SBIR Reauthorization: What Just Happened and What It Means for You

See the summary of the bill here
Lawmakers aim to fast-track federal small business reauthorization
Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act

A fireside chat with Sam Tetlow (CEO, Grant Engine), Eric Blatt (Partner, Scale LLP), and Josh Bar-on (Senior Advisor, Grant Engine)

The Moment Everyone Was Waiting For

We hosted this webinar expecting to deliver updates on a bill that was still in negotiation. What we didn’t expect was to watch it actually break loose in real time.

Midway through our conversation, word came through that Senators Ernst and Markey had jointly released the reauthorization legislation. After months of stalled negotiations, false starts, and growing anxiety across the startup ecosystem, the SBIR program finally has a path forward.

But before we get to what’s in the bill — and what you need to do right now — let’s back up and walk through how we got here, straight from the people who were closest to the action.

Who’s in The Room

Josh Bar-on: Welcome, everybody. My name is Josh Bar-on, and I’m a Senior Advisor at Grant Engine. Today we’re going to give you updates and discuss the current state of the SBIR reauthorization process. For this fireside chat, we are joined by two extremely knowledgeable speakers about the SBIR program and also about its reauthorization — namely, Grant Engine’s CEO and founder, Sam Tetlow, and also Eric Blatt, who is a partner at Scale LLP, and has been on the ground engaging with the two senators’ offices that are negotiating back and forth about whether or not, and under what structure, to reauthorize the SBIR program.

But before we introduce our speakers in more depth, I’d first like to introduce Grant Engine. Grant Engine is a consultancy firm focused on helping innovative companies win and leverage non-dilutive funding from a wide range of industries and also from a wide range of agencies, including the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, BARDA, the ARPA programs including DARPA, ARPA-H, and ARPA-E, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and many foundation and state sources as well.

Our mission is pretty simple: to save lives and extend the length and quality of life by helping our clients win federal non-dilutive funding for research and development. Grant Engine is now in its 10th year. We are based out of New York, but we have team members across the country, including more than 40 PhDs, and have specialists in the life sciences as well as in defense and dual-use. In addition to helping companies write proposals and win federal funding, we also provide accounting and compliance services. Our win rate is 2 to 4 times better than the national average.

One of our speakers today, Sam Tetlow, Grant Engine’s founder and CEO, has a track record as an entrepreneur and investor in tech companies such as Amalgam Therapeutics, Epicypher — which was named the best university startup in 2016 by the US Congress — ILS Genomics, Immunologics, and Transient Pharma, which actually led to an IPO in April 2011. As a leader, Sam focuses on building great teams, developing products and services that clients and customers love and actually need, and more recently, navigating the turbulence in the federal funding landscape. Sam continues to build on his venture capital experience by investing into compelling companies as an angel investor. Sam holds an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He has been on Mount Everest and is a former competitive triathlete and an avid proponent of being good while also doing well.

Sam is joined by Eric Blatt. Eric is a partner at Scale LLP and a leading voice on intellectual property and government innovation for emerging companies building in national security, dual-use, and defense tech markets. Eric combines deep IP and litigation experience with practical fluency in federally funded R&D, including SBIR, STTR, and government data rights. He began his career as a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and is recognized for his ability to synthesize new technologies, craft persuasive arguments, and deliver cost-effective outcomes across patents, IP transactions, and strategic partnerships. Eric also serves as Executive Director of the Alliance for Commercial Technology and Government, and mentors founders through programs including the Navy’s SBIR and STTR Transition Program and MIT’s Mission Innovation Program. Eric has been an important advocate for the renewal of the SBIR program.

Setting the Stage: Turbulence and Opportunity

Sam Tetlow: Thanks, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I just want to set the stage a little bit for today. We’re going to talk about two key topics — one which is near and dear to everyone’s hearts and wallets, which is the SBIR reauthorization. Eric is going to walk us through the latest state of play and offer some insights and some reality about where we are and what we can expect. We’re going to then turn our attention to what opportunities exist in the landscape for life sciences and defense and dual-use.

