So without further ado, I want to introduce you to Dr. Jim O'Halloran with ScienceDocs. Dr. O'Halloran

has more than 17 years of experience with the SDI program and has received funding from the NIA,

National Institute on Mental Health, and the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. He

has served as principal investigator on more than 20 grants, totalling more than 10 million. He had also

served as the select reviewer for the same agencies for over a decade and is intimately familiar with the

five-axis proposal scoring processes and dynamics. [inaudible 00:01:09] funding depends on. As a deeply

[inaudible 00:01:12] proposal strengths, avoid common pitfall, and two proposals for review. So we

definitely have an expert in residence today. Thank you so much for being here, Jim. I'm going to turn

over the presentation to you now.

All right. Thank you. This is a presentation on an introduction to the program. We won't be getting into

strategy and mechanics. Those will be in the subsequent presentations over the next several weeks. But

this is basically a warmup on what to expect, I think, with anything. So among qualifiers, what I share

with you represent my opinions and experience and don't represent the NIH or related agencies, and

just my experience writing and receiving funding over more than a few years. So I have no conflict of

interest in that regard.

Again, this is part one of four. At the end, well take questions of answers. I hope some of you listening

will make notes, send text messages so we can address those at the end. This is one of my favorite

graphics that they use to advertise the program. It's a well-funded program at this stage. I think the-

Jim, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't think your screen is sharing.

Oh, I'm sorry.

You might want to go back to the Zoom call and click "share screen".

I'm terribly sorry.

No, it's okay. Happens to the best of us.

Let me see if I can find this function. This is going to be back to share… We lost share screen. I see. All

right. We didn't miss much. I'm just getting into the core of this. So-

Now you got to share your PowerPoint presentation on the student screen.

Yeah. Can you see the first slide now?

There you go. You're all set.

Okay. Picking up with where we left off with questions and answers and then intro. It's very high level on

funding for the program spread out over many divisions. Some of the divisions are very well-funded,

including NIA, neurology, heart, lung, and blood, especially Cancer Institute. A very well-funded program

at this stage. What is an SBIR application? It's a highly structured request for funding. That's kind of a

loaded statement, but the simplest way to put it, it's a combination of science and product

development, and that is all mentioned in these subsequent slides.

Distinguishes us from academic grants. So you're doing some science and you're developing a product at

the same time. There's really a limited amount of hypothesis testing you can do in an SBIR. It's

unavoidable. In the case where you're developing some kind of diagnostic instrument to be used with

patients where there's early stage questions to be asked and answered, typically that's more so the case

in a phase one that I'll get to.

These are a couple of documents you need to be intimately familiar with to have a good perspective on

what the requirements are. These are large documents. I think the Omnibus Solicitation is up to about

300 pages, and the forms E and now F series are I think, I don't know, 190 pages, something like that.

But you really do need to study these. There's all kinds of information that you need to know. As tedious

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as it is, if you intend to apply, get these documents. You will be spending probably more than a few

weekends to digest everything that's in them, including what's mentioned here in the first panel, the

research topics of interest to each division.

Advantages of SBIR funding, higher probability versus VCs and other kinds of institutional funding that a

lot of startup companies ind. There's no debt or dilution. So whatever you own as part of your company

remains that way. The NIH does not want any ownership or interest in your company. Again, a freedom

to develop, modify the development plan. So in the middle of an SBIR, if a problem comes up, you're

free to change direction, and you have all kinds of latitude that you don't have, again, with VCs and

anything structured as a contract. A grant has a lot of, again, degrees of freedom here.

SBIR funding reduces the risk and builds value for eventual investors. So some of you may have talked to

investors or VCs about developing your project, product, and they may be hesitant because there's big

questions that remain unanswered. So an SBIR is a way to reduce that risk by answering one or more

critical questions before one of these other investment entities is willing to get involved. It also puts

your business on the map. You can put in your solicitation materials that were funded by NIH, which is

NIH [inaudible 00:07:25] is very significant in the technology world.

