SBIR Reviewer EXPOSES PEER REVIEW SECRETS: What happens when reviewers evaluate your NIH SBIR Grant?

Alright, you've asked for it, so I'm going to do it. In this video, I'm going to review of what goes on when reviewers are evaluating your SBIR application, coming from a former NIH SBIR reviewer. That's me. I'm going to expose 3 really surprising aspects of the peer review process and how that completely transformed the way I advise my clients to prepare SBIR applications today. I'm also going to share how you can take these learnings to improve your own SBIR application so that you can increase your chances of getting non-dilutive funding from the NIH to support your startup journey. So make sure you stick around because you do not want to miss out on these insider tips. So let's dive right in. Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I'm Stacy Chin from KeepYourEquity.co, and our mission is to help startups secure non-dilutive funding. We specialize in science and tech startups by helping them to secure funding from federal programs such as those from the SBIR and the STTR. If you're interested in learning more about these programs, I'll leave a link in the description to another video below. Also, we help to consult other private and public companies as well as NGOs on their non-dilutive fundraising strategies by helping them to navigate complex federal grants and contracting landscape. So for 5 years, I've had the privilege of serving as an SBIR reviewer, both for the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. It was genuinely an eye-opening journey, and I consider myself fortunate to get a small snippet of what goes on behind the scenes when reviewers are critiquing SBIR applications. However, there are certain aspects of the peer review process that was quite surprising to me, and so I'm going to tell you all the secrets I realized when reviewing SBIR applications and how you can take those insights in crafting a really compelling SBIR application so that you can maximize your chances to secure non-diluted funding. But before we get into it, I have one huge favor to ask you. We recently learned that 90% of you viewers are not yet subscribed to this channel, and our goal is to get that down to 70%. So if you found any of our resources, videos, or tips helpful, we would greatly appreciate if you can subscribe to this channel and to like this video. And by doing so, in exchange, we're going to promise to continue working hard to provide you founders with the necessary resources, advice, and tips on how you can secure non-diluted funding. So that you can bring your innovative ideas to the commercial market. Do we have a deal? If so, let's dive right in. The first surprising thing I learned about the NIH review process is that NIH SBIR reviewers are just very busy people, often with full-time jobs and lots of other commitments. NIH reviewers are volunteers that generously offer their time, resources, and expertise to help evaluate SBIR applications. And these reviewers come from diverse backgrounds and industries, including researchers, engineers, clinicians, other healthcare professionals, and even entrepreneurs running their own and most of them have to juggle the NIH reviewing responsibilities alongside their full-time job. I can personally relate to this challenge when I was reviewing SBIR grants while juggling my own startup on the side. Sometimes reviewers can receive a batch from 10 to 12 SBIR applications to review at once, with some of these applications exceeding 100 pages long. And reviewing each individual application can be a meticulous process in itself that involves hours of dedicated reading, evaluating, and preparing responses to the applicants on their strengths and weaknesses of the application. And for me, sometimes these reviews can take 5 hours at a time. Then once we finish reviewing those applications, reviewers are then required to sit on a study panel that can extend for over 2 days. And this discussion is vital for helping the agency make the final determinations on these SBIR applications. And so while serving on these NIH SBIR review panels can be a significant time commitment on top of the reviewer's other responsibilities, sometimes there's a chance that the reviewers can be fatigued or under time constraints, potentially leading to oversights of critical aspects of your application. And while reviewers strive to avoid such oversights to ensure fair evaluations across the board, it is essential that these errors still can occur. I mean, after all, SBIR reviewers are human too, right? So with this insight, what can you founders do about your own SBIR application? Ensuring that your SBIR proposal stands out from the crowd and is easily digestible by reviewers is crucial to your success in securing funding. Imagine a scenario where a reviewer, after a long day at work, is now tasked at assessing multiple SBIR applications late in the evening. This is the exact situation you should consider when writing your SBIR application. So to make their job more manageable and to increase your chances for a favorable review, there are several valuable steps that you can take. First, pay meticulous attention to the formatting of your application. A well-structured, visually appealing proposal is essential. Utilize easy-to-understand and colorful figures and tables to break up the monotony of the black and white text. Also, make sure that you're complying to the standard NIH formatting requirements that your proposal is easily read by the reviewers. Another effective technique is repetition. If there are one or two points that you want to make sure comes through well on paper, it is okay to repeat it once or twice throughout your application to make sure it resonates with the reviewer. Another way to help emphasize really important points in an application is to bold or underline your key points. And this to help to draw the reviewer's eyes to the key components within your SBIR application so they hopefully won't miss it. Also, including clear subtitles before new paragraphs or breaking up sections by topic area is another strategy to help you convey your message clearly and concisely. And if you were to deploy all those practices within your SBIR application, this makes your proposal much more readable, even when reviewers might be tired when reviewing applications late at night. So by making your SBIR applications readable, accessible, and easily digestible for the SBIR reviewer. This can help make sure your SBIR application stands out from the crowd and helps persuade reviewers to give you