To set the stage, we’re hearing a lot of questions from the marketplace. There’s a lot of commentary and posting on LinkedIn and at the proverbial water cooler. And here’s a snapshot of what we’re hearing — and there’s a lot of concern, rightly so. This runs the gamut from “worried that things won’t get reauthorized” to “I can’t count on it anymore” to “I’m moving on because the uncertainty is just prevalent and everywhere.”

All of those feelings and dynamics we hear, we understand, they’re real, and we’re living through those as well. We’re also here to impart to you the insights about where the program is and what it can mean for you when it does get reauthorized — which it absolutely will. Moreover, there are other opportunities that are available to you now. There is turbulence here, and in spite of that turbulence, there is opportunity for you to go after non-SBIR funding. We absolutely advocate and believe you need to be ready for when the program does turn on, and in the meantime, also think about alternatives. We’ll talk about those towards the end.

If there is one person that we are closest to, who is himself closest to the action — the staffers, the senators making the decision — it is Mr. Eric Blatt. The staffers are a lot of who make this action happen, while the senators make the decisions. In my opinion, there is no better person to provide the reality and the insight about what’s going on behind the scenes, what we can expect in the coming days and weeks, and also provide some hope to you. So without further ado, Eric, I’ll hand it over to you.

Inside the Negotiation: How We Got Here

Eric Blatt: Thanks, Sam. I don’t know that I have insider knowledge right now, which actually, to some extent, frees me up. Sometimes people do pass little nuggets to me and then say, “Please don’t share.” I’ll give a little bit of context on how things wound up where they are. I have two hats I wear. I’m an attorney — I lead a legal practice that’s focused on dual-use and emerging defense technology companies. We represent around 200 startups in the space. And then I also serve as the executive director for the Alliance for Commercial Technology and Government. That’s an all-volunteer trade association — all work for free. We represent basically the same constituency of companies: companies that are largely startups, largely IP and product-oriented, that want to get into the government and have a fair shot at actually selling their products as products, and not becoming butts-in-seats service defense contractors.

We got involved — the organization, even before I joined, was deeply involved in the 2022 SBIR reauthorization, and that got done, as these things tend to do, at the finish line. We had some priorities for the 2025 reauthorization. We actually went live with a wish list in October 2024, so about a year and a half ago was when we formally kicked up our involvement in this process. Senator Ernst was interested in a lot of our recommendations — a lot of those found their way into her Innovate Act, released in March 2025. The Democrats had their own positions on various issues and had their own version of the bill. And then the clock ran out. There wasn’t substantive engagement, and the clock ran out.

The Alliance represents the startup side of this issue, so you can think of there being maybe three key stakeholders in the SBIR reauthorization debate. There’s the agencies — in particular the DOD, but also the NIH, Department of Energy, NASA, and National Science Foundation. They have their missions, and the SBIR program is an important part of executing on those missions. For each agency the thesis is a little bit different, but it’s important for all of them.

Then in industry there are sort of two camps. There is the startup world, which we believe the SBIR program was really designed to support — get non-dilutive funding to folks who are developing high-impact technology, and then those companies can get the money, and if things work out, they’ll graduate, they’ll grow out of the program, and move on to bigger, better things. Obviously not all projects pan out, so maybe they’ll get a little funding, it doesn’t pan out, and they’ll move on to the next thing. That constituency is, by numbers, about 99% of the program.

And then there is a legacy component in the program — contract research and development. A lot of these companies have been in the program for 30-plus years. Some of them receive tens of millions of dollars. The largest — some people call them SBIR mills, or multiple award winners, take your pick, we try not to use the pejorative term — has been in the program for many years and is receiving about $40 million of these awards per year. They obviously have an interest in protecting the status quo and continuing to get that significant source of revenue.

