SmallBusinessNewz

Sounds like a step in the right direction. They dhould be doing a whole lot more, including totally revamping the SBA. The SBA has never been of help to me, too small i guess. But they they do love to help large corp.'s it seems.

 

The SBA is the biggest joke of the century; it was only an appeasement program. It never was intended to help out the small business man. If you can qualify for SBA help you are already qualified for a standard loan from most any bank.

 

Some how the government spending 101 million on “business” programs fails to give me any kind of inspiration or hope and I just wonder who the fat cats are that are going to benefit from it this time.

 

The fact is, I would just as soon the government keep out of my business altogether because all they ever do is make life more difficult.

My small company has 4 employees.  We have successfully competed for SBIR and STTR grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and currently have our third grant. 

The re-authorization of the small business innovation research grants (SBIR grants) is looking like a disaster, though.  The House and Senate are in the process of opening up these funds to businesses that have large VC investors, businesses that don't qualify as small businesses at all under current regulations because they technically have more than 200 employees.  The last thing VC's need is charity.  They certainly don't offer charity to others.

See http://www.inknowvation.com/Call_To_Action_SBIR_2008/     from which I quote "SBIR is being hijacked! Isn't it time for you to get involved and speak up?! The product of over three years of sustained, powerful and well-funded lobbying on the part of BIO (Biotechology Industry Organization) and NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) on Wednesday April 23, 2008, the US House of Representatives overwhelming passed a bill - H.R. 5819. Ironically designated Modernizing the SBIR and STTR programs, it is the judgment of most long-time SBIR advocates, that H.R. 5819 is seriously flawed with innocuous-sounding provisions that will actually have the effect of excluding a major segment of the SBIR Community."

In my line of work, which is medical discovery, VC's won't touch a company until a huge amount of work has been done, and the SBIR (or related STTR) grants are one of the few sources of funds available (unless you live in a State that offers special small business programs, which I don't, though they would claim otherwise; they have programs, the programs just never actually give out any money, as far as I can tell).

I briefly worked for a gentleman who has lived off of SBIR funding for nine years. So far, he has spent about four million dollars of grant money and hasn’t had a single successful contract. I eventually discovered that the technical reports and proposals that he was sending out to his customers were complete fabrications. All of his technical claims were scientifically unfeasible. He has had no luck with commercial entities as they are wisely too cautious to give him money based on blind trust. The yahoos running the SBIR program are still cluelessly handing him gobs of cash. The first employee to try to blow the whistle was persecuted with a high priced lawyer until he agreed to be silent. Then the company owner forced all of his employees to sign legal contracts agreeing to pay for his attorney to sue us if we chose to make allegations against him. Shortly before I quit, the crook admitted to me that he was confident that he could continue to receive grant money forever without delivering anything but promises and bad results because the SBIR system was incredibly easy to abuse. I figured that this weasel was headed straight to jail, but by God, he was right. He still has a nice fancy house and drives a big car and he still hasn’t been held accountable for failure to deliver on any of his contracts or for any of the lies he has told. A few SBIR award winners do the work they promise to do. Unfortunately, most SBIR award winners, one way or another, are scamming the government. You can see why the long term return on investment of SBIR money is extremely dismal. That money is better spent in a forum where researchers and innovators are held accountable for failure to produce verifiable results. Otherwise we end up funding not the best ideas, but the best liars.