In this instructional video, Stacy Chin of KeepYourEquity walks startup founders through the mandatory NSF Project Pitch that must be completed before submitting a Phase I SBIR or STTR proposal. She explains why the pitch is a critical early‑stage checkpoint, outlines the four required prompts (technology innovation, technical objectives & challenges, market opportunity, and company & team), and provides a step‑by‑step template for each. For each prompt she details the ideal two‑paragraph structure, word limits (500 words for the first two prompts, 250 words for the last two), and the key elements to include—quantitative problem context, clear R&D‑focused objectives, TAM/SAM/SOM market sizing, and concise team bios that demonstrate relevant expertise. Chin stresses the need to frame the pitch as a mini‑SBIR, focus on high‑impact, unproven R&D rather than incremental engineering or marketing tasks, and avoid common pitfalls such as vague language or over‑emphasis on commercial advantages at this stage. She also highlights the $275,000 Phase I award amount, the importance of the NSF approval email as a mandatory component of the full application, and offers industry‑agnostic advice that applies to medical, digital health, environmental, software, manufacturing, energy, and other sectors. The video concludes with calls to action for additional resources, templates, and further videos on team structuring.
Chapters
Before you even start your Phase 1 or Phase 2 SBIR or STTR to the National Science Foundation, you'll first have to submit a project pitch. So in this video, I'm going to break down for you how you can respond to the top 4 prompts within the project pitch application so that you can increase your chances for approval. Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I'm Stacy Chin from keepyourequity.co, and our mission is to help startup founders just like you secure non-dilutive grant funding from federal programs called the SBIR and STTR so that you can keep your equity within your fundraising journey. So according to the NSF website, the Project Pitch application allows small businesses and startups to get feedback at the start of their Phase I application. In fact, this is a mandatory step for startups looking to submit a full Phase I SBIR or STTR to the NSF. Personally, I think the Project Pitch application is an excellent way for founders to understand whether or not their innovation is aligned to the objectives of the SBIR program to the NSF before they invest all their time, effort, and hard work to prepare a full Phase 1 application. So to submit a project pitch, startups have to respond to a series of prompts in an online form, and if the project pitch gets approved, the NSF would send an email to the principal investigator or PI confirming that the innovation is of interest to the NSF. Not only does this email serve as your official invitation to submit and prepare a full Phase 1 application, but this email is actually a mandatory component of your application as well. And even though this NSF project pitch application process has been around since 2019, I'm finding that it's getting harder and harder to get these project pitch approved as time goes on. And that's because there are so many startups who are eager to submit a full Phase I SBIR or STTR application to the NSF, because if they get awarded, this gives them a chance to secure about $275,000 of non-dilutive funding. In case you're interested to learn more about the NSF budget limits for 2023, I'll leave another link to a different video in the description below. And after spending years trying to navigate this project pitch application process, I have finally come up with a strategy that has helped so many clients not only to get their project pitch approved, but we've also used the same strategy to turn around rejected pitches into approved ones. And this method works really well for startups across so many different industries, including medical, digital health, environment, engineering, software, manufacturing, energy, and so many more. So here are the 4 primary prompts that you'll need to focus on for your NSF project pitch application. 1. Describe the technology innovation. 2. Describe the technical objectives and 3, describe the market opportunity, and finally, 4, describe the company and team. And yes, although these high-level prompts seem pretty straightforward and simple, actually a lot of thought has to go into your response. Typically, you should treat the Project Pitch application as a mini SBIR. Therefore, you want to be really thorough and think through each of your responses to these prompts. So to help you prepare a really strong Project Pitch application and increase your chances of approval, I'm going to walk you through what I found to be a great way to respond to each of those prompts. Prompts. But before I do so, please like this video and subscribe to this channel so you won't miss any tips and tricks I have to share with you so that you can get non-dilutive funding and keep your equity throughout your fundraising journey. All right, now let's get into it. Prompt number 1: Describe the technology innovation. So according to the NSF Project Pitch website, the instructions for this prompt are: describe the technical innovation that will be the main focus of your Phase 1 project, including a brief description of the origins of the innovation as well as an explanation as to why this meets the program's mandate to focus on supporting research and development of unproven impactful innovations. Oof, so I know that was a mouthful, so let's break down how you can respond to this prompt in 2 paragraphs and 500 words. So before you even introduce the innovation, you have to first justify why we even need a solution. So to do so, we have to give some context to the problem that you're trying to solve. This is actually your first paragraph. Here you want to use quantitative descriptions to present the problem, identify who is impacted by this problem, describe describe their pain points, and then finally summarize what solutions are out there and why they don't do a great job addressing those pain points. And by laying the groundwork in this manner, we are addressing the latter part of those instructions first for a new high-impact innovation. Now, the second paragraph is all about pitching your idea, and your first couple of sentences should go straight to the point as to what is your innovation and how would it solve the problem. Essentially, you'll need to answer: Why is this better than anything else out there? And how can your innovation address your customers' pain points. In this paragraph, you also will want to describe why your innovation is technically innovative. And here I want to stress the word technical, and that's because this is