The two sides had opposed views. Senator Ernst was taking the startup-oriented view of things, and some of the other folks on the other side were taking another view, and unfortunately there just wasn’t a lot of engagement. That went right through the September 30th deadline. We hit December. There was an effort by the other side to force their preferred outcome by attaching a one-year status quo reauthorization to the NDAA in December. That didn’t happen. In mid-December, substantive negotiations started, and obviously mid-December there’s a holiday break, people went out of town, and then people came back. Starting in January there were earnest negotiations, and then we all thought we had a compromise, and then we didn’t have a compromise.

But now it seems — I think we might be having this webinar about 24 hours too early. We picked this date a few weeks ago. I think we’re probably at the finish line. I’m expecting good news to come across in the next 24 hours, although I’ve expected that before and been proven wrong. But I think most likely we will see some good news in the next day or two, and possibly later this afternoon.

Sam Tetlow: Amazing, Eric. Thank you, first of all, for your tireless work and advocacy. The acts of Congress don’t just happen — people like you help make them happen. I think I speak for the entire community that your work matters. What you’re doing really matters to everyone. So thank you first and foremost for leaning in and making the hard work look maybe easy, but it’s never easy. And moreover, for keeping people apprised — your LinkedIn is well followed, rightly so. Thank you again for joining us here. Let’s take some questions as we go, Eric.

How Close Are We Really?

Eric Blatt: So there was a question about how do we know, right? We have been working with various stakeholders on the Hill. Senator Ernst has been the champion for the startup side of the issue, so our strongest relationship is with Senator Ernst’s team. Senator Ernst is the chair of the Senate Small Business Committee. We’ve also had many discussions with the other corners on the Hill, and have lots of friends who have strong relationships with those other corners as well. We get information through various channels — some of it is just having friends in industry who are speaking with staffers, and some of it is coming directly from staff.

One thing I have observed is that when negotiations are happening, the staff would prefer to have space and quiet and an expectation of decorum, and that conversations are going to be confidential. For whatever reason, there was a lot of no progress during this debate process, and I think people got frustrated. So various sides have gone to industry to organize letters, and industry sometimes goes to the press, as ways to release pressure or to apply pressure on the other side to come to the table. From my observations, when things are hitting a snag is when we tend to hear more information, and when things are going well we tend to hear a little bit less.

Things have been quiet for about the last week and a half. I interpret that as a good sign. There was a report in Politico Pro on Monday suggesting that there would be a bill released Tuesday — that didn’t happen. There was a report in CQ yesterday thinking a bill might go live today. We’ve asked, and the staffers are appropriately keeping a tight lid. I really don’t have a firm answer. I can just tell that there’s a lot of people thinking it will happen, and I haven’t heard anyone firmly say no. I think most likely it’s going to happen, but again, could be wrong.

Sam Tetlow: A little bit more color there might be helpful, Eric. Given your interactions with both the Ernst and Markey staffing teams, I’m hearing kind of between the lines that not hearing something from the past week might be good news, because they’re heads down working on progress. Can you unpack the tone and tenor about its trajectory a little bit for us?

Eric Blatt: A lot of the bill is baked, right? Both sides had their bills, then they exchanged some drafts, and then they started working off of a common set of language. I think the common language had 11 or 12 different sections, and most of that there was substantive feedback that went back and forth and it basically got agreed — both sides found it pretty productive language. The point where there was substantial disagreement between the two camps was what’s called Section 4, which had to do with the multiple award winner issue. The proposal from Senator Ernst’s side was to go to the agencies and say, “Some companies are submitting very large numbers of proposals, and in order to reduce administrative burden, maybe the agency should apply a limit.” The agencies would determine what that limit is — if an agency wants to have companies submit hundreds of proposals, the agency could set a proposal limit at 10,000 per year, or some arbitrarily high number that really was no limit at all. Or the agency could say, “We’re getting flooded by AI-generated slop proposals,” or “We don’t like that a couple of companies have strong relationships and are winning tens of millions of dollars of this money per year, and we’d like that to be more broadly distributed,” and set a low limit. The agency would be empowered to effectuate its mission as it believes best and would set whatever limit the agency deems best.

