The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Technology administers the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program. Through these two competitive programs, SBA ensures that the nation’s small, high-tech, innovative businesses are a significant part of the federal government’s research and development efforts. Eleven federal departments participate in the SBIR program; five departments participate in the STTR program awarding $2billion to small high-tech businesses.

For more information, head over to the SBIR.gov site.

BioEnterprise, in conjunction with TechLift, is offering a two-part training workshop on this important source of federal funds. 

SBIR/STTR Training Workshop

Offered in Partnership with TechLift

Part One: Informational Workshop
Wednesday September 24, 2008
1 to 4 p.m.

Offered in Partnership with TechLift

Workshop on the basics of the SBIR/STTR programs geared to those interested in learning more about the program’s scope, technology interests, eligibility, & funding sources. This session will help you decide whether you can and should compete for the over $2 Billion in SBIR and STTR Funding in 2008.

Location:
JumpStart, Inc.
737 Bolivar Road
Main Conference Room

Click here to register

Questions:
Contact Dee Montgomery at 216.658.3973

Part Two: Intensive Grant Preparation Workshop + One-on-One Consulting
October 15 & 16, 2008
9 to 4 p.m.

Two-day, intensive workshop covering all aspects of writing winning SBIR/STTR proposals, focused on health care technologies and companies. This program is geared for those individuals that are serious about submitting a proposal and includes 5 hours of one-on-one consulting.

Location:
BioEnterprise
11000 Cedar Ave.
Main Conference Room

Cost: $250

Click here to register

Questions:
Contact Dee Montgomery at 216.658.3973

The best advice we can give is to work through an entity that is plugged into the investment community.  NEOinc is one, and there are others throughout our region.  For entrepreneurs not in Northeast Ohio, do some research to find economic development entities or business incubators and work through them. 

If you cannot find local or regional partners that can provide an introduction for you to potential funders, then this article on how to approach a VC you don’t know gives some very practical do’s and dont’s on the topic. 

We urge you to read the entire article, but here are the basics.

Do

• Research the VC, his/her firm and their investments
• Reach out to the VC in a way that makes it easy for a VC to respond to your approach
• Be specific in your approach about why you’re approaching that VC and what you’d like to accomplish
• Provide the VC with enough information during the initial approach to allow him to qualify that you and your opportunity are interesting
• Recognize that successful fundraising is usually a series of small steps rather than one large step
• Follow through when you make your outreach and be gently persistent

Don’t

• Try to make idle chitchat as a prelude to your “ask”
• Name drop, try to create a false sense of urgency, or raise a lot of hype unless you can back it up

Agenda:
8:00-8:30 a.m. Registration
8:30-8:45 a.m. TechLift Introduction
8:45-10:00 a.m. Presentation by Edward M. Caner, Director, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Programs, College of Arts & Sciences, Executive Director, STEP
Case Western Reserve University

Tuesday, October 7th, 2007
8:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.

Location: OAI, 22800 Cedar Point Road, Cleveland, Ohio 44142

Registration:
The event is complimentary but you need to register.
By e-mail: patriciagrospiron@oai.org and monicadumitriu@oai.org
By phone: Patricia Grospiron, 440-962-3216 and Monica Dumitriu, 440-962-3141
For more information, please visit www.oai.org (Networking & Events).

From time to time on the NEOinc blog, we’ll highlight a few good articles on a particular topic.  Today, we have three articles with particular relevance to new, or first time entrepreneurs. 

1. First, our apologies if you are already on Olympics overload.  Using Olympics stars as a backdrop, the post 7 lessons Olympians can teach Internet entrepreneurs is a quick and valuable read.  Much of it is reinforcement of basic entrepreneurial qualities, but if you are just starting out it’s a good statement of the effort and commitment you will need to succeed.  We’re not sure why “Internet” is in the title - this article is applicable to any entrepreneur.
2. Next, since many younger and first-time entrepreneurs are starting online businesses, we thought this article on How to demo your product would be applicable.  This is a phenomenal post written from the perspective of someone who had just sat through 40 hours of online demos (in 10 minute increments)!  Some of the suggestions are basics, some are more insightful, but they are all good.  If you have a start-up with a product that can be demoed, this article should definitely be on your bookmark list.
3. Finally, a lengthy post on fundraising.  For those of you who have been around for a while, you can skip this post as it is mostly comprised of fundraising basics.  The interesting twist is the article is written primarily from the perspective of a technology-or service-oriented entrepreneur.  So, new entrepreneurs, here’s a good overview on the topic of fundraising.  Technology and service entrepreneurs, here’s some twists on the fundraising issue that might be of interest to you.

So there’s our three great posts for first-time entrepreneurs.  If you know someone who could benefit from any of these posts, please forward them on.  If you are reading this via RSS, there should be a convenient “Email this” link at the bottom of the post.  If you are reading this on the NEOinc blog, simply right-click the post title and “copy shortcut” for a link you can send.

The response has been extremely informative, and the survey will be closed soon.  Before that time however, we are opening up this survey to regional entrepreneurs regardless of whether they are involved with NEOinc or not.

If you are a technology entrepeneur and would like to participate in our brief survey, follow this link.  The survey is designed to take only a few short minutes out of your day, and we thank you in advance for your participation.

A pitch, or elevator speech, is a unique, compelling profile of the business opportunity your start-up represents.  It needs to be short, typically around 60 seconds or less.  It’s only goal is to intrigue a potential investor that you deserve a follow-up meeting.