There's a lot of differences, again, between SBIRs and academic grants, product development versus

basic research. There's a phase one, phase two structure. I'll talk a little bit more about that. This is not

something you find in R1s and R21s. Funding levels are very different for SBIRs versus academic

proposals. I'm going to talk more about exceeding the limits, which is very common.

Before you take on a project that you think is of value to a particular division of NIH, do contact a

program officer. You need to find the name and contact information for your program officer within the

solicitation or the forms F document, and send them an email. Request a phone call, prepare a one-page

outline with bullet points. Advise if you will be exceeding the statutory budget limit. So NIH has

statutory budget limits for phase one and twos that vary according to the division you're applying to,

which correlates highly with the size of their budget. But for some of these projects, including one that I

have currently funded, a phase one that's over half a million dollars, which that's a lot for a phase one,

but it really depends on the alignment with the division's priorities. An application that is of high

relevance, a program priority to a division officer is more likely to get funded, even at a very high budget

limit and at the exclusion of other projects with lower budgets.

You have to be persistent in contacting program officers and personnel. They're very difficult to get in

touch with, and that's a development that has nothing to do with COVID, but as of the last several years,

the intense interest in SBIR funding has resulted in program officers facing a barrage of inquiries that

they really don't have to field by telephone. Again, it's difficult to get their attention, so you have to be

persistent.

Division topics and priorities, I mentioned, very, very important to understand. Coming back to that

onerous Omnibus Solicitation, you do need to take the time to go through your divisions, and you need

to decide which division your application is likely to fall under or be assigned to. Subscribe to funding

opportunity announcements. There's multiple avenues for respective applicants and even people

involved in the program beside that to be informed on what the latest priorities are.

There's also something called strategic plans and visions. You do need to be aware of these, because

they change a lot. They may change very much in your favor. So when you write a proposal, you want to

be able to say that my proposal aligns very closely with current program priorities, program relevance,

etc. Sometimes you will only find that in these kind of intercedent plans and visions that you can receive

through subscription. So these are some of the services you can sign up for, and they'll send you regular

emails updating you on your current activities and interests.

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This is a pretty big topic. I find I'm advising a lot of small businesses. Eligibility requirements are very

difficult to understand sometimes, and a lot of would-be applicants are often unaware until late in the

game that their business doesn't qualify for a number of reasons. So again, you need to study those very

carefully before you jump into this. There's all kinds of online resource to determine this, including this

first link that I'm mentioning.

To apply, you also need a DUNS number, the Dun and Bradstreet assignment. You have to register with

the systems of work management, grants.gov, Small Business Administration. You need a federal tax

identification number, and you need to register with the IRS, and you need to understand the

application process. So these are touching the surface about what you need to know about whether

you're eligible.

I just was advising a group who had a project that they were very excited about, and it turned out that

they were planning to outsource about 90% of the work to a couple of laboratories to do what they call

wet lab kinds of research. That's not allowed, if you read the instructions and requirements. So the

portion of an NIH SBIR award that could be outsourced is limited. It's limited in phase ones to about

40%. So you need to be aware of things like this and plan carefully, think ahead.

Basic programmatic structure in phase one, you're going to look at feasibility and proof of concept. This

is very difficult to define. If you have a new medical device, for example, that measures some kind of

heart function, which aspect of it do you decide to prove in a phase one with limited time and limited

budget afforded by phase one? What is proof of concept? Well, typically you have to pick the greatest

vulnerability or the largest question that might occur to a reviewer reviewing your application. This

speaks to the idea of getting not just a second pair of eyes, but input from people in the small business

community about not only how valuable your product concept is, but what the weaknesses are. So you

want to address the weaknesses in a phase one so that you merit phase two funding. Again, establish

technical merit.