That proposal is basically giving the agency power to run its program how it wants. A lot of people have seen that proposal and think it sounds pretty reasonable. There was obviously a camp that said, “We’re worried about the impact on our business — what if the agency picks a number like 30 or 50 proposals per year and we usually submit 200? What will that do to our revenue?” There was some pushback from certain players in industry, and that was where the real friction was on Section 4. We don’t know exactly how that will break down, but we do know pretty much the rest of the bill is out there and we expect it will continue to remain uncontroversial.

How Does This Actually Get Passed?

Sam Tetlow: A couple of questions around the passing — does this require a full Senate unanimous approval? What’s the unlock?

Eric Blatt: I’m not a lobbyist, I’m an attorney. I’ve wound up doing this in my spare time, just trying to do what we can to bring the sides together. My understanding — and again, I’m not a legislative process expert, but what people who are experts have told me — is that in order to get this passed, the Small Business Committee does not get floor time. Floor time is very limited. You can’t put something on the floor and have everyone vote on it, even though that’s how many people think Congress works. So either this bill would need to be added to some other must-pass legislation, like the NDAA, which would happen in summer, fall, or even winter if things get delayed — that would be a very long time. There’s some other must-pass legislation coming up, although we’ll see if it gets added to any of that.

The default plan right now is something called unanimous consent. If every single senator agrees, you don’t have to have a vote, you don’t have to add it to another vehicle that actually goes on the floor. If even one person objects, then you have to go through the vote process. But the hope and expectation is that if the camps on the Senate Small Business Committee can agree that this is a good resolution, then all 100 senators will follow suit and there will be no objection. So the preferred path is unanimous consent, yes.

The Single Hang-Up: SBIR Mills and the Multiple Award Winner Debate

Sam Tetlow: Why do you think now is the moment where things are going to happen?

Eric Blatt: I don’t know, honestly. There’s public reporting that it’s going to happen. A lot of people are saying yes, I’ve heard this and heard that. I haven’t heard someone say no, that’s not going to happen — and I think I would have heard a no. If we weren’t close, I think someone would have let me know.

Sam Tetlow: And I think Rich had asked in the chat — what is the single hang-up point? I think you touched on this issue of multiple award winners, or some have referred to these companies as SBIR mills, that just go get 10 or 20 awards per year — hundreds of millions of dollars per year. About 20% of the dollars go to these companies, and they clip the indirect fee, the profit, and don’t use it for translational product into market. As I understand it from you, Eric, the Ernst camp wants reform to limit the number of awards or dollars that can go to any one company, and the Markey camp is opposed.

Eric Blatt: Yeah, I think that’s fair. The Ernst camp would like to see — if we’re spending $4 or $5 billion per year, which is what the SBIR program is — that there’s ROI, that we’re spending taxpayer dollars in a way that is efficient and effective and is leading to new technologies and new businesses and new commercialization, and is adding to the vibrancy of the U.S. economy and the tax base and jobs and all these things. They see that happening when those dollars go to high-growth startups that are making a big bet on something big — if it hits, it could change the world. Obviously they don’t all hit, but if it hits, it changes the world. They see that as creating dynamism and return on investment for the taxpayer, whereas if you’re doing contract R&D, making a new bolt or a new widget, and it doesn’t go anywhere — maybe if it goes well you make a few units, but that’s kind of it. They don’t see that as high-impact, high-ROI for the taxpayer.

If the Ernst camp had their druthers — and they actually did propose this in the Innovate Act — a company would get up to $75 million of SBIR awards, and once you hit $75 million, that’s it, the money goes to other companies. That is not what the ultimate compromise was, because there were some companies that had received hundreds of millions of dollars and they didn’t want to be eliminated, and they had friends who were able to prevent that from going through. That is what Senator Ernst would have wanted — the money would go more toward these high-growth startups and truly small businesses — but where we’re going to wind up is probably going to be some sort of compromise.

Will the Full Budget Still Be Available?

Sam Tetlow: We’re getting questions around whether the total budget for the year is still going to be available through September 30th.

