Leveraging Invest NI

and Innovate UK

Funding for Strategic

Growth

A Little Bit About Me and Why I’m Here

• 18 years in the US working in the aerospace and defence industry

• Director of Business Development and Director of New Technology

Development for a growing SME

• Currently EiR with NISP Connect

• Work with a number of early stage tech startups

• Successful in leveraging government grants to accelerate strategic

growth to >120 employees and $25M+/annum in revenues

• Lots of (hard) lessons learned along the way

Some Things We’ll Touch On

• When grants make sense

• How to use them as part of a broader strategy

• Preparing to write a strong proposal

• The importance of partnerships and collaboration

• Protecting your IP

• Getting beyond the grant and into the marketplace

Are Grants a

Good

Fit For Me?

What Grants Are Not

• Revenue

• A quick proposal

• A sure thing

• Your first customer

• Enough money and resource to get to market

What Grants Can Be

• A platform that helps to launch your technology and business

• Pre-validation of your idea for VCs and investors

• Door opener to many new connections, government & industry

• Time-consuming

• Frustrating

• Distracting

• Unbeatable resource if used the right way

They Can Be Highly Competitive

• Depending on the funding type, win rate can be as low as 1 in 10

• Competition is good! It makes you test your assumptions and battle

harden your business plan!

When Are They a Good Option?

• The technology is a core part of your business model

• Still need to de-risk the technology for private sector funding

• There is an identified market

• The technology is innovative and protectable

• There is not an immediate go-to-market urgency

• There is a good balance between technology push and market pull

Technology Push versus Market Pull

R&D Production Marketing Need?

R&D Production Marketing Expressed

Market Need

Be Prepared For the Following

• 40-60 hours of preparation time for a strong proposal

• Lots of writing and rewriting

• Lots of writing and rewriting

• Potentially long time lag between submission and award

• Mandatory contractual obligations and associated overhead

Fitting Them Into

Your Innovation

Strategy

They are most effective when part of

an integrated plan

Don’t Let a Grant Drive the Company

• Too many people focus on “how can my business model be

adjusted to fit into this grant/contract?”

• Leads to frustration and ultimately failure to launch the business

you dreamed of

• Focus should be on “how can this grant/contract fit into my business

model?”

• If it doesn’t clearly fit, you should not apply

• Be aware of the time lags that grants can add to product

development

My View on Strategic Use of Grants

The real value of grants is when they

allow you to get further along in your

product development and market

exploration in a timely fashion such that

you have developed significant

additional value in your

product/company before you seek

external investment

Only Bid if You Can Answer Yes

If you had the same amount of money in

the bank as you intend to submit a

proposal for, would you invest it in the

technology yourself?

Setting Yourself Up

to Write a Great

Proposal

It’s all in the preparation

It’s Not About Winning a Grant, It’s

About Getting to Market

• Winning a grant is not a goal in and of itself

• Primarily an opportunity to fund derisking of your technology

• Provides a platform to get your technology to market

• Proposal must be developed with bigger goal in mind

• Engaging with potential customers before proposing is key to a

great proposal

• The government agency is not a guaranteed customer

9 Questions You Need to Know the

Answers To

1. What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using

absolutely no jargon.

2. How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?

3. What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be

successful?

4. Who cares?

5. If you're successful, what difference will it make?

6. What are the risks and the payoffs?

7. How much will it cost?

8. How long will it take?

9. What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

Understand Your Market

• Target industries and demographics

• UK and global market size

• Potential market share and value

• Typical business models (e.g., SaaS, PaaS, OEM, retail, etc.)

• Barriers to entry and typical adoption cycles

• Route to market

• Resources required

Understand Your Competition

• Avoid being a me-too business

• Must have an intimate understanding of competing offerings

• Identify competitors unique selling points

• Identify gap in the market

• Clearly differentiate your offering and uniqueness

• Technical

• Business model

Understand the Risks

• Technical

• Operational

• Commercial

• Financial

• Use to refine technical approach and business model

Have Peers Review the Proposal Before

Submission

• Official review panel may be made up of a different skills and

backgrounds

• If possible, have both people within your company/industry and

people unfamiliar with your industry do reviews before submission

• Industry peers can help poke holes in your assumptions, clarify

applications

• Non-industry peers help improve clarity of the proposition

If You Don’t Win, Don’t Despair

• The process you have gone through will strengthen your business

plan and ability to secure other types of funding

• In general, feedback from the review panel is excellent and adds a

lot of value

Protecting Your

Innovation

You need to have a comprehensive

IP protection plan

You Can’t Monetise What You Haven’t

Protected

• Copyrights

• Trademarks

• Trade secrets

• Patents

• NDAs

• Proprietary markings

IP Protection Extends to Employees,

Subcontractors and Partners

• Employee agreements include transfer of IP ownership

• IP transfer agreements for outsourced works (work for hire)

• Clear identification of IP and ownership in partnership agreements

Be Extra Careful When Using Open

Source Software to Develop IP

• Benefits of open source must be weighed against licensing terms

• Derivative works are not always protectable

• “Copyleft” licensing agreements

• Consult with an IP professional if open source may be key part of

your technology plan

Teaming and

Commercial

Partnerships

The right team with get you there faster

You Can’t Do It All Alone

• Partnerships reduce risk and are critical to your success

• Technical partners will:

• Improve and/or expand capabilities and potential market

• Commercial partners will:

• Shift your focus from technology push to market pull

• Allow you to develop a product that appeals to the end user

• Provide market entry point and sales and marketing resource

Big versus Small Partners

• Big companies are often ultimate goal but can be poor first partners

• Large and inflexible, long contractual timelines

• Impact of your technology on their bottom line too small

• Smaller (but right sized) partners are often better

• More flexible, hungrier to differentiate themselves

• Often times are suppliers to your target large companies

• Fast response times: don’t forget that this is a race to market

Sharing a Little Wealth Goes a Long

Way

• A small subcontract makes all the difference

• Large companies need to have a chargeline to bill to to make it

easy to support you

• Small companies have limited resources

• Puts some skin in the game for all involved

• Shows intent and provides reward for valuable contribution

Teams Work Well When Everyone is on

the Same Page From Day One

• Before you start a project together, establish in writing:

• Responsibilities of each party

• Ownership of background IP and separation/inclusion

• Rules on new IP ownership, sharing or licensing

• Expectations for follow-on work partnering (e.g. Phase II)

• Never start a project assuming this will be taken care of later

• What is difficult to discuss now is 10X more difficult later

Bridging the

Valley of Death to

Commercialisation

Start Planning for Next Phase

Immediately

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

TRLBack of

napkin

Validated

commercial

product

InvestNI and

InnovateUK funding VCs, angels, etc.

Significant time lag if done in series

Lots of Programs & Networks That Can

Help Smooth Way to Phase III

• _connect

• Springboard

• Cofounders Wanted!

• Invest NI Business Strategy Services

• Propel Programme