In a phase two, you continue research and development, but you're also trying to complete a product. A

lot of SBIR phase twos do not result in a finished product. I would say probably at least a third of them

that I review are somewhere between a finished product and a lot more work that's going to have to be

funded independently. So what the NIH SBIR program defines as phase three, commercialization means

basically you're on your own. Phase threes are not funded by NIH. You're supposed to be at a place in

your game plan, your roadmap at the end of phase two that that's very clear and you're ready to talk to

investors or take some product prototype to market.

Phase one and two goals, in phase one, proof of concept, you can do some hypothesis testing. Again,

this is not an academic grant. It's not the core issue. You want to establish a foundation for a phase two,

reduce the risk of further expenditure by the agency. Milestones and criteria for success are highly

problematic for most applicants and even experienced applicants, because at the end of a phase one,

you're supposed to have in hand some proof of concept that's quantitative so you're able to say, "We

met this goal or this set of goals defined by these specific criteria." A lot of applicants fail in their phase

twos because what they proved or thought they proved in a phase one was not substantive.

So you need to think very carefully about what the milestones and criteria for success are, what they

should be. Again, did you address key weaknesses or key weakness? How well did you address it? Was it

a specific number, threshold of some performance of a medical device for example? Phase twos, follow

through on the promises you made in phase one. It's a little known fact among many, especially new

applicants that in a phase one application, you're fully expected to paint the picture of what the phase

two will be about, even though that's not in the instructions or guidelines for preparing of phase two,

but you need to be aware of that.

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A lot of times phase two is about evaluating some device, some software-based system in human

subjects. That entails all kinds of things that many of you are probably familiar with, institutional review

board approvals, other things that now take extraordinary amounts of time to get. Something to be

aware of. You're going to demonstrate efficacy. You want to prove that it works. What works? Well, the

device. What is your central question? What's the central performance measure of whether something

works or not? You need to prove that in the phase two.

Often in a phase two, experienced applicants will rely on an independent advisory board to review the

results of their phase one so that they have an independent or arm's length evaluation of the outcomes.

It's one thing for an applicant to say at the end of a phase two, "We finished it. We did it." It's another

thing for a group of thought leaders in a specific area of science to say, "Yes, these were met." So that's

also something to give a lot of thought to an advisory board. How do you recruit people to be on an

advisory board for a small business? It's a very, very difficult question. Give yourself a lot of time to think

about it, and if you have presence at the university, mentors, advisors there, a good place to start what

you would call a chain of trust soliciting letters from people in the field you're working in that your

concept is meritorious and that they would like to be an advisor in some capacity.

Again, coming back to this point, ideally at the end of a phase two, you're ready to go into production.

You're ready to commercialize something. This is rarely the case, by the way, as strong of an ideal it is,

the funding and time limitations, and beyond that, just the unexpected problems that come up in

implementing a project with a lot of moving parts, very, very difficult to anticipate. Impossible to

anticipate. So you'd like to have that production-ready device that's ready to go to the market, but it

simply may be impossible, again, for reasons that are unpredictable.

Here's a common scenario with… I'm putting this in the context of SBIR. Everyone watching this has

probably heard of the valleys of death, valley of death, a project product development effort gets to a

certain point, runs out of cash, and it's stalled indefinitely. In the case of an SBIR, you have the first

valley of death where you have an idea, a light goes on in your head, but you have no funding to pursue

it. You could define that as the first valley of death. You get a phase one approved and funded, and you

run out of money after the phase one's over. So you need to go to a phase two. Phase two will end, and

you will be out of funding again at the end of a phase two.

Where do you go from there? Well, there's the obvious that most of you, I'm sure, have heard of, VC

funding, an industry partner, or you bootstrap it somehow. I've seen this done especially with projects

and products that are software-based, web-based that can be managed and implemented by two or

three people. This is not the norm, but I want to point out the value here of having an industry partner

engaged in an early stage.