Eric Blatt: I think it might be a little less. There were some movements to reprogram some of the SBIR money — move it to other weapon system procurement and research and development. There was, just a few days ago or maybe a week ago, a move to shift more of that money out of that pile if the reauthorization didn’t happen. I think, hopefully, that sort of jolted people into action, and it’s not going to happen. So I think some of that money is going to come back, but I don’t know that all of it is.

Sam Tetlow: On the NIH side, no one knows until things get passed into law. But remember, the SBIR program is a percentage of the extramural budget, and that basis of dollars is based on what’s appropriated from Congress for the agency. The appropriations have happened for the NIH at least, and the word we’re hearing is that they would try to spend the full year budget before September 30th. We’re not going to know until things are inked.

We’re also hearing a number of questions around — “I got a competitive score” or “my Year 2 is going to happen in the fourth quarter of this year, what’s going to happen?” The answer we’ve been hearing is that there will be a running through of the backlog of competitive scores that have gone through study section and review. When the program is reauthorized, they will take them in submission date order. For the NIH it’s April 5th, for DOD it would look to be July or earlier for the out-of-cycle solicitations. They will award by institute, center, and division, and the DOD by when the council would effectively meet, and they would follow the similar process of awards as they typically do — but catching up on the backlog in chronological order.

The Pressure Campaign That Moved the Needle?

Sam Tetlow: One question that’s a good one and that I think is in everyone’s best interest is — what can we do to keep up the pressure?

Eric Blatt: I think there are two paths here. One is we get a happy announcement in the next 24 to 48 hours, and then the Alliance’s position will be congratulations, thank you so much. It’s going to be a celebration — obviously a much delayed celebration that caused a lot of pain, but better late than never.

And then there is a world where we don’t get that, and then most likely that means something happened. We won’t necessarily know exactly what. We thought we had a deal based on that agency authority compromise two weeks ago. I had been told that there was compromise language that was basically approved at the staff level, and that we were waiting on official stakeholder approval. Then Senator Markey was supposed to provide his approval, and he didn’t. At that point there was a lot of concern that maybe we didn’t have a deal, or maybe we weren’t as close as we thought we were. So we did go public with that information, and there was a very significant public response — because virtually everyone in the ecosystem wants it to happen, and there were just a few companies that were concerned with that agency compromise. There was a lot of public response — probably 100, 200, or more companies called Senator Markey’s office. There was a Change.org petition that I believe has 500-plus signatures now pushing for the compromise.

There was a very strong, very organized public response from the startup community in a way that really there hadn’t been before. My best guess is that public response did have an impact and is going to produce a compromise soon. If we don’t get that compromise soon, I think absolutely the public should continue to apply pressure, because I do think that pressure has a very discernible impact and is motivating the sides to come together. So if you don’t see something in the next 24 hours, sign the Change.org petition, call your representative, call Senator Markey’s office.

Sam Tetlow: Keep up the pressure. If it doesn’t happen, my personal action is — if it doesn’t happen by 5 o’clock, or whenever I go to bed tonight, I’m emailing Giselle Berry and the four other staffers that I have email addresses for at Markey’s office, and I’m picking up the phone and leaving a message for the fifth time. If you are interested in those email addresses, email us — we’re happy to give those to you one to one, we’re not going to make them public. If you email Dan, he’ll get those email addresses to you. We’ve got Ernst’s too, but I think Markey is the linchpin here. So if it doesn’t happen in the next 12 hours, let the democratic process work its magic — which is you making noise about the need to get it reauthorized, especially those of you that live in Massachusetts.

A lot of questions around Year 2 awards — a Phase 2 where the Phase 1 has been completed, or maybe a fast track where the first year has been awarded. If you think about this conceptually, the NIH needs to spend a year’s worth of money in the remaining time between now and September 30th. The existing awards that have not yet been authorized to be spent or awarded will get funded in that catch-up year. When the program gets reauthorized, new applications that have competitive scores will go through the award process as per normal. So if you can envision — hypothetically, if the program never hit pause, we would be normally flowing with awards happening. All of that is just going to happen in a shorter time period between now and September 30th, which is the government year end. I would expect a Year 1 award for the NIH to be awarded. I would expect a Phase 2 of a fast track — where we did the Phase 1 — to be awarded if you hit your goals. Everything is going to happen normally, just in a very abnormally short time period. What that means for you is that you must be ready.

