Thank you so much for the enthusiastic response to the concept of the course on the SBIR proposal review process. Based on your feedback, I am going ahead with the course and invite to will join me this Friday 11/10 at 1pm Mountain (3pm Eastern, Noon Pacific). The course will be a 90 minute (plus Q&A) live webinar.
Pricing: In order to make this accessible I have priced the course at $95. You can register for the course at the link below.
http://venturewrench.thinkific.com/courses/SBIR-Review-Course This includes pre-course materials as well as videos on writing high quality executive summaries and "pitches" to help you create a strong introduction and overview to your proposals.
I will send out the webinar link to everyone registered in advance by email AND I will post it on the course site. However, please note that our thinkific training site doesn't do "live webinars", but it is great for hosting the materials. So please watch for the live link.
Elements to be covered will include:
- The importance of the pre-proposal executive summary/submission (more than 2 weeks in advance of submission deadlines) Your chance to make reviewers love what you do!
- Overview of orientation that reviewers receive
- Identifying the different types of reviewers on a panel and how this impacts the process
- What reviewers are asked to do for each review (and how this impacts your proposal!)
- Why an SBIR Program Director said on a road tour this summer that just a few things can raise your odds of being awarded funding from 15% to over 50%!
- Why the Introduction can make or break your entire proposal
- The order in which experienced reviewers read your proposal - and why it matters.
- Differences and similarities between Phase I and Phase II reviews, and why your Phase I review is really the first part of your Phase II review
- Do letters of support really matter - and how not to get them
- What is really needed in the commercialization section of a Phase I (vs. Phase II)
- Review of my list of 40 ways to improve your SBIR proposal (from mistakes I saw in actual proposals)
- The difference between individual reviews and panel summary (and scores) and what that feedback means
- How to track the progress of your proposal
- Clues that you have been recommended for funding and what to expect from your PD
Of course, such a course can't guarantee any results in a competitive program like SBIR, but the small cost of this course could provide the insights you need to move from that 15%, up to that 50% chance of receiving an award in Phase I and to further improve the odds of a Phase II win. In fact, I have never served on a Phase I review panel where more than 3 out of 10 proposals were even rated highly enough to be CONSIDERED for funding. And on most panels that number is 1 or 2 out of 10 that are even in the running for funding.
If you have any questions, drop me an email at VentureWrenchCommunity@gmail.com or reply to this email and let me know you're interested.
Based on interest levels, I'll let you know if we're going ahead.
Here's to Entrepreneurship!
Nicole and the VentureWrench Team
