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Federal Sales and Government Contracting (Neil McDonnell)

Dept of Defense Wants to Give $2.5B for Small Business Innovators (#sbir)

DoD has $2.5B for Small Business Innovators ready to change the world.

Join GovCon Chamber president Neil McDonnell in a fireside chat with Gina Sims, Director of SBIR / STTR Program Office for the US Department of Defense.
 
✅ In this live interview, GovCon Chamber president Neil McDonnell and Gina Sims discuss:

  • What kind of 'innovation' is DoD is looking for from Small Businesses
  • How Small Businesses apply to get access to $2.5B in DoD #innovation funding
  • DoD's non-dilutive funds for traditional government contractors and those not yet supporting federal agencies
  • Why #SBIR dollars should be part of government contractor total growth strategy Difference between successful and unsuccessful applicants 

✅ Join us on LinkedIn to build your network and engaging other in the largest Government Contracting community online. https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/government-contracting-success-6895009566325907456/

🟩 ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Gina Sims, Director of SBIR / STTR Program Office for the US Department of Defense Ms. Regina “Gina” Sims is the Director of the Defense SBIR/STTR Program Office for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Ms. Sims is the principal point of contact for Congress, the Small Business Administration, Government Accountability Office, and Interagency SBIR/STTR Community Representatives. 

Ms. Sims oversees and leads the SBIR/STTR Program to unify and convey transparency and trust across Defense agencies and components encompassing the program. Prior to her role in OSD, Ms. Sims was the Department of Air Force (DAF) Specific Topic Branch Chief, a role she held in the AFVentures Division of AFWERX.

Ms. Sims was responsible for the facilitation of the DAF’s SBIR/STTR Life Cycle, designed to rapidly and efficiently transition innovative technology to the Airmen and Guardian Warfighter communities. Ms. Sims was also responsible for the planning and execution of an annual portfolio of $400M while managing the day-to-day efforts of the Specific Topic Branch within AFVentures, supporting a variety of mission partners.

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🟩 HOST | Neil McDonnell
president GovCon Chamber of Commerce and co-founder of GovCon in a Box
https://www.linkedin.com/in/neil-mcdonnell/

Small business owners trust Neil to show them HOW to earn federal government contracts and subcontracts. A passionate 'evangelist' for business development in the federal marketplace, Neil has helped 1000s of small business contractors collectively win over $3B (federal contract value).

A small business contractor in the tech space for 25+ years, Neil successfully won contracts worth hundreds of millions for the Department of Defense and civilian agencies, including
  • US Army • US Navy • US Air Force • HHS • VA • White House • Departments of Education, Transportation, Interior and Energy and numerous large prime contractors

