Stacy L Chin explains why your principal investigator needs to be fully committed to your startup for SBIR grants. Reviewers check if the PI is primarily employed by your company, not juggling it as a side project. Weak PI commitment kills your application before it gets read.
Don't bother with the SBIR program because it's going to be a waste of time if your PI is treating your startup like a part-time side gig. The SBIR program expects the PI, or principal investigator, to be primarily employed by the startup, and that's not a checkbox, it's an eligibility requirement, because the PI's involvement tells the agency whether or not this is a real company or just an academic experiment. And if your technical lead isn't fully committed, you're asking reviewers to believe in execution without evidence, and that's the fastest way to lose credibility.
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