Sam Tetlow: Amazing. You called it, Eric. We thought it might happen during this webinar, and there we go. So what you just said, Eric, is underlining the point we were just talking about — you need to be ready. Ryan, you asked about when the point of no return is, and what we’re hearing is that about a month is the necessary time for the NIH to get its machinery in operation. So March 5th would be a red line. Hopefully this happens in the next 24 hours, but we’re hearing March 5th is a red line for the NIH. I will also say DARPA has gone on record as saying that as soon as the SBIR program gets reauthorized, the next Wednesday they’re issuing SBIR solicitations. So it depends on where you’re going, but good news there.

What’s In the Bill: The Key Provisions

Sam Tetlow: There’s a question on AI. The NIH has issued a limit of six applications per year per PI, which is a low number. The NSF requires you to disclose if you used AI to write your application. At the NIH, reviewers are prohibited from using AI for their reviews. That’s the state of play at the NIH, and the DoD has not come out with guidance as of yet. But one thing we have seen pretty consistently — we saw it in 2024, where AI was used to write grants — the win rate, effectively the award rate, was the lowest it has ever been in 2024. And that’s because AI was used. Reviewers can tell. Don’t use AI as a crutch.

Eric Blatt: With the obvious caveat that I haven’t reviewed what is going live at present, I assume that most of this looks like it did before. The number one most high-impact item for most of the folks in this audience is going to be the Strategic Breakthrough Program. The Alliance’s viewpoint — and this is particularly for folks who are working with the DOD and the agencies where the government might be your customer, so not really NIH — is that the SBIR program is a fantastic tool to get in, get some research and development, and build something compelling. However, there’s a problem on the other end. The number one problem is going from Phase 2 to actual delivery of value to the warfighter. Valley of death is a common term to describe this, but the bottom line is there’s no dedicated program on the other end, or even a transition program to get you to the other side.

The Strategic Breakthrough Program is specifically intended to address that problem. It’s modeled on the Air Force’s STRATFI program. It’s a jumbo Phase 2 slash Phase 3 — legally it’s a Phase 2, but you can think of it functionally as a Phase 3. You can get up to $30 million in a contract or a series of contracts of SBIR-allocated funds, and then you can match that with other dollars. So you can go to a customer in the DOD or another agency and say, “I have this product, this solution that adds value to your mission. If you can find maybe $5 or $10 million to work with me, then I can multiply that by getting $5 or $10 million of SBIR funds and $5 or $10 million of venture capital funds or private investment. So if you can put in $10 million off your budget, I can actually deliver $30 million of value to you.” That’s a really powerful sales tool to actually get over the valley of death and deliver real value to your customer, and get your customer to begin forming the habit of buying from you.

The other thing it does is — on Phase 1s and Phase 2s, they’re really great tools, particularly early on, but it’s hard to scale up your business on $1 and $2 million contracts. You just can’t get enough headcount and enough traction and velocity to get to where you need to be, where the government is willing to place a big bet on you and really rely on you. What this does is it allows you to build up to $30 million — or potentially larger than that, because you include the matching funds — and really build the critical mass of your business to the point that the government truly believes that you’ll be there in a handful of years and they can rely on you. So number one, it’s a really powerful transition tool, and number two, it’s a really powerful tool to scale up and build the critical mass you need to be a real competitive player in the defense or public sector. That’s something we’ve been pushing for for years and we’re really excited about it.

There are a number of other quality-of-life improvements. If anyone’s ever tried to do a Phase 3 with the government, you will have found that most contracting officers are not familiar with Phase 3 and not really comfortable with it. The legislation directs the agencies to implement training programs to educate acquisition professionals. There are also improvements on Phase 3 processing, trying to standardize things. And there are quality-of-life improvements on how TABA — Technical and Business Assistance — dollars go out to companies, giving companies more flexibility to use that money in ways that make sense for their situation.