Good pitches are short on details and long on the big picture, especially the financial opportunity represented.  Your presentation style, comfort and passion are important intangibles that can help prop a so-so pitch up or kill a great pitch.

So how do you develop a great pitch?  There are no shortcuts here, just good old-fashioned, roll-up-the-sleeves, hard work and practice.  You develop your pitch.  You practice it; over and over.  You pitch your family, your friends, even complete strangers.  You ask for feedback, particularly criticism.  You video yourself and watch to see how good you actually come across. 

A good pitch is a lot like true love; hard to find, but you know it when you see it.

Now there’s a tool to see bad and good pitches alike, and get some independent (read: brutally honest) feedback on your pitch.

TechCrunch, a weblog dedicated to profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies, has rolled out Elevator Pitches, a community video project that allows entrepreneurs to pitch their start-ups to the general public.  Visitors then have a chance to comment and vote on the pitches they like the most or least.

This About page gives a few more details, including how to submit videos for review.  It’s pretty simple; even an engineer can do it.  (We’re kidding).

Your pitch is absolutely vital to your start-up.  Investors typically have around a 15 second attention span when you get in front of them.  Developing a solid pitch, that speaks to why they should be interested, delivered with passion and in simple terms is ironically one of the hardest things you will do as an entrepeneur.  Here’s one more resource for you to use as you develop yours.

A recent Kiplinger article points out that wth limited work experience, minimal or no credit history, and a skimpy resume, young entrepreneurs may find it more difficult to be taken seriously. 

The article offers six steps young entreprenuers can take to reduce your “credibility gap”.   Some of the advice is similar to that we give to virtually every entrepreneur that walks through our doors, some is very helpful to younger entrepreneurs. 

The six steps are listed below.  If you are a young entrepreneur, or are thinking of becoming one, the full article offers some very solid advice.

Young Entrepreneurs Six Steps to Starting Your Own Business

1. Get some experience
2. Build a winning team
3. Fight inexperience with advice (from NEOinc, perhaps?)
4. Write a bulletproof business plan
5. Raise money
6. Follow the money

Best of luck to you in your new venture.

Bob Cohen, Executive Director of BrainTree Partners in Mansfield, and Hector Carlo of VITEC2 in La Quinta Industrial Park in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, signed the mutually beneficial agreement in order to open markets for technology entrepreneurs in both countries.  The agreement helps BrainTree and NEOinc portfolio companies gain access to the Puerto Rican market and gives Puerto Rican entrepreneurs an entry point for distribution into the Northeast Ohio region.

For more details, read this article from the Mansfield News Journal.

Anita recently posted on the topic of online communities and provided some brief insight as to why these terms have become so popular, and why they are becoming more important to small business (actually businesses of any size).

If you have an online component to your marketing plan and would like a starting point for understanding why online communities are becoming an increasingly important facet of that plan, read Anita’s article.  With over 160,000 subscribers to her blog, comments to her articles tend to be just as insightful as her articles.  Don’t hesitate to comment or ask a question yourself - Anita does read comments left and will respond to questions.

CIO Luncheon

The Mansfield Richland Chamber of Commerce and the Northern Ohio IT Alliance invite you to join other Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, and Information Technology Managers as we bring together IT leaders from throughout the area.  Our guest speaker will be Ashok K. Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., Senior Director of Outreach at The Ohio Supercomputer Center.  Mr. Krishnamurthy will be discussing the Blue Collar Computing Initiative and the Ralph Regula School of Computational Science programs.

 MONDAY, May 19, 2008
11:30am to 1:00pm
Downtown Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites
116 Park Avenue West
Mansfield, OH 44902 

This luncheon is being offered free-of-charge to CIO and CTOs to make it easy to interact with other IT professionals to promote our area’s technology resources and infrastructure.  Please RSVP to the Northern Ohio IT Alliance by May 13, 2008 at 419-525-1614 or by email at bleach@braintreepartners.org.

How is NEOinc Involved?

The Northern Ohio IT Alliance (NOITA) was formed out of desire to provide an IT organization to represent the areas of northern Ohio not represented by NEOSA and not actively engaged by OhioITA.  NOITA is sponsored by NEOinc incubator Braintree and Bob Leach, Braintree’s Director of Operations, serves as its Director. 

The Northern Ohio IT Alliance sponsors several types of events each year to promote networking and interaction between IT companies and individuals in IT departments.  NOITA has been the organization facilitating Richland County’s interaction with the Ohio Broadband Council for expanding broadband services within the area.  NOITA also works with several technology entities as board members and on steering committees.  

About the Presenter 

Ashok K. Krishnamurthy, Ph.D. is the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s Senior Director of Research and is an associate professor in The Ohio State University (OSU) electrical and computer engineering department.  Krishnamurthy conducts research in signal/image processing, high performance computing and computational models of hearing.  He serves as the academic lead for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program in the area of integrated modeling and test.  Ashok has designed and provided numerous training courses for the DoD User Groups on all aspects of the MatLab programming language.  

On an entrepreneurial leave of absence from OSU, Krishnamurthy started a design center in Dublin, Ohio for Ecrio Inc., a Silicon Valley startup.  He led a team of engineers at the design center developing wireless and handheld communication applications.  As a consultant, he has worked on the development of micro-controller and microprocessor based products, and has assisted in the development of strategic plans to introduce Application-Specific Standard products for multimedia and telephony applications such as speech coders, caller-ID receivers etc.  He earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India in 1979.  He received his master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering at the University of Florida in 1981 and 1983, respectively.