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Broadcast on:
26 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
other
If you don't know who I am, my name is Neil McDonald. I'm the president of the Gubcon Chamber of Commerce, and I want to welcome you to my federal sales training, where I provide tips for success in the federal market. Today, it's around CBR. I spent 20 years in the federal market as a small business owner, and since 2018, I've been teaching people like you, that government contracting is not a secret, it's just a process. When we follow a process A to Z, we're gonna have repeatable, predictable results, and this is what I want for you. This is why I bring this training back every single day. I'm excited to have Gina Sims here. She's, as you can see, the director of defense for CBR and the STTR program. Today, we're just gonna talk about CBR only, and I'll ask her to come back another day and talk about the STTR program. But Gina, just as we're getting started, first off, thank you very much for joining us. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you helping us line up more people from DARPA, Missile Defense, Army, and Air Force later this week. But I just wanted to start off just, before we even dive into the program and some of the information people are coming here to listen to, why are you in CBR? Like, what motivates you to be part of this program within DOD compared to all the other places you could have supported? What attracts you to the CBR program? And maybe starting with what does CBR stand for? - Yeah, sure, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, and I do apologize for the lack of visual, but I promise you folks, you're not missing much. So, SBIR, Small Business Innovation Research. Just a little bit about me. I am a career defense civilian worker, so I like to tell folks this is really my only big girl job. I have been working in the Department of Defense since I was a junior in my undergrad, so I started as an intern, as a little GS3, basically paying the government to let me work for them, right? And then loved what I did, loved supporting the warfighter. I worked for the Department of the Air Force, and I decided to make a career of it. So, under the Air Force, I worked several major acquisition programs, so I worked in the Air Force Material Command, Life Cycle Management Center, so that's where the Air Force hosts most of their PEOs, so their weapon systems, worked a lot of big ACAT-1 programs there, and after 13 plus years of doing that, I kinda needed something different, away from the major prime contractors, the major acquisitions, and I wanted to go see what the small business side of things was like, an opportunity presented itself to work for the Air Force Research Lab under the SBIR program, and the rest is kind of history here, here I am. I told the Air Force the only reason I would ever leave that job was to become the director of the Defense SBIR-STTR program, and I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to come here and work alongside the small businesses. - That's funny, it makes me feel like saying the only reason I would stop doing these videos, is if I won the lottery tomorrow, I'll get the millions of dollars, and so maybe you're luck to me. I wanted to ask people two poll questions as we go through, and so I'll start with the first one really quick, is just for everybody listening, what is your experience with the small business innovation program, right? Tell me one of four answers, right? Number one, just put the number one, two, three, or four into chat. I've won a CBIR award, or number two, I pursued CBIR, but haven't won. Number three, I've heard of CBIR, but don't know really much about it, and that's really probably where I fit. And then number four, I don't know what CBIR is, but I like the idea of money for innovation. So, I put that into the chat, one, two, three, or four, as we go along. And Gina, just as I research us having this conversation, one of the things I talk about is that this is like the biggest angel investor out there, and especially for a lot of people coming out of Silicon Valley, angel investing seed investments or something, those are a big deal. What's, can you tell us a little bit just what is the money side of it? I have on the slide people are looking at that there's two to have billion dollars available, right? And that's a rough number that changes annually or something. But tell us about the money that's available in the program, if you would. - Yeah, absolutely. So, the money side is what I love talking about the most, because it is congressionally set aside. So, every fiscal year, Congress sets aside funding for innovation, and it's considered non-dilutive funds for small businesses to help the department with our research. So, what happens every year, once the president's budget is signed and appropriated, there is what a lot of folks refer to as a tax for SBIR and STTR taking to certain programs with a threshold, if you will, of extramural RD-TNE funds. So, easy math, the department takes 3.2% of the total RD-TNE extramural pot, and that percentage becomes SBIR. In FY23, that was $2.5 billion. In FY24, it's looking like a little bit closer to $2.6, $2.7 billion. So, that billion with a B is available every fiscal year. So, annually, you see that pot of money that is available for small businesses to have access to without compromising or losing any other intellectual property available for them to help poor fighters and help generate better research for the department of defense. - Yeah, no, that's perfect. And I like how you started off. That's your favorite thing to talk about is the money, because I'm pretty sure for all of us on the call, that's our favorite part, too, is talking about the money. Can you expand a little bit? You said non-dilutive funds, which is an attractive thing for those of us who track on that, right? But what do you mean by non-dilutive? I guess going with that, can you touch on if I'm in the SIBR program with some sort of innovative invention or whatever data rights or intellectual property? Can you touch on just a little bit of the protection to the small business? - Absolutely. So, SBIR is just, it's a wonderful avenue for small businesses to utilize, to get involved with the department of defense and bridge that gap to the warfighter. So, what an awesome way as a taxpayer to be able to contribute directly to the warfighter. So, when I say non-diluted, just a bluff of it, right? Small businesses, you're not required to give up any equity in your company. So, intellectual property is