I mentioned earlier how valuable it is to connect with people in industry, not just to review your product

concept, but also to give you guidance along the way and conceivably take a strong interest in

commercializing what it is you're developing. This makes that next step conceivably seamless, if it's

something that an industry partner wants. So this gets all very complex.

Then there's also the, I mentioned last, because I think it's last on a lot of people's list, is VC funding,

which I found over the years to be precarious and quite uncertain. I can take questions on that later if

you'd like, comment on it a little bit more. Common scenario following up on the last slide. You do a

phase one. You do a phase two. What happens after that when you're done with the phase two?

Commonly, you're in a loop. What a lot of SBIR awardees do is that they keep a project alive by getting

another award. They start another project, some parallel idea, and they can get on something of a

treadmill, if you will, to keep projects alive or keep their small business alive, keep the doors open, keep

the lights turned on by getting additional funding. Again, for some parallel project, I've known a lot of

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applicants who have been very, very successful in doing that. I would also caution you it's very, very

difficult to do that.

Deciding whether to apply. I'll emphasize this one point throughout this four-part series. The strength of

the value proposition embodied in your invention, innovation is really the core of the whole thing. The

value proposition being what is this? Why is it valuable? Who is it valuable to? How much does it cost to

make? How much can you sell it for? How much impact will it have on a particular patient population?

Will it reduce symptoms of Alzheimer's disease 55%? Something like that. How strong is that value

proposition?

Again, this is very much in the eyes of the beholder. Again, this is where you also come back to people in

industry to get their read on this. You need to vet your product concept. Again, going back to

independent sources of expertise. You need to really think about whether your project fits into the

phase one, phase two structure. I talked a little bit about phase one and phase two of proof of concept,

and then finishing something resembling a medical device, for example, an advanced prototype, and

dividing up the funding and the timing of those two phases such that it's possible to get where you want

to go within that structure. How do you divide it? How much work should be done in a phase one and

two? Very, very difficult. It's unique to each project. You really need advice on that as much as anything.

Do you have the resources to apply and implement a project? It takes a lot to create an application. I'll

talk more about that in the upcoming series, but I've rarely seen one person create an SBIR application

that was fundable, and I've rarely seen a very small group of people with the resources solely from an

SBIR able to implement it successfully. Again, there's too many unknowns in these kinds of equations

that you need to be aware of. So this is something of a caution here.

Time. You need to really think about whether you have the time also to commit to something like this.

This is a multi-year undertaking, and it's not for everybody. So you have to give some thought to

whether you can make the necessary commitment. It ends up, for most people, being probably the most

important thing in their life for several years, because it requires just that much time and attention and

effort. Kind of like going down a freeway at 80 miles an hour and taking your hands off the steering

wheel for a little while. You just can't do that when the project's in motion. So you have to be able to

keep your hands on the steering wheel, sometimes at the cost of other things you'd like to do with your

life. High-level advice there.

What about first time PIs and small businesses? A new, inexperienced PI is at a substantial disadvantage

for a lot of reasons. A PI being a principal investigator, the lead on an SBIR project. Inexperienced PIs, by

definition here, are someone who has not done this before. There are so many things to learn in this

highly competitive arena that you're very, very unlikely to learn those on your own, unless you have

many years to devote to trial and error of pleasing a review committee, which is what this comes down

to at the end of the day.

Said the problem of relevant business and scientific experience. If you haven't run a business before and

don't have any real scientific publications, experience, but you're proposing a project that does require

that, you can see the problem here. You're in a loop of how much experience do you have to have

versus… You're trying to please reviewers, right? Of look at your application and make a determination

as to whether you're qualified to implement something or do something you've never done before.

Again, running a small business, as easy as that may sound, is exceedingly difficult for someone who's

never done it for reasons that a lot of intrepid entrepreneurs find out as they go.

