I asked ChatGPT how it can write me SUCCESSFUL SBIR start up grants. This is what I found out…

So I've asked ChatGPT how it can help me write successful SBIR grants for science and tech startups. So in this video, I'm going to share the 3 recommendations that ChatGPT gave me, along with my completely honest opinions on those recommendations and how I have been using ChatGPT to successfully write SBIR grants. And I know you're thinking, can ChatGPT actually replace me as a professional grant writer? Well, if you stick around until the end of this video, I'm going to tell you my thoughts on that as well. Hey guys, welcome back to this channel. I'm Stacy Chin from keepyourequity.co, and our mission is to help science and tech startups secure non-diluted federal grant funding. And we've helped many startups secure funding from the federal programs called the SBIR and the STTR. If you're interested in learning more about these federal programs, I'll leave a link in the description to another video below. And we also help support NGOs and also other private and public businesses on their grant writing strategy so that we can get them the grant funding they need to support projects that would make a big impact on some of today's biggest global problems. So personally, I love learning about new technologies and tools and figuring out how I can leverage these things to level up my grant writing game. And I found these technology tools have done me wonders to help me optimize my business, streamline my workflows, and to save me a lot of time and energy. And if you're curious about the different tools and platforms I currently use to help me write my grants, I'll leave a link to another video in the description below so you can check that out. So I'm sure many of you have been doing the same thing, but in the past months I've been playing around with ChatGPT and learning how to use this hot new tool to help me write grants much more efficiently. And so far I've been learning a lot. Most importantly, I was trying to figure out, can ChatGPT help me write successful full SBIR applications? Can it help me do research? How can ChatGPT make this job easier for me? And importantly, can ChatGPT replace me as a professional grant writer? So after months playing around with it, I decided let's just ask the master itself. So I decided to ask ChatGPT, what are the top 3 ways startups can use ChatGPT to write SBIR proposals? And frankly, I was actually quite surprised of the answer it gave. And this is because based on my experiences so far, I found there are some nuances to keep in mind if you do decide to use ChatGPT to write grants. And this is true, especially if you're doing it so for science and tech startups. So in this video, I'm going to share the 3 responses ChatGPT gave me, along with my completely honest opinions on those responses as a professional SBI grant writer. But before we jump into it, I'll be so grateful if you can take a moment to like this video and to subscribe to this channel. It truly does help us out a lot, and by doing so, you'll gain a wealth of knowledge on how you can secure non-dilutive funding for your startup without giving away your equity. And of course, don't forget to check out our website at keepyourequity.co where you find lots of more advice, resources, and templates to help you on your non-dilutive fundraising journey. And with that, let's see what ChatGPT had to say. All right, so here I am behind my computer and I have opened ChatGPT. And here I'm just using the free version that's available online on OpenAI. So here I'm going to type in, what are the 3 ways startups can use ChatGPT to write SBIR proposals? Let's see what it says. So number 1, ChatGPT told me it can help generate initial drafts. 2, it can help me refine content and language. And 3, ChatGPT said it can help me answer questions and clarifying concepts. That's quite interesting, actually. Now let's go over each of those 3 recommendations that ChatGPT gave us, and I'm going to give you my honest opinion as to whether ChatGPT can do each of those items efficiently. So ChatGPT said for the first recommendation that it could help me generate drafts for SBIR applications. And according to ChatGPT, it said startups can use ChatGPT to generate initial drafts of their SBIR proposals. And by providing the model with prompts and instructions, it can generate coherent paragraphs or sections based on the input given. This can save time and provide a starting point for further refinement. So in the past months, as I was playing with ChatGPT, I do agree ChatGPT is very helpful to provide a starting point when you're trying to prepare a grant. However, I want to show you there is a catch to it. Let's go back to ChatGPT behind my screen. All right, so here I am behind my screen again, and let's open ChatGPT and ask it something like, write me an NIH SBIR proposal about an innovative digital healthcare platform to improve mental health in vulnerable populations. So here I go, and let's push enter, and let's see what it says. Oh, okay, so it has a project