Startups and small business owners are constantly innovating to create competitive product offerings. Product development can be expensive and with limited cash flow or credit a business owner may afford to make only incremental product improvements. Tying up precious dollars into these improvements can be risky if the return on investment is not guaranteed.

Several smart business owners instead use government sponsored R&D opportunities to develop new product features or create an entirely new product. Being able to get government funding such as grants is no secret and yet many companies do not realize that they are designing and building a product that the U.S. government is willing to fund. The government is also generous enough to let small business owners maintain ownership of the intellectual property developed under government funding for 20 years.

Agencies like the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Human Health Services, or the Department of Transportation will often issue solicitations that describe the challenges they need to solve.  The U.S. government employs two small business funding programs for companies that solve their problems – Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program.  Both programs have awarded more than $3.5 billion to small businesses in 2019.

The SBIR program can be performed solely by a small businesses while the STTR program requires teaming with a non-profit research institute. To be eligible the small business must be American-owned, organized as a for-profit entity, and have less than 500 employees. To learn more about the program visit https://www.sbir.gov/.