Stacy L ChinFounder, KeepYourEquity · I get the government to write you checks

Clarifying Golden Market Plan Critiques

22 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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In this advisory monologue, Stacy Chin discusses a frequent criticism of SBIR proposals: an unclear go-to-market (GTM) plan. She explains that this issue often arises when teams have strong technical or clinical expertise but lack commercialization experience, leading proposals to focus heavily on research questions rather than market translation. To address the critique, Stacy outlines a three‑question framework she uses with clients: (1) define the product or service, (2) identify the target customer and why they need the innovation, and (3) determine the revenue generation model. By clarifying these elements, teams can better articulate how their R&D will be turned into commercial outcomes, improving the strength of their SBIR applications.

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I get all the time on rejected SBIR applications, and one I also received myself, is that the go-to-market plan is unclear. From my experience, this critique appears more frequently when the investigator team either has a strong technical or clinical background but might be lacking all the go-to-market or commercialization expertise. And if this is the case, usually the SBIR proposals are more heavily weighted towards answering research questions versus trying to translate knowledge innovation towards the commercial market. And so when I see this critique, we want to hash out what is our go-to-market plan. So to figure this out, I ask my clients a lot of questions. Such as what is the product or service you're trying to deliver, who is your customer target, and why do they want this innovation? And then 3, how do we plan to generate revenue? Having a clear go-to-market strategy will help us to better articulate how we plan to take our R&D efforts and translate that towards the commercial efforts.