Key personnel, you have to have more than one person. You need several very dedicated key personnel

in a project to have a chance of getting funded. No matter how inspired or energetic a PI is, you have to

have that core of people who are also able to support a project and be there through all of its stages.

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Team management experience. As a PI, how qualified are you to manage a team of programmers, for

example? For those of you who have never run a team of programmers, managed, that's a difficult word

to use with respect to software developers. Very, very difficult. It's not something that's easy to learn on

the fly.

Facilities and Resources statement. This is a requirement for applicants, and reviewers would like to

know what are your facilities and resources to implement a project like this? Do you have a two-room

office somewhere, or do you have access to other resources that give them the confidence that they

expect from ostensibly a successful applicant to actually pull off the project. So you need to give that

some thought as well.

Contractors can be one of your most valuable resources or assets here, because you can hire contractors

of all kinds, software developers, hardware developers to do all kinds of work that… Hiring software

developers, programmers is very, very difficult. Keeping them is very difficult. Typically on an SBIR

budget, it's very difficult to pay them industry scale, but contractors who charge a lot more, you can

engage and disengage with in a way that makes it possible to implement a six, 12, 18-month phase one,

for example.

Here's an attempt at giving you an idea of a project personnel landscape with the moniker here, "It

takes a team." You need a team of people to implement a project, and all is centered around the

principal investigator. Key personnel, the people that have to be there to make it work, an advisory

board of ideally thought leaders in the field that you're doing your research in, research and

development and, again, contractors. This is one way to look at personnel that would constitute a

successful team.

Aiming your application. Which division? Coming back to a comment I made earlier, you need to read

through the Omnibus Solicitation very carefully and determine which division. Years ago, some of the

mission statements of the divisions and areas of interest overlap. That's less so today, but it's still the

case that there's overlap between different divisions. You want to give that a great deal of thought,

again, spending your weekends reading that Omnibus Solicitation, you have a very clear understanding

of where you want to direct your application.

You can also request a dual assignment wherein more than one division of NIH may have been

interested in funding your project, and you would indicate this on the electronic application form. "We

would like this application assigned to this division, and as an optional, this other division." So there's a

provision for that in the electronic forms.

What about program priorities and relevance? I mentioned before you really need to go back to that

Omnibus Solicitation and understand very clearly all the areas of interest. Again, coming back to the

strategic plans and visions, which are separate from solicitations. Sometimes a strategic plan, and case

in point here, I had a project that had kind of a lukewarm connection with the National Institute of

Neurological Disease and Stroke, but I happened to find a white paper, a strategic plan that pointed to

exactly what I was doing. So I cited that in the application under the title "Alignment with Division

Priorities and Strategic Plans", and then explained that in four or five sentences. A very powerful way to

deflect criticisms from reviewers before they get traction about program relevance, etc.

A study section assignment. You're free to request assignment of your application to a particular study

section that you think is most relevant. Often, those study section assignments are made for you.

They're not very… Center for Scientific Review, which is a separate institution from NIH will make those

decisions for you, but if you feel for some reason that it would be more capably reviewed by another

section, you can request that. Send them a letter, email, etc.

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Which grant mechanism are you going to use? There's a regular phase one, phase two. There's the fast

track, which is a combined phase one and phase two all in one. Very difficult to write. It includes the

commercialization section, which are very extensive, very difficult to write. There's also directive phase

two. If you have a great deal of preliminary data, you're qualified, potentially, to go direct to a phase

two without going through a phase one. The advantage of that being access to a great deal of funding a

lot faster than going through the phase one with a separate review in between, and conceivably a gap of

a year or more. Again, you're doing these options.

