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Senator Tester encourages the SBA to improve and speed up the SBIR awards process
Recently, Sen. Tester sent the following letter http://www.matr.net/files/SenTesterSBIRLetter.pdf to Karen Mills, the SBA Administrator, urging better streamlining of the SBIR Phase II award process at participating agencies.
As background, the following website gives statistics on the time delay between end of Phase I and start of Phase II for different agencies, as well as time from proposal submission to start of Phase I: http://sbir.gov/competitiveness. Note that the average delay between end of Phase I and start of Phase II is 10.5 months for DoD, and almost 21 months for HHS (NIH), which can present an insurmountable cash flow problem for small businesses working on the development of important and innovative new technologies.
Improving this award process would be especially important here in Montana, where SBIR/STTR funding has provided $140 million to over 100 different companies for new technology and product development, contributing to regional economic growth, but other sources of investment capital, such as Venture Capital, are extremely rare – VC investments have averaged just one per year over the last 15 years in Montana, while a number of promising high-growth companies have been offered VC investment only on condition of moving out of state.
The SBIR program is important to Montana’s future economic growth, and such improvements to the program would be helpful to our state.
Full Letter: http://www.matr.net/files/SenTesterSBIRLetter.pdf
Best regards,
Ray
Ray Friesenhahn, CLP, MBA
Advanced Technology Scout
SBIR & Technology Transition Manager
TechLink
2310 University Way, Bldg. 2-2
Bozeman, MT 59715
Ph.: (406) 994-7726
Authorized U.S. Department of Defense Partnership Intermediary per Authority 15 U.S.C. 3715
Partner in Defense Alliance Advanced Power & Energy Cluster (APEC)
Sponsored by the SBA’s Regional Cluster Initiative, for Advanced Defense Technology
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