yours. There is a FAR and D FARs clause. So, for those of you new to working with the department, there are several regulations in place for a variety of reasons, but specifically, the SBIR data rights clauses there to protect you for 20 years to ensure that your innovative solutions, ideas, feasibility studies, prototypes are yours to move forward with as you go to become larger or commercialize or whatever is in your portfolio's best interest. So, it really is just a great opportunity for you to help get startup and take your idea, generation into reality. - No, that is awesome. And it's such an important thing to be able to get off the ground. I've been watching your offices, especially Chad Rogers, who's helping us make this event possible today. But I've been watching some of the videos he's been doing out there lately at events saying, tell me your SIBR story and talking to people who've had successes in SIBR and it's so awesome, that I plan on sharing a lot of that content out because those stories are really interesting. And I think for the people on this session today, they'll care about it. Let me ask you just so from an industry side and not to put us all just in this one bucket, but we value the money, right? The ability to get the money to be able to innovate is a valuable thing to us. You touched on this a little bit already, Gina, but why does DOD care? What is DOD getting out of this? If we get the money, what are they getting out of this? What's the big picture for them? - Yeah, so the department really in basic terms, we utilize SBIR to keep the bad guys from getting our technology, right? We want to get ahead of them. We want to prevent them from having an innovative solution or idea generation before us, so it is to maintain technological superiority. We want to ensure that we are giving access to small businesses the means to keep us as the leader for research and development and the best military in the world. So we ensure that small businesses have access to what I hope is a seamless process to have availability to these two point, whatever billion dollars a year to help us reach that common goal. And that is, I just want to kind of put it out there. I know we're talking about the Department of Defense, but SBIR is a federal program. So if you go to the Small Business Administration's website, you can see all of the supporting agencies that participate in SBIR. I am just one of them, but specifically for the department, it's to maintain technological superiority. - No, I like that because in Silicon Valley, the purpose of investment for them is to get a 10x return or even get a 100x return and cover down on bad investments they made. But I really wanted people to understand if they're newer to this world that a lot of us who are in the government contracting or the federal market, if you will, we tie what we do all the way down to the user. So whether it's the veteran getting care in the VA or the soldier in the field, the FBI agent, there's a difference in the federal market in just helping people understand that there is such a bigger picture. Yes, you can commercialize, which we can talk about in a second, but that's perfect. And I want to talk about process in one second. Just really quickly, Roger, I saw you put something in chat and I generally don't look at chat 'cause it's going so fast. But he happened to ask a question I'm gonna ask about. And so I'll remember to come back about how to get your idea in December, but I wanted to let everybody else know, put your questions into chat because I'll try to see them and get to them. If I don't, then I will work with Gina and Chad, et cetera, to get these answers out to you. I'll talk more about that in a second. But Gina, so if we're talking about the money there and really the protection and the non-dilutive value to the Smalls and the value to the government you just described, what do we mean when we think innovation? Like for me, I used to think, like I never even really touched on Sibra because I felt like it was just out there as, you know, weapons systems or something, something that was so far around. Can you talk to what can people, like what innovative ideas are coming in that are maybe less, you know, a satellite in space spectacular in more day to day? I'm thinking like emerging technologies, business process improvement, et cetera. - Yeah, absolutely. So the department, we have set out what we call the 14 critical technologies under research and engineering, under secretary, honorable, a high issue. So those 14 critical technologies can be broken down into four areas. So one is areas of emerging opportunities. So that's where you find advanced material, future G, quantum science and biotech. The second area is effective adoption. So that's space, like you just mentioned, renewable energy, advanced computing, human machine interfaces. And then there's the defense specific areas. So I'm sorry, there's three areas. Defense specific areas such as direct energy, hypersonic, integrated sensing. So that's one avenue to go look at what the department of defense is focusing on right now. And that's derived from the, you know, Secretary of Defense's priorities and what we're looking at as a country, as a whole. So if you literally a Google search, DoD 14 critical technologies, you can see all kinds of white papers, all kinds of news articles regarding those 14 critical technologies. In addition to that, if you go onto the defense SBIR, STTR portal, we call it DSEP, which I'm sure we're gonna get into, you can look up past awards and see all of the different type of solutions that's kind of already out there that you can tell the department of defense has already got our hands on or we're interested in, but there is literally not an end to the type of innovative solutions that we are searching for, looking for. And that's why we're trying to ensure that we reduce barriers to entry for small businesses so that they, you know, you all that I am talking to right now, you are the subject matter experts, I am not. So we want to ensure you can come to us and tell us what we don't know we need. - Well, no, that's a perfect segue to another question I had about just who can apply for silver dollars of these silver awards, et cetera. And well, let me just start there and I'll come back in a second to the other question, but is it only government contractors? Are you looking for innovators across the country or is it only Silicon Valley type companies? - So we are looking for any type of US-owned small business. So there is a threshold to be considered a small business concern as that we call them