Budget and time limits. Budget and time limits, I touched on some of this a little earlier. There's never

enough money and never enough time to finish a project. This is a truism in the world of entrepreneurs

and innovators. It's also true here in phase one, the nominal limit. Depending on which document you

look at, in the omnibus solicitation, it says the statutory limit on a phase one is 150K. If you look at forms

F, and there's another section called Budget Waivers. You may want to take a note of that to see if your

project qualifies for a budget that goes far above these limits. So they have a special document that lists

topic areas available for waivers. You'll have to get in touch with some program officer and, to an

extent, get their permission, but what they will almost always say when you ask them, you're not really

asking for permission. You're advising them that a project is coming in, say, $400,000 at a phase one,

well over any statutory limit.

What they'll say is, "Fine, let's see what happens in review." Depending on how well you score in review

will depend on the likelihood of getting funded. But you do need to make them aware of that in

advance. In some cases, people come in with massive, massive budgets that are far above these levels.

So really then the division director needs to be made aware of this so they aren't surprised at the last

minute with a high-scoring proposal that is far beyond their limit.

Phase twos, if you look in the Omnibus Solicitation, statutory limit is a million. If you look in the forms F,

1.7 million. The time limits are flexible. Phase ones can go up to two years, and a lot of time they need it,

because you're doing some kind of patient testing, recruiting, they just can't be done in a hurry. Two to

three years on a phase two. Three years is good if you're doing patient testing, especially in rare

populations that are difficult to recruit.

Again, touching on this all-important point for many of you. What if you need to exceed guideline limits?

Make the program officer aware of it and be prepared for a decision by program officer director. Again,

waivers. Get that document and check these waivers if you feel your project just doesn't fit within the

budget limits that are front and center.

Intellectual property. What is the intellectual property you're developing? Is it a patent? Is it a

copyright? Copyright databases, by the way. There's a lot of projects out there that don't have a patent

or a device. They're a database and methods for doing some kind of diagnostic. A database that might

take them four or five years to develop, it would take industry seven or eight years and five to 10 times

the cost. So even a database could be a very valuable intellectual property proposition.

Again, what is the IP? It must be owned by the small business. This is a requirement of the program. It

cannot be co-owned. A small business needs to own this outright, unless you consider the STTR

mechanism, which is a small business technology transfer mechanism wherein you collaborate with the

university, for instance, and where the university is licensing some technology. The STTR program is not

preferred by a lot of applicants, because in vernacular, the piece of the pie of the agency's or division's

budget to fund STTRs is far smaller than for the other grand mechanisms. So they're not often

considered STTRs. Here we go. Requires an agreement on proprietary interest in both parties and you

need special legalistic mechanisms in place for these to work.

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What are the chances of receiving SBIR funding? Well, if you look at over time, your chances of getting a

phase one are somewhere around 15% if you look at any batch of proposals that comes in for review,

probably 30% of them are not competitive at all. They don't get reviewed. By definition, half of all

proposals submitted are not formally reviewed in committee. They're returned with an ND, which

means, "Not discussed." They didn't make the first cut. So your chances of getting funded, if you write a

competitive application, are probably well above 15% somewhere. Phase two, [inaudible 00:42:30]

phase two conversion rate is much, much higher than for getting the phase two funded, because you've

taken a lot of the risk out.

That's pretty much all the content I have, Karen. I can take questions, and hopefully I haven't scared too

many people with some of the strictures and requirements here.

No, thank you so much some great information. We did have some questions coming through. If you

want, you can take down your screen share so people can see you. We had a few questions come where

is there any limitation on the ownership of the company, in terms of international owners versus

residents and citizens of the US?

Yeah. NIH, when the program was conceptualized, foreign ownership is disallowed. You're also, unless

you can get an act of Congress, as I was told by a division director one time, and we had somebody we

wanted to include in a project who was in Australia who was one of the world's leaders in a particular

area of diagnostics. I said, "Can we pair as a consultant?" She said the same thing. "Please don't ask me

that again."

All right. Point taken. How necessary is it to follow the approved budget? For example, we're getting an

STTR grant, but it has been delayed so much that the work we had written for the sub [inaudible

00:44:01] is already done. Can we divert the money for other R&D work with other contracts?

