We are frequently asked what a company receiving SBIR funding looks like. Occasionally, it is a long established company with several hundred employees. More often it is a ten to twenty person R&D company that has been around for five or more years. But most frequently it is a very early stage company with less than a handful of mostly part-time employees that is looking for seed capital.
Such a start-up was Simatra Modeling Technologies, which is developing high performance computing technologies for numerical simulation and analysis. The SBIR Assistance Program started working with Simatra in March 2006 when the newly formed company was seeking its first funding to develop the technology with an initial application to medical research. The National Institutes of Health funded Simatra with a Phase I SBIR grant of $183,000 to start moving the technology forward and earlier this year followed through with a Phase II grant of over $1.5 million to continue development.
The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) has recently announced that Simatra is being admitted to that incubator’s highly selective membership. There is still much work to be done, but the company is off to a good start with funding to move the technology toward commercialization and the support of the ATDC as they navigate the many issues of a growing young company. Simatra is not unique as many other Georgia companies have successfully gotten off the ground in large part through SBIR funding.
Regarding the guidance from the SBIR Assistance Program in obtaining these funds, Simatra President Michael Sorensen has stated that “we really could not have done this without you…” Guidance from the SBIR Assistance Program is available to all Georgia companies at no cost.