a good score. Now, the second thing I have learned about reviewing SBIR applications for the National Institutes of Health is that one bad review might reduce your chances of an award. Usually, your SBIR application will go under evaluation by multiple reviewers. Specifically for the NIH, the application can get read by 3 to 5 reviewers, and your objective here is to impress the reviewers by getting a low numerical score, which is the percentile that correlates to your overall impact score. The lower the score indicates to the NIH agencies that you have a strong application that should go under serious consideration for funding. It is not uncommon to encounter a situation where the most of the reviewers gives you a very strong score. However, you might find there's one bad apple in that mix, and unfortunately a single negative review can impact your overall score, potentially jeopardizing your chances for getting SBIR funding. And several factors could lead to this discrepancy. One possibility is that this reviewer possesses different expertise than the others and might identify a weakness that went unnoticed. Alternatively, this reviewer might have unintentionally overlooked a key aspect of your SBIR application or might become overly focused on such a minor detail that undermined their confidence within your proposal. It is even possible that you might have caught a reviewer on just a bad day. Who knows? This stuff happens. And while the NIH is dedicated to ensuring a fair and unbiased review process, it is essential to recognize that the peer review process isn't perfect. The NIH is continually working on improving their processes today, and reviewers, when committing to this role, are only drawing from their own expertise and their personal experiences to offer guidance to the agency on whether or not these proposals should get funded. Reviewers are also required to justify their scores by sharing what they thought were your strengths and weaknesses of the application, which can be reviewed in your summary statement. So with this insight, what can you founders do about your own SBIR application? Once you get the reviews back and you're ready to review the summary statement, whatever you do, do not take the negative critique personally. Instead, review these critiques as constructive feedback that can guide you to strengthening your application. Embrace the opportunity to learn from the proposal review process and even consider reaching an NIH program officer to provide further guidance and advice on how you can go back in stronger the second time around. And of course, it is worthwhile to try and go for a resubmission after you revise your application according to these critiques to hopefully improve your chances of getting an award the second time around. Also, it's important to acknowledge that securing SBIR funding can also involve an element of luck. Therefore, persistence is the key to this endeavor. So remain determined and don't be disheartened by these setbacks, especially if this is your first ever SBIR application. However, if you ever felt that your SBIR application was evaluated unfairly, don't hesitate to discuss your concerns with an NIH SBIR program officer. Their job is to serve as a resource for you founders and explore other ways to assist you in this pursuit. So overall, in the world of securing SBIR funding, tenacity can make all the difference. Now, the third surprising thing I have learned was that applicants should not expect all reviewers who are evaluating the proposal to be 100% experts within their industry. So the NIH SBIR agency receives a wide range of different proposals spanning from various sectors of healthcare, and these proposals can encompass anything from developing new approaches to synthesize medicinal compounds for cancer treatment, getting approval for new medical devices, or developing new digital health tools to improve accessibility for healthcare resources. The possibilities for healthcare innovation is vast. So given this wide range of different proposals they can receive, NIH strives to assemble a panel of experts within the relevant expertise necessary to evaluate your SBIR application. And we're looking for individuals from academic backgrounds, startup founders or executives, industry leaders. However, finding these experts who are not only the right fit to review proposals but are willing to commit the substantial time to serve as an SBIR reviewer can be very challenging. Rest assured that the NIH is working diligently behind the scenes to identify the most suitable reviewers for your application. However, the— not all reviewers will be the experts in your particular field. So for instance, if you're developing a new AI algorithm to help develop new drugs by screening a bunch of compounds able to treat lung cancer, select reviewers such as a chemist specializing in similar work, a clinician with expertise in lung cancer, or perhaps a startup executives that's within this domain. This serves, of course, as just an illustration. It may not precisely reflect your situation, but it demonstrates the diversity of expertise that can be involved. And while each expert may place more emphasis on reviewing particular aspects of your application, they may rely on their fellow other reviewers on that same panel to provide their own expert opinions in evaluating the robustness of your SBIR grant. So with this insight, what can you founders do about your SBIR application? Your narrative is accessible and easily digestible to a diverse panel of experts that might be reviewing your application from all those various backgrounds. Striking the right balance essential. On one hand, you should provide sufficient technical details to engage a PhD chemist, but on the other hand, your narrative should be strong and coherent enough for individuals without a chemistry background. And with that, thank you so much for watching until the end of this video. I hope you found these tips helpful to learn what goes behind the scenes when your SBIR application is getting reviewed by NIH reviewers so you can best position your SBIR application for an award. And if you haven't done so, I would greatly appreciate if you can like video and subscribe to this channel so that you can learn new ways to keep your equity throughout your non-diluted fundraising journey. And of course, don't forget to check out our website at cheapearequity.co, where you find lots of others, templates, resources, and advice on how you can secure non-dilutive funding. Thank you for joining me today, and I'll see you in the video very soon.