SBCs. You can go to the small business administration's website for a whole list of the criteria to be considered an SBC, but it's really just about how many humans you have working in your small business, right? So US-owned, SBIR in particular, when we talk about our solicitations, we have two key types of solicitations. One is for conventional topic, which are those defense specific innovative solutions that we're looking for, typically and historically, defense contractors, small businesses, have been known to award those more often, but in the FY 22 reauthorization, Congress required us to do a solicitation called Open Topic. And the Open Topic solicitation is supposed to be more broad by nature, and that really is created to have this open door policy for any type of small business who possibly has never done work with the Department of Defense before, to submit a white paper generating that idea of how they could start partnering with the Department of Defense. So really SBIR dollars are available to any small business concern owned within the United States. - No, that's perfect. And one of the things we did when we were trying to just promote this event was to make sure we were bringing in people who perhaps weren't in the federal market circling around. And I might ask my second poll question really quick to the people who were listening, is tell Gina and me just about you in one of three answers. And the answer is just put into the chat five, six or seven, depending on which one is you. But number five, or put five in the chat if you're an existing government contractor in SAM already, put six into the chat if you're not yet in SAM, but plan on it, and put seven into the chat if you don't even know what I'm talking about when I say SAM and you're like, who's that? And that's totally cool too, because it means to Gina's perspective in particular that we're attracting people who are newer to this federal market. And that's exactly what we're trying to do is to reach government contractors and non-government contractors. So five, six or seven into the chat, depending on who you are. So let's switch over a little bit to the process. And I know that there's three phases from a high level. I want to dig into phase one a little bit more, but from a high level, can you just explain the three levels or the three phases of a SIVA, which apparently as I research as a couple in the middle. - It's always great, right? So I'm a program manager. I love giving the, it depends answer, but at a very high level, there are three phases for an SBIR. Phase one is a feasibility study. So you go and apply to a solicitation and submit a proposal, and that proposal basically shall say how you plan to introduce this innovative solution to the Department of Defense. And we do that through what we call a feasibility study. So those are lower dollar, lower period performance. You will typically see anywhere from $100,000 up to $200,000 for that phase ward initiation. The phase two then goes to prototype. So you take that feasibility study, hey, we think we can do this thing, and then propose showing how you can actually do the thing via a prototype, and that can go up to a little over $2 million for an award. Phase three is really the cool part. So in acquisition, for those of you who have worked with the Department of Defense, it takes a very long time to get a contract with the Department of Defense through normal acquisition authorities. With SBIR, contracting officers and program managers have direct authority to do a sole source contract award to you if you have completed it as phase one or phase two. And so with that justification, contracting officers can bypass a very long acquisition, lifecycle timeline to get your innovative solution on contract to work with the Department relatively quick. - Oh, I didn't even know that about, you know, when I think commercialization, I'm thinking, you know, go off and sell it to commercial companies or something. But the idea to accelerate the process is pretty big. And I wanna come back another day and talk about phase two and phase three as we move forward. I did wanna say one quick thing. In the chat, I'm seeing people going back and forth. I wanted to encourage you first off to follow DoD's SIBR site on LinkedIn. You can definitely check out their website, but chat and somebody else will put in there the link to the LinkedIn page for SIBR. But I would highly encourage you, I'm assuming Gina's okay with you reach it out, but first, go read every possible thing you can on their site. So the questions you ask are the hard questions, not how do you spell SIBR? That's just a great way to get what you need from somebody. Let me dig down Gina just into, we're down into eight minutes left, which is great, lots of questions coming at you. You've been awesome answering really fast. But let's talk about phase one, because that's where it all begins. And actually, even before I ask you about phase one in the process there, you talked about open topics. So I think this might be where this question's gonna fit, but there's topics the government has where they've identified a need or something and they're looking for responses to that. But what about when I have an idea and I wanna bring that idea in and I think it'll benefit the government, et cetera, how can I just bring a random idea in and maybe together with that, when could I bring a random idea in? - Absolutely. So again, with the FY 22 Reauthorization Act, Congress identified this as a problem. So they heard you hopefully, but they heard the company say, hey, I would like to be able to propose to the Department of Defense without this niche technology area or I can't find the right partner in order to propose my idea. So there are two means to solicit, to propose ideas to the department. The first is conventional topics. So on our portal, DCIP, so my team will share that website but that is a one-stop-shop for you all. And actually, I'm really excited if you don't mind me to take a second and brag about our program, but we are introducing a new fiscal year 25 schedule for solicitations. So in the past, those solicitations, to be honest with you, they were kind of all over the place. There was three a year that we did, but after that, they kind of jumped around and I didn't think that was fair for small businesses to try to track our calendar. So what we're doing starting in October is releasing a new solicitation schedule. So as a small business, I am asking you to go to my DCIP site the first Wednesday of every month and that's where you will find funding opportunities. So it's, as you