an R&D-based proposal. So that means you need to describe how you plan to overcome technical hurdles with that funding they're going to give you. And of course, it's also nice to include some of the commercial advantages of your innovation as well. But I would encourage to save that either for the full Phase 1 application or even Phase 2, just because we're so limited in space in our response. And then finally, you want to wrap up that first prompt by explaining the main focus of your Phase I application, along with an explanation of how you came up with the idea or the origins of the innovation. And once you address everything there, you are ready to go ahead and attack prompt number 2. So prompt number 2 is to describe the technical objectives and challenges, and the NSF project pitch instructions for this prompt are: describe the R&D or technical work to be done in your Phase I, including a discussion as to how and why the proposed work will help prove that the product or service is technically feasible and/or significantly reduce technical risks. Discuss how ultimately this work could contribute to making a new product, service, or process that is commercially viable and impactful. This section should also convey that the proposed work meets the definition of R&D rather than straightforward engineering or incremental product development tasks. So for prompt number 2, there is a lot you have to consider within your response. You only have 500 words to do so. And in my opinion, this is actually the hardest prompt to respond to. And that's because a lot of thought has to go into what you want to say. So to make things a bit easier, I like to rephrase this into a question in the following way: If you were to get the Phase 1 award of $275,000 tomorrow, what are you going to do technically to prove that your innovation, number 1, works, and 2, is better than current solutions? Or in other words, how do you prove that your innovation has commercial potential and that at the end of Phase I, you're ready to hit the ground running for your Phase II proposal? So in Prompt 2, you want to identify the technical risks that you plan to overcome by presenting a really rigorous R&D strategy. So in your first paragraph, you first want to summarize what is your Phase I goal and then break down those technical risks into 2 to 4 different objectives or big experiments that you plan to pursue if you got Phase I funding. And to make this really simple and straightforward, you can just list out these technical objectives. So for example, you can write objective 1, we will develop a working prototype by doing A, B, C. And then after saying that objective, it's nice to follow up with a couple of sentences to summarize how you plan to overcome your technical objectives and why this is such an important objective to pursue for your phase 1 goal. And then all you got to do is rinse and repeat for the other objectives. And here I want to really stress that NSF is looking to see how you plan to overcome your technical hurdles. And that's because NSF is not interested in funding any projects that involve making incremental improvements to an existing product, or you're looking to conduct any marketing or customer interviews. So stay away from proposing any of those topics. And now that leads me to prompt number 3: Describe the market opportunity. So here, this asks you to describe the customer profile and their pain points that will be the near-term commercial focus related to this technical project. So this prompt can be a little bit confusing because the prompt itself and the instructions are asking you for a couple of different things. So what do you do? You got to do it all and you need to respond within 250 words. So the first thing you want to do is to describe the market opportunity. And to do so, you can just address the following questions. 1. What is your target market? 2. Describe the total available market, the served available market, or the serviceable obtainable market, or TAM-SAM-SUM, and estimate how big these markets are in US dollars. And finally, what are current market trends, and how is your innovation aligned to those market trends? So once you address those questions in a couple sentences, you can then move on to the second part of your response, and this is all about describing your customer pain points. So here you want to make sure your response hits all these key points: 1, who is your end customer and why? 2, what are your customers' pain points? And 3, if your innovation was successful, how does that address your customers' pain point? It would be a huge plus if you have conducted any customer discovery interviews, since this shows that you have identified there is a clear market need for your proposed innovation. And then last but not least is prompt number 4, describe the company and team. So the instructions for this prompt are: describe the background and current status of the applicant's small business, including key team members who will lead the technical and/or commercial efforts as discussed in this project pitch. And like prompt number 3, your response needs to fit within the 250-word limit. And this prompt should be pretty straightforward to respond to. So here again, break your response into two different sections. So first, give a high-level summary of your company. Here you can mention what is your company's mission, when was it founded and by whom, and whether you have completed any key milestones to date. And then finally, you can summarize the key personnel within your team that will be involved in your SBIR efforts. Here you should convey that you have all the necessary expertise to carry out your proposed efforts, as described in your previous prompt. If you want to learn more about how to best structure your team for your SBIR proposal, I did a whole 'nother video to break this down for you. So I'll leave a link in the description below. And so to summarize your team, clearly state the names of each of your team members and mention their roles in the company. It is also vital to draft a couple of sentences that highlights the relevant past experiences and past accomplishments to demonstrate credibility. Well, that is all for today. Thank you so much for watching until the end of this video. If you found these tips helpful, please like this video again and subscribe to this channel, and feel free to leave a comment below if you have any other questions on how to get your NSF project pitch approved. Well, thank you for joining me today. Please make sure to check out our website at keepyourequity.co where you'll find lots of other advice, templates, and resources that can help you secure non-dilutive grant funding through SBIRs and STTRs. So that you can keep your equity throughout your fundraising journey. Thank you.
