r/SBIR

To clarify, I’m a woman founder and owner and am genuinely curious what other women are exploring SBIR/STTR.

(sorry if this is spam, it's not trying to be) Hi, we have developed a drone that flies at 30dB noise. We're looking for buyers, but they must be non-evil. Is SBIR open topic still a thing?

We just got an award and is asked by the program officer to stay compliant. This is all pretty confusing.

I talked to a couple of firms like reliascent or Jameson. But the prices are pretty steep. Plus I’m still confused in the end.

What do you all do? Also how do you all manage the budget?

EDIT: We ended up going with forge https://goforge.io/solutions/sbir-accounting. The prices were great. Plus I got to talk to a customer of theirs and that really helped me feel solid about choosing them.

I’m a solo entrepreneur preparing an NSF SBIR Phase I proposal without university affiliations or institutional research infrastructure. I have the technical work plan and needed expertise areas identified, but all resources are still TBD because I do not yet have specific people attached.

For those who have gone through this process, how did you identify and secure tentative technical support before award? I’m trying to understand what the normal process looks like for getting people willing to say they would participate or support the project contingent on funding.

I am a CPA that handles a lot of SBIR companies and constantly I run into people that don’t know you need to file tax returns or for some reason think grant proceeds are not income. Unfortunately in many situations this can lead to the build up of back taxes penalties and interest that can bankrupt a small startup.

With the program reauthorized now I am sure there are a lot of people who will be receiving their first ever SBIR grant. Be sure you are working with a competent professional that understands how these grants work so that you can proactively plan for taxes instead of scrambling to deal with a problem on the backend.

Writing a full NSF SBIR proposal for a med device, and it's my first one (of these - have written others for other programs).

Is there any kind of more detailed 'proposal assessor guidance/scoring criteria' for these solicitations than what is in the merit review guidelines?

I've seen much more detailed proposal assessment criteria made available for other programs (in other countries), which can be useful to inform how the proposal is written, and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

Thanks.

I work inside an R1 university research ecosystem. A few times a month, an SBIR company reaches out wanting to add a faculty co-PI or university subaward to a Phase II proposal. Most of those requests get a polite "we'll consider it" and then quietly die.

Here's what's actually happening on the other side of that email.

Faculty get pitched constantly. A cold ask from a company they've never heard of, two weeks before a Phase II deadline, with a vague "we need a university partner for credibility" framing, lands in the same mental bucket as the LinkedIn DMs from offshore SEO firms. The faculty member skims it, sees no specific technical fit, sees no real budget for their lab, sees a tight turnaround, and moves on.

The companies that actually land university partnerships do a few things differently:

• They show up six to nine months before the deadline, not two weeks. Real conversations take more than one email, and the faculty member is weighing your ask against grants they're already chasing.
• They've read at least one of the faculty member's recent papers and can explain the specific technical overlap. "We do AI for defense" is not a fit. "Your 2024 paper on X is exactly the gap we have in our approach to Y" is.
• They come with a clear scope for the university role and a realistic subaward budget. Faculty don't want a token 5% subaward that creates compliance overhead with no real research. They want a defined deliverable they can actually staff.
• They understand that the university has its own contracting office, IP terms, and overhead rates, and they don't try to negotiate those things away in the first conversation. Pushing back on F&A in email one is the fastest way to get ghosted.
• They have a real Phase III story the faculty member can see themselves in. If the only path is "and then we sell it commercially," there's nothing in it long term for the lab. A sustained research relationship attached to the transition is different.

None of this is hard. Most SBIR companies just treat the university partnership as a checkbox on the proposal rather than a relationship to build, and the universities can tell.

If anyone wants to dig into specifics in the comments, happy to. If you want a blunt read on how your current academic outreach looks from the faculty side, or how to structure a Phase II teaming arrangement that universities actually say yes to, DM me. I'll do a handful for free.

Our submission is Nov 2025 NSF SBIR Phase I in translational impacts. Our status is stuck on assigned for reviews. Has anyone heard any decisions or any request for due diligence?

For any SBIR applicants who took an I-CORP program for a new therapuetic, what strategies did you use to contact customers?

I'm focused on oncologists, VCs, and researchers. I haven't had much luck making cold calls or through LinkedIn.

We submitted an NSF STTR Phase 1 proposal a while back and as we all know, many many many things have happened since then on NSF's side. After due diligence, they gave us one update in Feb, but I haven't heard anything since. I've sent emails and a linkedin message to our PO but have not received a response. Are POs allowed to talk about what's happening right now? Should I try to reach out again?

I got the feedback report yesterday, which was generally good, yet I did not get "excellent" on any metrics, and I did not get selected. aside from a linkedin post last week, it has hardly been evident that they were moving forward with the AFWERX/SPACEWERX open topic from last year. Did anyone get good news of selection?

We submitted an NIH Phase II STTR in April 2025, scored, JIT post AC meeting (late Fall). No movement since. PO hasn't given much direction other than we're "still being considered". Anyone else in the same boat?

Not sure how much longer we can stay afloat!