Talk to your program officer before you do that. STTRs, they're a different animal really in the

vernacular. You don't have as much discretion over how the funds are spent, so that's how I would

respond to that.

All right. Now if a project has already progressed past a phase one objective without SBIR funding, can

you apply for phase two directly?

Yeah. I mentioned earlier you can go direct to phase two with this caveat. Reviewers expect a lot. I'll get

into this in the next couple of weeks in this series. Everything that you do in formulating an application

comes down to whether reviewers think it's a great idea or not. Program officers and directors are not

included in the scoring process. So it can make it very difficult for reviewers to make a decision based on

preliminary data like that. However, it all comes down to how convincing that preliminary data is.

There's no single answer to that, but yes, you're free to apply directly for phase two funding, assuming

you have a critical mass of preliminary data that points in that direction.

Now a followup to that. Do you need a patent for a SBIR phase two, or is patent development objective

to use as an objective for phase two?

It can be an objective, but you need to cover this space. Ideally, you would get, if you don't have the

funds to pay patent lawyers who, in Southern California, go up for about $500 an hour I think to start,

you can get a letter from them saying, "We would be pleased to engage in filing a patent for you,

contingent on your SBIR funding conditions and your business strategy." But don't leave it out.

Reviewers are very, very strict on identifying tangible intellectual property rights, if that answers your

question.

Awesome. Great. I think there's one more coming in. If we're applying for a phase two directly, should

we mention that in the so-called pitch that needs to be submitted initially in your proposal?

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17 – OHalloran – SBIR Series Part 1-4 (Completed 11/29/20)

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I'm sorry, could you run that by me again?

If you're applying for a phase two directly, should you mention that in the proposal or the pitch that

needs to be submitted initially?

So he's asking you do you need to include the preliminary data in the direct to phase two?

Yeah. Looks like the question is, yeah, they're doing a direct to phase two. Should we mention that in

the… I'm assuming when you're contacting the program officer, right? You have your-

Yes, yes. Absolutely mention that. They'll say yes to almost anything like that, by the way. It's almost like

talking to a broken record sometimes. They'll have pre-recorded answers for almost everything, but yes.

Fantastic. I think that's all the questions we have right now. If there's any more questions, please jump

in. Now Jim, can you tell us a little bit about your next talk? I know you're getting really into the meat of

it. This is a four-part series that we're doing. We're actually doing November at University Lab Partners is

SBIR month. We also have another program put on by the SBDC. Then we have this four-part series with

you. Can you tell us a little bit about the number two, three, and four and what you're going to be

covering, since we have a really nice handful of attendees here?

Well, sections two and three are about how to create an SBIR application, and specifically how to create

a competitive SBIR application. You don't want a grant-writing experience to become an academic

exercise, which it often is for people who don't understand the program. One thing I'm really going to

hammer home, relentlessly so, is that you really do need help. You need experienced help, not just a

second pair of eyes to do copy editing. But you need advice, and I'm going to focus on that a lot, but I'm

going to get into the strategy and mechanics of writing a proposal. So hopefully the people in

attendance will prepare for that so that the information might be more palatable and easily assimilated

than otherwise. I'm going to go… There's a lot more content coming up than this one. This is an

overview. This is the easy stuff.

Great. So SBIR series number two of four, How to Create a Competitive SBIR is going to be on

Wednesday, November 11th at 1:00. So same time, same BAT channel. You can go ahead and SRVP on

our website. And so on behalf of ScienceDocs and ULP, I want to thank you, Jim, for joining us today and

sharing your insight. Were really looking forward to this entire month with you. In the meantime, please

reach out, folks, if you need assistance in any way. ScienceDocs and ULP is here to support you. We

want to see more SBIR funding here in this region. So in the meantime, take care of yourself, and we'll

see you next week. Bye now.

Bye bye. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Thanks, Jim. Take care.