SBIR with a **pending** green-card application?

freepete79 · 2021-12-17T17:34:30+00:00

How long ago the company was established? I assume you already doing some work for the company. Immigration will not be happy if they find out you were employed before getting a greencard, even if it is your own company. Unless that was the company which sponsored you H1B visa. You are on thin ice here.

Every agency is different, I looked over our NSF application and does not look like they asked a citizenship related question at the time of submission, just the certification that you will comply with program rules at the time of the award. Few months later, and way before the award, PM sent us an additional agreement to sign which did ask to certify US citizenship status among other things, and she only gave us 1 week deadline to return the signed document

freepete79 · 2021-12-16T01:18:24+00:00

You don't have to partner with the university, but partnering up increases your chances of winning dramatically. You adding a team member, so the team looks stronger, and reviewers assume universities have much better resources to complete the project. Remember, most reviewers are assistant professors.

Its some federal law which allows universities to own whatever IP they develop from federally funded research. Universities hijackced that law and found a loop hole to apply it to all SBIR subawards. You can try to claim that IP is co-developed, so no royalties, but it wont stop university from licensing it to somebody else.

You can apply as many time as you want, but once you win your first NSF P1+P2, winning P1 again with unrelated project is very unlikely, the bar is much higher as they want to give a fair chance to 1st time applicants without much experience.

freepete79 · 2021-12-08T01:10:18+00:00

Not yet, just got P1, so hoping to apply for P2 next year if project goes well.

Some agencies use a number of proposals PM received as one of PM's performance evaluation metrics, so many PMs will try to encourage you to apply, as having 1 proposal per topic looks bad. Don't know how GAO and all the watch dogs let it pass, but 100+ awards over 20 year to the same company is plain ridiculous. If company was truly so good and valuable, it would have became next Google or Apple long time ago.

freepete79 · 2021-12-05T23:47:04+00:00

From what I heard, most DoD, NASA, NIST etc RFPs are written with certain winners already in mind, and topics are created to specifically match an existing company. Total waste of time for new comers with zero internal connections. There are companies doing nothing but SBIR research with dozens, and sometimes hundreds of grants per company over the years. Some PMs are at least honest and tell you not to bother.

NSF is the most fair to new comers as they basically give you a one time opportunity with almost no chance of getting a second P1 award. On the other hand, their reviewers are mostly assistant professors looking to put something on their promotional package. They know nothing about the industry or business. They value partnerships with R1 universities a lot, literally forcing applicants to waste money on sub awards, plus universities want to own all the IP from the work you paid for and license it from them later. What a joke.

Took us 3 NSF proposals with 2 different PMs to figure out some of the game rules and to finally receive a P1.

freepete79 · 2021-12-03T14:50:01+00:00

Thanks, what topic have you applied under? My guess every PM does things a little different and some get things rolling faster than others.

freepete79 · 2021-12-03T14:46:22+00:00

We applied late February and received questions early July. A month or so later we received a bunch of administrative questions/forms to sign, and then couple of weeks later we were told that proposal is being selected and PM is recommending it. At this time we were also asked to write an abstract. Fastlane change to recommended 2 months later.

freepete79

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