The top 3 SBIR application MISTAKES to avoid from an SBIR Reviewer | KeepYourEquity

Let's talk about the top 3 mistakes I see startups make all the time in their SBIR applications, coming from an SBIR reviewer myself. 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 federal SBIR and STTR grant funding in order to bring your innovative ideas to the commercial market. So I've had the pleasure of serving as an SBIR reviewer for the National Institute of Health and also for the National Science Foundation for several years, and I've also helped over 100 different startups with their SBIR strategy, and we've helped our clients secure over $10 $1 million of non-dilutive funding to date. And as an SBIR reviewer, I spent countless hours reading huge stacks of SBIR applications and also spent more hours behind closed doors with other reviewers figuring out who to recommend for funding and who to not. And from that experience, I know exactly what reviewers are looking for in a really strong application in order to recommend it for award. And unfortunately, I've seen a lot of mistakes that startup founders have made in their SBIR applications that I want you to be aware of so that you don't make them when you apply for these grant funding opportunities. So before I share the top 3 biggest mistakes for you to avoid when preparing your SBIR application, please hit the like button and subscribe so you can get notified of new tips and tricks to be aware of when preparing for your SBIR application. Mistake number 1: there's just not enough technical details in their R&D approach. So in most SBIR/STTR applications, startup founders must lay out a really rigorous R&D plan to tell the reviewers what they would do with the funding if they got awarded. And a huge mistake I see a lot of startup founders make is that there's just not enough technical details in their approach. And if vaguely describe how you plan to go about your R&D approach, this unfortunately does not give reviewers the confidence that you know exactly what to do in order to reach for a successful outcome. So for example, I've come across many different types of SBIR applications coming from a drug development startup company that are trying to make some sort of therapeutic or small molecule to treat a cancer or disease. And in their Phase I SBIR applications, sometimes some of them fail to address critical details such as what type of animal model do you plan to use and why did this choice make sense? Would both female and male animals be considered in this study? How do you plan to collect and then analyze the data? Or how many animals do you even need in the study? And if you include those types of details in your R&D approach, that shows reviewers that you have thought of every single nitty-gritty detail throughout your proposed research plan, and that will just help you validate feasibility, commercial potential, and technical merit of your innovation. So with that being said, when I work with my clients, I like to ask the following question for them to consider in order to properly structure the technical approach of the R&D plan. For instance, what is your hypothesis? Or in other words, what are you trying to prove? What experiments do you need to do to test your hypothesis? How do you specifically go about these studies as if you're doing them tomorrow in the lab? How do you plan to collect and then analyze the data? And then what are your expected outcomes? And by answering all these questions, that will help you to get all the necessary technical information you will need when structuring your R&D approach. And then that will give reviewers the confidence that you know exactly what you plan to do if you get awarded, which at the end of the day will impact your score. Mistake number 2: there are no measurable outcomes for success. What I mean by this is that sometimes startups fail to describe what does a successful outcome look like if they finish their SBIR proposal. This is such an essential piece to include in your SBIR application because it shows reviewers that you have a clear end goal in mind. And there are too many times I've come across a really nice application that beautifully laid out the technical objectives, explained how they're going to carry out their experiments, and they told us how they plan to analyze the data, but they never describe what a successful deliverable looks like. And the last thing you ever want reviewers to do is to question your ability to understand, do Do they even know what success looks like at the end? So to avoid this mistake, your job is to lay out the quantitative metrics that you would consider as a success for each of your aims or technical objectives. And each of these quantitative metrics has to bring you one step closer to validating that your innovation or technology has commercial potential. So for example, if you're proposing to do a cytotoxicity study to see if your brand new molecule kills cancer cells but not the healthy ones, you want to make sure this is quantitative and measurable by rephrasing that, stating our goal is to get 95% cell viability of healthy cells compared to the control over a 24-hour period. And notice that by setting the quantitative metric of 95% strengthens the rigor of what your outcome looks like by saying that you want 95% viability over a 24-hour period. So by describing what success looks like to you, by using quantitative metrics, this is going to really increase the rigor of your R&D approach. And most importantly, this gives reviewers the clear idea that you know exactly what the measurable outcome looks like when you reach success. Mistake number 3: Sometimes startups don't describe why their innovation is innovative. So a third mistake I see in many SBIR applications is that startup founders typically assume that their idea is very innovative, but they don't clearly articulate or describe why their innovation is actually innovative. This makes it really challenging for our reviewers to understand your unique proposition and your competitive advantage. And remember, no one can read your mind. So your job as an SBIR applicant is to remove any of the guesswork by clearly telling reviewers why your innovation is so groundbreaking and it's worth the SBIR funding investment. So to do so, you want to make sure you answer these following questions when describing your innovation: What is unique about your technology and why is it innovative? Why has no one taken the technical approach to solve this problem that you're doing? If you are successful, how does this innovation stand out in the market? What are your competitors doing? And finally, how are you approaching the problem differently compared to your current competitors? So there's a couple different approaches you can take to articulate this in your SBIR application. First, the easiest thing to do is to write a paragraph that starts off with, "This technology is innovative because— and then fill in the blanks. Another way is to put a bullet point list that clearly summarizes all the unique features of your technology, or you can create a competitive analysis chart that compares your unique features to those of your competitors. So I hope you found those tips helpful to avoid the top 3 mistakes I find in many SBIR applications coming from an SBIR reviewer. If there are other common mistakes that you have made during the SBIR process that you want others to avoid, leave them in the comments below. Otherwise, thank you so much for watching to the end of this video. Please like and also subscribe to this brand new channel where I'm going to share all the tips tricks to help you prepare for your SBIR so that you can keep your equity throughout your fundraising journey. Thank you, and I'll see you in a video very soon.