In this segment, Stacy Chin explains that many founders lack formal training in grant writing and effective AI prompt engineering, leading to AI-generated proposals that miss reviewers' expectations. She highlights the absence of guidance on crafting strong SBIR applications and the broader challenges in securing non-dilutive funding. Recognizing this gap, she and co‑founder Tim Barnes created Scout, an AI‑powered platform that consolidates decades of grant‑writing expertise to help founders discover suitable grants, develop competitive applications, increase win rates, and manage post‑award compliance.
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Here's the part founders don't realize. It's not their fault. Most founders were never taught how to use these tools properly, or in fact, what reviewers are looking for in a great application. So no one has any idea what a strong proposal looks like. So when they plug their ideas into AI, they get something that sounds smart but completely misses the mark. And then I realized that gap. It just hit me. And no one has taught me these processes either of how to use AI the right way, how to build prompts that produces actual meaningful content, or even how to write strong SBIR applications. Now, though many of us have to learn from trial and error, it doesn't have to be that way for you founders. And so I thought, there has to be a better way. And so I asked myself, what if we can combine decades of knowledge and expertise in the grant writing experience with these new AI tools? So that's what I've been working on behind the scenes at Scout. So with that, I teamed up with my co-founder Tim Barnes to build an AI platform designed to fix everything founders are struggling with today in the grant writing world. In when it comes to non-dilutive funding in general. Everything from how to find grants that are right fit for you and your company, how to write strong competitive applications, and eventually how to win them and what to do with post-compliance. We've all delivered this in a platform for you guys through Scout.