summary, which is good. It gives us a project description, the background objectives, which is fair, methodology, user assessment, tells me about the platform, which is good, the commercialization plan, which is true, we do need that in an SBIR proposal, different aspects of that, project team, expected outcomes and impact. So based on that quick exercise, it seems like ChatGPT does hit some of the key points that are required in an SBIR application. However, in my opinion, that should never be submitted just as is. The content's way too broad, innovation and scope are, well, not defined at all, and it's missing a lot of other critical components within an SBIR application. The output is just really bad in my opinion. And again, I know it's kind of my fault since I put in a very broad prompt in the system. So even though I'm still learning how to use ChatGPT myself, based on my experience thus far, I found out although it can write complete generic SBIR proposals, ChatGPT cannot do so in the level of detail that is required for a strong SBIR grant, at least not yet. And this is especially true for really complex technical grants, especially those with a really heavy R&D sections. However, if I do want ChatGPT to help me write new sections for a grant application, what I find useful is that I have to feed it with lots of background information on the efforts I want to pursue to give it insights as to what the problem is, what is my solution and innovation, and the broader impacts of the proposed efforts. and usually this is from text that I have to write myself. And then I found it was helpful to ask it very specific questions in order to get the output that I am looking for. And then afterwards, I always have to adapt the language further so the content has the level of details that I'm looking for that will meet my expectations as a professional SBI grant writer. And this is also super important because you do not want to just simply copy and paste the text from ChatGPT to your grant, because some agencies might even consider that as plagiarism. So either way, if you were to ask me, Stacy Chin, would you use ChatGPT to help you write initial drafts of SBI applications? Unfortunately, my answer would be no. And this is because a lot of SBIR applications are usually prepared by experts in those fields. A lot of thought and strategy has to go into that initial draft. And for those reasons, I wouldn't recommend using ChatGPT to start your initial drafts from the get-go. Now, ChatGPT's second recommendation is that startups can use it to refine content and language. It says, ChatGPT can help startups refine the content and language of their SBIR proposals by engaging in a conversation with the model and reiteratively asking for suggestions and improvements Startups can enhance the clarity, coherence, and persuasiveness of their proposal. The model can also assist with grammar, sentence structure, and overall tone to make the proposal more compelling. So let's go back to ChatGPT behind my computer and test it out. All right, so here I go on ChatGPT once again, and let's say I'm working on a proposal that is focused on delivering better stroke care systems towards rural populations compared to those in urban. And here I just wrote a super sloppy couple sentences on an abstract that I say want to submit to the NSF SBIR program. And so here I want ChatGPT to help me take these couple of sloppy sentences, make it better by making it more formal, more comprehensive, and just more tailored towards an abstract for an SBIR. So let's see what it does when I click enter. All right, here we go. It's nice. It gives me a title, which I really appreciate, and looks like it's really expanding out the abstract based on a couple of sentences I fed it to them. Looking pretty good so far. All right. So here the first couple of sentences in the first paragraph is talking about rural populations, the limited access problem statement of why we need more care, and then it goes into saying our innovation or solution, which is a proposed algorithm to help bridge that gap between urban and rural stroke care, which is great. Um, here it goes into more detail of what type of— how we're going to go about that application or the innovation, which is excellent. And then at the end it says, if we were successful, this is what's going to happen. And then at the end it goes into the anticipated outcomes of the research. So based on my example, In my opinion, I think ChatGPT did actually do a pretty good job to refine and make the content better based on the input that I gave it. Overall, the output was definitely an improvement. And so overall, I do agree that ChatGPT can be an excellent tool to use if startups want to use it to refine content or language when writing an SBA application. So if you want ChatGPT to help you on this front, I would recommend to make sure you ask very specific questions as to how you want to improve your content. So for example, tell it you want to make it more persuasive. Do I make it more concise? Do I make it more formal? And this is