Stacy L ChinFounder, KeepYourEquity · I get the government to write you checks

The Government's Free Money Hack

5 Mar 2026 · 2 min

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1:34

In this presentation at the C2 Accelerate event, the speaker thanks the hosts and introduces the concept of obtaining non‑dilutive government funding through grants, specifically the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The talk explains that SBIR/STTR are highly competitive, non‑equity funding mechanisms administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and offered across 11 federal agencies—including NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD, and USDA—with roughly $4 billion allocated annually. The speaker notes a typical 10‑20 % success rate for applications. The purpose of these programs is threefold: to foster U.S. innovation and maintain global competitive advantage, to promote commercialization of research into marketable products, and to advance federal research objectives by supporting small businesses with non‑dilutive capital.

Chapters

Thank you so much for having me here today. Before I begin, I want to give a special thanks to Annie and Kriti and Raj for the invitation to be here with you guys at the C2 Accelerate today to talk about one of my most favorite topics, which is how to get free money from the government. One great way to get free money from the government is do something called grants. Now, I specialize in a type of funding called the SBIR and STTR, and I'm sure many of you have heard of this program before, but if not, the SBIR program stands for the Small Business Innovation Research program, and the STTR stands for the Small Business technology transfer programs. These are highly competitive, non-diluted funding opportunities, and in my biased opinion, one of the best ways to fund innovation in the U.S. And so these are meant to help small businesses develop and commercialize technologies, and this is sponsored by the SBA. I tell clients expect a 10-20% success rate just because of how competitive these applications are, but there's about $4 billion allocated across 11 different agencies across the board. So a lot of these agencies have SBIR programs, like you guys know, NIH, NSF, DOE, DOD, USDA, and so forth. Why do we have this program? And so this is spun up by the US SBA. One, the US wants to foster innovation. We want to be at the forefront of innovation, have competitive advantage across all of our— globally, right, with new technologies out there. Two, we want to promote commercialization. How can we take new ideas, new R&D research, and translate that to the commercial market? And finally, we want to advance federal research. What are some of the alignments and things that the US federal agencies are looking into, and how can we support small businesses by giving them non-dilutive funding to kind of accelerate our own