Foreign Risk Assessment and the Five-Year Window

Sam Tetlow: It does appear that both Ernst and Markey’s offices have jointly issued legislation. Eric, would you say that’s a meaningful statement?

Eric Blatt: I think it does. I would love to read it, but I think that would be a good sign if true.

Sam Tetlow: Yeah, that was the first line, and I think that says it all. One question that has been threaded through here is foreign risk assessment. This has been a well-intended goal applied with arbitrary force. The more transparent decision-making that Eric touched on — a disclosure back to companies about why they were denied, and a process to correct erroneous denials — expect that to not be easy. The best way to do this is to have as clean a profile as possible, with no risk assessment flags against foreign countries of concern — Russia, China, Iran, Turkmenistan, and a couple of others — before you submit. The intent of the legislation remains, but the inadvertent flagging of certain applications that don’t involve foreign countries of concern, but where an errant word raised a red flag — I think that’s really what’s been happening here. So you still need to be diligent and have rigor in this regard, but it’s going to be less arbitrary. That’s good news.

There are a number of questions around other agencies like NIST, Department of Energy, and USDA. The bill is being authorized for five years through 2031. That gives enough runway for agencies to spin up — like USDA, which is not as prolific. It gives runway to agencies like the DOD to get their infrastructure up and running. All agencies that pass the threshold for having an SBIR or STTR program will get up and running. For some smaller agencies that’s going to take some time. For groups like DARPA that are nimble and move very quickly, it’ll happen fast.

What You Need to Do Right Now

Sam Tetlow: One question that came up is what do you do from here around budget waiver topics, and will there be another cycle — because we missed one in January. We don’t know is the short answer. But I would encourage you to continue to think about budget waiver topics where that’s appropriate and allowed. The program is really there to reach milestones, so be ethical, don’t be greedy. But if you need that extra money to do the budget waiver — which you almost always do to get product to market — then go there.

Given this state of play, April 5th looks to be a high-confidence deadline for the NIH. For the next available cycle after that, I think we’re looking at summer — usually June or July. The insertion of another deadline between April 5th and September 5th I would say is unlikely, but certainly possible. There’s going to be a lot of submissions happening between now and April 5th. What I would encourage you to do is not use AI to slam something together just for the sake of submitting. We saw in 2024 that that does not work. We had one of our clients — who shall forever remain nameless — submit 22 applications in a cycle, and they came up short 100%. That’s a data point, but it’s representative of the reality of using AI. Real people, for the most part diligent, read these reviews. You want to put in high-quality, competitive submissions that matter, and that takes time to prepare and submit. We’ve prepped for these moments when we need to do two and a half months of work in a month. Please reach out to us at funding@grantengine.com. If we work together, you’re going to need to move faster than you’ve moved before — be ready for that.

Eric Blatt: I’m really excited to read the bill. We’ll be interested to see exactly how it came out. Looks like that Section 4 item was resolved in a way that seems like it could have been agreed weeks ago — looks pretty familiar to the last draft I reviewed. I’m glad to see it came live, and it does look like the rest of the bill is basically what we expected. I’ll have to dive into it, but looking forward to reviewing it carefully. We’ll probably provide some analysis and commentary on what it contains in due course, and obviously we’ll try to provide an update to our legal clients to the extent that that is relevant for our folks as well.

Sam Tetlow: Great. If you’re not a member of the Alliance, I’d encourage everyone to join — it’s a nominal fee. Or hire Eric as your early stage company counsel. He is not only awesome in helping the ecosystem, but I can say, as an attorney, he is a trusted source. Please lean on him. We’re not getting paid anything for that advertisement — it just comes from an authentic place. Please support Eric’s outstanding work for everyone. Thank you again, Eric, for sticking around as we wrap up this webinar.

We’ll just call that great timing.