In this talk, Stacy L. Chin, a former polymer chemist turned federal grant specialist, shares her decade‑long experience helping biotech, med‑tech, and health‑tech startups secure over $50 million in non‑dilutive funding. She explains the SBIR program’s eligibility rules, the two main phases (Phase 1 feasibility funding of $300‑$500 k and Phase 2 commercialization funding of $1‑$3 M), and how to match the right phase to a company’s development stage. Chin outlines a step‑by‑step framework for building a compelling SBIR application: identify critical de‑risking experiments, define quantitative milestones, compare the proposed technology to existing market standards, and tie scientific work to a clear commercial ROI. She stresses the importance of a rock‑solid Phase 1 before pursuing larger awards and differentiates the narrative needed for federal reviewers versus venture investors. The talk also covers newer federal contracts (e.g., ARPA‑H) and recent policy changes from the Reauthorization Act that impose stricter foreign‑risk assessments, warning founders to scrutinize foreign partnerships, vendors, and cap‑table affiliations. Throughout, Chin positions non‑dilutive funding as a strategic bridge for early‑stage life‑science companies before they engage venture capital.
Chapters
Well, first of all, Jeff, thank you for the invitation to be here today, and thank you for all the founders being here and really inspiring us to hear your stories. So I'm Stacy Chin. I've been in federal grants and contracting for about 10 years. I started when I was doing my PhD at Boston University, so I have a polymer chemistry background. Had a crazy idea and wanted to get a grant to kick off my first startup, and so it took me 16 tries to win my first grant. Did a bunch of NIHs, NSF. And so finally we got SBIR Phase 1 from the NIH, Phase 1, Phase 2, which is fantastic. And I was like, oh my God, this— I actually had validation for once, which is exciting. And then I was a reviewer for NIH and NSF for about 5 years and saw all the crazy chaos behind the scenes there. And then realized a lot of founders were also looking for help to get these non-dilutive funding opportunities. And so I kicked off my own firm about 10 years ago. We secured over $50 million of funding. We've done anything from SBIR Phase 1s, Direct-to-Phase 2, Fast-Track, pretty much anything in all sectors. So biotech, medtech, healthcare tech. We do a lot of NIH applications. I'm still recovering from the deadline from yesterday. I also do the larger federal contracts going for the $3, $5, and $25 million range. One of my clients, Celino, in Cambridge, was one of the first clients that got awarded an ARPA-H. And so it's a completely different monster, a completely different game. I love working with founders and all the crazy innovations that they come up with. And our job is to figure out how to tell your story and present it on paper in a way that makes sense for the reviewers to give you the best chances of funding. So really excited to be here. Like I said, we'll keep it open-ended. I'm happy to answer any questions and kind of share what I'm seeing, especially after the Reauthorization Act. Absolutely. So I'm biased, of course. I think non-dilutive is a great way to raise capital, especially for early-stage healthcare biotech companies. And this is a great way to give funding for your company before you're ready to have conversations with people like Vic. There's so many opportunities out there. And so I find a lot of founders get very overwhelmed to figure out what are the right non-dilutive funding opportunities for me. I've heard grants, what type of grants are out there? I've heard contracts, what type of contracts are out there? Right. And I think since a lot of us here are in Like a biotech, pharma, early-stage R&D, I believe SBIRs are a great way to fund early-stage startups. And so these are non-dilutive funding capital. I'm sure you all— this has been on everyone's radar. There's $4 billion given out every year from the U.S. government to U.S.-based companies. Unfortunately, SBIR program is only for U.S.-based for-profit businesses that are Mostly owned by U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and so a lot of you guys might be going after the NIH, the DOW, the NSF, or ARPA-H. The SBIR program comes in a couple different stages. There's Phase One, which is about proving your feasibility. Can I get three hundred to five hundred K of non-dilutive funding to say, "Hey, I have something that." is feasible and has commercial viability. If you're in the later stages where you have a proof of concept, you have good data or results that can say I have something better than the market, you might be ready for Phase 2, which allows you to tap into the $1, $2, or even $3 million project to kind of take that initial prototype and start translating that towards commercialization. When we work with our founders, there's a reason how we structure these narratives. The way you're pitching your innovation and your project to a person like Vic versus to a federal agency is very different. And so usually the way I like to think about structuring an SBIR application is to first figure out what stage am I in? How much do I need to get that proof point? We talked a lot about de-risking and milestones. This is the same thing here. Right? If I just formed an LLC yesterday, I don't want to go for $2.5 million just yet, or maybe I'm not ready for that yet. Does the $300K Phase 1 make sense for me? And a lot of times I tell founders, let's take a step back, making sure we have a rock-solid Phase 1 to get you to that strong validation and proof point before we go into the larger applications. And so, when I think about preparing these applications for clients, I first think about What do I need? How much money do I need? And what are the 3 or 4 biggest experiments I need to do to validate that I have something that's better than the market? I have something that can generate revenue or money, or something that can deliver a benefit that nothing else out there can deliver at this stage. And so the way we want to show our value proposition is to compare the performance of what you're developing to a current standard out there. And so I don't like to use SBIR funding just to build something and say, hey, we built something, it works. That's not a strong application. But if you position the application in a way to say we can build something and prove it works better than this in ABC ways, that's a much stronger application. I'm also a huge stickler on de-risking and presenting quantitative milestones. You want to show the reviewer that if I were to hand you $300K tomorrow, I know exactly what to do with that funding. I know who's going to do it, how they're going to do it, the experiments I want to pursue, the statistics that I'm— embark on, what does success look like. And the more we can flesh out those nitty-gritty details, the stronger the application would be. And so when you're done with this beautiful application, you want to present that to our reviewers to say, I know exactly what I'm going to do with $2 million. I need you just to give it to me so we can go and execute. That's just a high-level way of how I think about these applications. These are R&D-based grants, so I do want the nitty-gritty scientific details, but I also want to show how that impacts the bigger commercialization goal. I work with a lot of startups spinning out from universities like Harvard and MIT. Those grants turn out to be very academic, which is fine, right? But then we want to pull them back to figure out why do these exist? experiments tied big to tie back to the bigger, larger impact goal. Because at the end of the day, these federal agencies are also your investors. They also want to see the ROI. One of the new trends I'm seeing right now after the Reauthorization Act, the foreign risk assessment is really stringent. So in the past, you can partner with foreign entities or international partners to do either validation studies, experiments, manufacturing. NIH particularly is being a huge stickler right now. So we're seeing SBIR applications awarded once getting pulled if there is any risk of foreign involvement. So we're being extra careful in case you go and do due diligence and they might identify either a vendor that has a foreign entity, someone on your cap table might be involved somewhere else, right? And so everything's very ambiguous right now. This is very new to a point where it's kind of being a little bit of a detriment to startups. So we're keeping a close eye on it. Yeah, ideally it's countries of interest of a list of thousands of companies they say is completely prohibitive. But as you've said, it's really anyone. And they're being very vague.