said earlier, repeatable and predictable, love those words. I use them all the time as well. So that is a repeatable, predictable schedule for small businesses to see when we are going out and trying to get ideas from you. So the first Wednesday of every month, I want you all to go to DCIP and look for either a conventional topic or an open topic. Conventional topic is exactly what you just mentioned. It's when the department has a warfighter need and we solicit that need out to small businesses to come back to us with a solution on how to adjudicate that risk problem concern. The open topic program is when you are able to solicit your ideas to us. So come and tell us what we don't know we need in the department of defense. And that's really also focusing on the dual use technology. So if you really have a commercial solution that you think the department of defense needs come to us via open topic. - No, that's awesome. And I don't know if you'd see my screen, but I tried to put in the URL for a DCIP. - So ZOD, Cibber, Citter, Don Mill. - Don Mill, yes sir, yeah. - By the way, is that how you pronounce that acronym? Cibber, Incider? - So yeah, Cibber, Incider. I try to just say SBIR, S-D-T-R to try to help it. It's a fun acronym. I have to Google it sometimes too. - Yeah, I like, sometimes we always say like DSBS, the dynamic small business search group. Everybody, if you're watching the chat, chat is also, so chats with Gina at DoD, and he's been dropping in tips for you and how to learn more. When she says something, he's gonna dropping it in. One thing that Cecilia, if you can do, I think some of this stuff, chat is dropping into one area. So we're actually just re-sharing in many different places. But just go to this other link that I have, I just put it here, I just want you guys to track on this one. I put in something good or govconchaper.com/cibber. We're gonna put out a handout and other material that we can put in there that'll be around the stuff that Gina's sharing and others are sharing. And actually, we're gonna try to organize a Cibber day. So if that's something you're interested in, go to this website and we'll make sure the things that Gina is saying is getting pushed out. Gina, I wanna ask you one last question just, or maybe one last question. We're 27, so we'll see how many we get. But just on the, when you think about the process, actually, let me pick a better one. What would you say the difference is between successful and unsuccessful applicants are? 'Cause I think this could be one that has tips for those of us interested to follow. - Yeah, absolutely. I get asked this question a lot. And really, the four biggest pieces of advice I could give everybody is one. Please, please, please ensure that you're reading the solicitation instructions and adhere to any of the parameters that you see in there, like page limitations. It is very unfortunate to have your proposal disqualified because you did not need a page limit requirement or the peer performance that the component requested, et cetera. Number two, make sure you do not leave any required fields blank. So unfortunately, we see that often where small businesses will leave required information blank and then that will automatically have your proposal rejected in our system. Number three, please, please, please, please, utilize our pre-release solicitation period. So pre-release is when you have access to the teapoc, the technical point of contact or a topic author so that you can really understand the request that's coming from the government. And that would help improve any proposal information that you're submitting. And then finally, work with your Apex accelerators. I'm gonna ask Chad to drop a link in the chat but the office is small business under acquisition and sustainment in the DoD. They help the Apex accelerators who are literally there to help ensure you all are successful but we make sure we feed them most updated information to help small businesses connect with our ecosystem and have successful proposals. - Yeah, no, that's perfect. And I would echo something you said just as advice to the people who are listening is I've been in this business for a long time in the federal market and going after an opportunity in SAM or some contract vehicle, sometimes it wall is trying to reach the program office, et cetera. But on the server side, it seems like they're just so wide open to talking because really they're trying to figure out, the innovative side. They're not trying to say, hey, I need the bathrooms cleaned or cyber security protected. They're saying, let's talk about innovation. So definitely follow up on those T-POCs she mentioned. Gina, we're wrapping up time here and I'm going to come back. I just wanted to say thank you very much and find out. First off, do you have any like last minute thoughts you want to share with the group? And then I was going to let them know about DARPA tomorrow. - Absolutely. So folks, my entire existence here is transparency. So I like to tell people I have supported the war fighter, basically my entire career. I've been a taxpayer for as long as I've had to, but I have never been a small business. I have never worked for a small business. So please reach out and tell me where we are not communicating effectively, what is not coming across as transparent and what barriers there are to entry that I am definitely accidentally causing. So my job is to make this easier to you. My job is to ensure that there is a manageable and repeatable process in place for you all to have access to this $2.7 billion a year. So I exist for you to reach out to me. Please don't hesitate. - That's awesome. I really appreciate again your time in Chad's time, not just coming in today, but also helping us organize our stuff going forward. I'm gonna step you off stage for one second and just tell everybody tomorrow DARPA is coming in. So Jennifer will be here. Jenna will be here talking to us about Sibber from DARPA's perspective. And I'm super excited about that. So make sure you get into LinkedIn and register and let us know that you're attending. Let her know that you're attending. I think we have almost 200 people coming to that. And then make sure you sign up for the govconchamber.com/sibber. So we'll have a free handout stuff that just comes from these fireside chats as well as if we plan a Sibber day with Gina and team that will let you know about that as well. But we're at 1230, 1231. I'm usually never late, but it was worth that extra minute. I'm gonna let everybody go. The replays are instantly available. I will see you in tomorrow's training. [BLANK_AUDIO]