Stacy L. Chin took 16 attempts to win her first $1 million NIH SBIR grant as a biotech founder. She now helps other founders secure non-dilutive funding through her organization Keep Your Equity, which has helped raise over $50 million by teaching founders how to craft grant proposals and navigate federal programs.
As a founder, I know what it feels like to spend weeks writing a $1 million grant proposal, hit submit, wait months for an answer, and then just to get rejected, but then have to convince yourself to do it all over again. I know this because it took me 16 tries to win my first federal grant. Back then, I was a founder with a crazy idea that I genuinely believed could become something. I knew the science, I believed in the technology, and the impact it could have in the world. What I didn't know was how to convince someone else that it was worth funding. After enough rejections, you start questioning yourself. Maybe the idea wasn't good enough. Maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I should stop trying. But I didn't, and eventually I got the yes. And I would never forget the moment I found out that I received my first $1 million federal grant from the National Institute of Health through the SBIR program. Fast forward a decade, and I've helped secure over $50 million Million in grants. of non-dilutive funding while helping hundreds of founders learn how to pursue the same. But I haven't forgotten what it felt like to be on the other side of that first yes. And that's really why I'm here, because somewhere out there, there's another founder wondering whether anyone else will ever believe in it. And that's why my team and I are here at Keep Your Equity, because we don't think figuring out federal funding should be as painful as it was when I went through it. So I started sharing everything I wish someone else would have taught me back then: how to find the right opportunities, how to know when you're ready, how to tell your technical story in a way that viewers understand and how to use non-dilutive SBIR funding to give your technology a real chance to make it out of the lab and into the real world. If you're new here, hi, I'm Stacy Chin. I was once a founder who couldn't figure out how to get her crazy idea funded, and now I'm trying to make sure it doesn't take you 16 tries like my own journey, because that's really the mission behind everything we share today at Keep Your Equity, to make non-dilutive funding a little bit easier. So if you're building one of those crazy innovations that can make a huge impact in the world, make sure you follow and subscribe to this channel. Let's make this process less painful altogether, help more founders keep their equity while giving more crazy innovative ideas a chance to become reality.