because the more directions you give it, the better the outcome would be. So the third and final recommendation that ChatGPT said of how it can help startups write SBIR proposals is that it can help answer questions and clarify concepts. Here, ChatGPT said startups often encounter complex technical questions or need to clarify certain concepts in their SBIR proposals. ChatGPT can serve as a valuable resource to get quick answers or explanations. By asking specific questions related to the proposal's technical aspects, startups can leverage the model's knowledge to obtain insights supporting data, or relevant references. So from my experience, this is actually one of the best ways you can use ChatGPT to help you write grants, because ChatGPT can be very helpful if you need to do more research, get more details and problem statement, or to find more details about different market opportunity. So with that, let's go behind my computer for one last time and test it out. All right, so here I am at ChatGPT, and let's just say I'm writing a proposal about remote patient monitoring and digital health products, and I want to know what problems problems are there when I'm using them in elderly population? So when I put this into ChatGPT, it's telling me that some problems could be technological barriers, which is true. There could be issues with the user interface and user experiences. It might be physical limitations, privacy and data concerns, social isolation, caregiver involvement, which is all true, cost and affordability. And yeah, this is— this is— these are great, great recommendations for the problem that I want to solve and to better understand the scope of the overall issue. So again, even though this did to do a good job to give me more of a comprehensive understanding of the problem area that I'm trying to solve. Again, you don't want to just simply copy and paste this into a grant. One, it looks too obvious, and two, you still need to do work to really flesh out those details with statistics and quantitative metrics to make sure you really get the meat and the pain points across to the reviewers. And also, I find that if there are prompts in a grant application that could be difficult to answer, for example, you know, name all the people or stakeholders that are involved in this problem, I found that ChatGPT can be very helpful just to help brainstorm ideas of how to approach that question. And again, to get a really good response, you want to first feed it with a lot of background information to help the system answer that question thoroughly. So overall, in my opinion, can ChatGPT help answer questions and clarify concepts in an SBIR application? Yeah, I think so. And it does a really good job, actually. So now I know you're waiting for the answer, in my opinion, as to whether I think ChatGPT can replace me as a professional grant writer. And in my opinion, it cannot just yet. So if you see my other videos, you'll know that preparing an SBIR application requires you to put together a really rigorous R&D plan. That's specifically tailored towards your startup as well as your long and short-term goals. And these aspects can greatly vary depending on the industry and also your startup as well. And so ChatGPT is still in its early days and the technology is not quite sophisticated just yet to provide that level of detail required for an SBIR application. However, I do think ChatGPT can be a great tool to help you write an SBIR grant. Other ways I've been using ChatGPT is to help conduct research, refine sections I've written, prepare bios and resumes, and to help draft summaries, as some examples. And although you can use ChatGPT to do research, I find that it's not sophisticated there just yet. So you always want to double-check your references and data because sometimes it can be wrong. And so based on my experiences using ChatGPT the past months, I found that the best and most effective way to use this tool is to make sure you understand how to ask it the right questions. And that's really the key to using ChatGPT efficiently. However, it does take years of practice, time, effort, and just experience to understand the level of details and questions you need in order to prepare a really strong SBIR application. Even ChatGPT ChatGPT itself emphasizes that the human touch, expertise, and personalization are critical elements that should not be neglected when crafting a compelling SBIR application. So with that, thank you so much for watching till the end of this video. I hope you found these tips helpful and give you some ideas of how you can use ChatGPT effectively to write proposal and other grants. If you haven't done so, please like this video and subscribe to this channel so you'll learn new ways of how you can keep your equity throughout your fundraising journey. And of course, don't forget to check out our website at keepyourequity.co where you'll find more advice, resources, and templates to help you in your non-dilutive fundraising journey. Thank you so much for joining me today, and I'll see you in a video very soon.