In early February we held well attended SBIR workshops in Athens, Augusta, Savannah and Warner Robins. Why not Atlanta? Well, our thinking was that we are located in Atlanta and readily available to those in the metro area so it was unnecessary. However, in publicizing these workshops, we received inquiries as when this workshop would be offered in Atlanta and even had people traveling from Atlanta to the Athens workshop.
So, maybe we were wrong. After all the large majority of technology development in Georgia occurs in metro Atlanta. So, we will be looking at first offering the same half-day workshop that was held around the state. This workshop first explains the SBIR and STTR programs and helps you determine if this potential funding source fits your needs and then explores the details of what goes into a winning SBIR or STTR proposal.
When should we offer this? Well, most of the federal agencies with the largest SBIR/STTR budgets have solicitations of proposals with deadlines sometime during the summer. DoD and NSF both have June due dates. NIH and USDA are due in August and NASA in September. So, a workshop in late April or early May would be timely. Future workshops that are under discussion cover topics such as “Now that your start-up has been selected for SBIR funding, what do you need to do?” and “How to develop a winning commercialization plan”. Let us know if there are other subjects that you would like for us to address.