I would greatly appreciate if you like this video and subscribe to the channel since it helps us out a lot. And by doing so, we're going to continue working hard to provide you founders with all the necessary knowledge, resources, advice, and tips to help you in your non-dilutive fundraising journey. And with that, let's jump into it. Now, the first step is to carefully read the reviewers' critiques in your summary statement. Look for what they liked about the proposal, the strengths, and what they think needs improvement, the weaknesses. And this will help you to understand what to focus on when revising your SBIR application. Next, I'd like to dive deep into the weaknesses. I gather all the negative critiques, I list them in a Word document, and then group together similar critiques. And this helps me to see if any common trends or patterns among the critiques. The areas with the most negative critiques are my biggest weaknesses. I then create a priority list by starting with the most common critique trends and work down to the least common. And this provides me with my guidance on what to focus on when revising my application. And this is also helpful when I prepare my one-page rebuttal summary. Afterwards, I turn that list into a questionnaire. For each group of critiques, I like to prepare a list of questions to help me brainstorm how to best combat these critiques. As if I was a reviewer myself. So for instance, if a reviewer pointed out it's difficult to understand the innovation's competitive advantage, what are the competitive products in the market? How do they function and what are the limitations? What unique competitive advantages does my innovation offer and why do I believe my innovation would succeed upon entering the market? And by crafting this detailed questionnaire, my hope is that this will help provide you with a structured approach on preparing the responses to effectively address the critiques right. Now I will tackle those questions head on. Here I do a huge word vomit by giant down my responses, and I tend not to worry about the page limit for this exercise at the moment. The goal here is to construct strong arguments to effectively counter the points raised in the questionnaire. So once the initial drafts are complete, I'll then refine my responses to ensure clarity, and now I have content that I can use to craft my one-page rebuttal summary and to leverage my refined technical narrative of the SBIR to address all the weaknesses in the application. Now, once you made all these changes and prepared that one-page reviewer rebuttal summary, you're then ready to go and resubmit your SBIR application and cross your fingers for funding the second time around. Thank you so much for watching till the end of this video. I hope you found these tips helpful in navigating the process of addressing the reviewer's critiques and strengthening your SBIR application for a resubmission. And if you haven't done so, please like this video and subscribe to this channel. And don't forget to check out our website at keepyourequity.co where you find lots of other templates, resources, and advice to help you secure non-dilutive funding. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I'll see you in the video very soon.