Industry sign banking massachusetts rfp later
all right good afternoon everybody we're going to get started now welcome to the Massachusetts clean energy centers quarterly funding opportunities webinar just a few housekeeping items all attendees are in listen-only mode if you have any questions please submit it in the chat box and we will get to as many of the questions as possible at the end of the webinar kind of as time allows also we are recording this webinar and will post a recording to a website as well as the answers to the questions posed in this webinar we will cover two Massey C programs that are currently accepting technology innovation proposals as a note Massey C offers these webinars approximately once every quarter and we aim to cover programs that are timely relevant today we will be discussing Massey's innovative and deploy mass programs as I mentioned we will be covering two Messi's clean technology innovation programs I'm Corey groom builds a program manager and Massey sees innovation and Industry Support Division in just a moment I will be providing an overview of Massey C and our technology development programs then our first presenter Eric Logan Hughes will cover the innovate math program Eric Logan is a program manager at Massey UC and works on both the innovative and deploy mass teams and lastly Arielle Horowitz will cover the deploy mass program Arielle is the director of technology development msec and oversees both of these programs Massey Massey C's mission is to grow the state's clean energy industry while helping to meet the Commonwealth's clean energy economic development and climate goals we fulfill our mission by investing in programs that increase renewable energy adoption by residents businesses and communities connecting employers job seekers students communities and investors to the clean energy industry as well as helping to spur innovation their infrastructure funding and technology development support Massey sees innovation and Industry support division offers a suite of programs that fulfill its mission by supporting clean tech startups and researchers at various stages while we are only going to focus on two of these programs today I wanted to take a moment to quickly go over all the programs that we offer in case any happen to pique your interest as you can see we have a variety of programs aimed at helping companies and research teams in the research prototyping demonstration and commercialization stages details on all these programs can be found on Massey C's website Massey c-calm all the green boxes on this slide represent grant programs while the blue boxes represent investment programs starting on the left of this slide we have the two programs we are featuring today catalyst and amplify mass catalyst is an early-stage prototyping grant program oh my apologies two programs we are featuring today innovate mass and deploy mass but on the left of this slide we have two other programs catalyst is an early-stage prototyping grant program that offers grants of up to 65 K amplify masks offers up to 500,000 and cost share funding to companies or researchers that are pursuing a prime award either federal or non-federal such as goe or NSF grants next we have accelerate mass which is an investment program that provides up to one hundred and fifty thousand in convertible notes to clean energy graduates of approved accelerator programs of a similar company stage we have innovate mass which is a program that we will be focusing on today which provides up to $250,000 to demonstration projects of new clean energy technologies we'll go more into depth in this part Graham in a moment as the company in its technology matures Massey she offers equity investments of approximately a $500,000 and venture debt investments between $100,000 and $1,000,000 on the far right of this slide we have Massey C's deploy match program which will be the secondary focus today which facilitates the adoption of clean energy technologies at public project sites deploy mass is the other program we'll be focusing on along the entire x-axis of this chart you can see that Massey C offers workforce development programs which essentially funds interns at all company stages and with that you will now hear from Eric Logan Hughes as he describes discusses the innovate mask program thanks Cory so innovate mass is the grant program located in the center of this slide as you can see on the x-axis the technology readiness level that is ideal for innovate mass our products or technologies that are in the demonstration phase so some quick highlights on innovate mass innovate masks can award grants of up to 250 thousand dollars and there's a 50% cost share requirement on the part of the company so if you're applying for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is expected that you will provide up to or you will provide $125,000 of cost share we also offer third party technical support through the innovate master program where a consultant will work with you to help you manage the project innovate amass is open twice a year of the current RFP for summer 2019 is due June 10 and there will also be a winter around opening sometime in the October or maybe September timeframe again the TRL range for innovate mass projects are in the 5 to 7 range these demonstration projects are for products that are in the advanced prototyping stage but not quite commercially ready yet it's also conditional that the company applying for innovative mass is based in Massachusetts and we'll go into more detail on what being based in Massachusetts it means for this particular round of innovative masks we have a spotlight on data science and machine learning the spotlight opportunity is not a carve-out but we have worked out partnerships with certain companies that would be willing to listen to your proposals and potentially partner with you moving forward and you may also apply for innovate mass as a data science and machine learning product without a specific partner company that we have provided so more information on this spotlight on each round we offer spotlights again this round is that it is they decide to machine-learning spotlight we've sort of loosely defined the spotlight as highlighting technologies that can accelerate adoption of clean transportation tech reduce building energy use and lower barriers for clean energy deployment a more specific definition of data science and machine learning technologies can be found on page 10 of the RFP document linked on the website the two companies that we have talked to about partnering under the spotlight are Annelle and National Grid you can reach out to them for potential project partnership opportunities the information is listed on the RFP and the deadline for reaching out to them is a week from today or next Wednesday May 13th what we look for in the application are the following requirements the application form lists or has sections rather where you can fill out an overview of the technology sort of describing what it is that your product does the target market and the role of the project in the path to the market as in what will this grant enable you to accomplish that will get you to the commercially ready stage in order to demonstrate that we'll ask you to fill out a project plan sort of describing the what the winds the where and how much is needed in order to demonstrate your technology importantly as a clean-energy Institute we will also ask you to sort of identify what is the climate impact of your technology we do this through a section that's called the total addressable carbon analysis which we'll go into a little bit more detail on later and finally as a Massachusetts Bay state agency we want to see what the benefits to the Commonwealth are that your demonstration project will bring sorry go back William we'll also ask you to fill out forms on the budget so how will the grant funding be spent towards demonstrating your product and also a draft project work plan outlining how you will actually use the grant funding to accomplish those goals listed in the five bullet points above so one component of the project work plan is the milestone table so one thing or one way you can think about this table is that each milestone is sort of like a chapter in a book we want you to describe to us what is the scope of work or what is the actual milestone that will be accomplished as you go through the project an estimated project completion date what is the grant amount that you will need to complete that that milestone and what is the cost share that you will provide for completing that milestone again with cost share being a 50% of the grant amount requested it's pretty common for the first milestone to be something aligned along the lines of work plan approval as we can't begin paying in any of the projects until milestones are completed so if you're coming in with something like software under data science and machine learning where it might be more difficult to demonstrate something upfront as the initial coding is being done it's okay to miss approval at the first of your work plan as the first milestone to get the cash upfront that you need to begin the projects associated with the milestones is a deliverable chart we will actually list out what are the deliverables that you will show to demonstrate that you have completed the milestone an important column here is the confidential column on the right where you can list whether or not a deliverable is confidential or not it's important that for each milestone we receive at least one non confidential deliverable so that we can verify that the work was actually completed and that you've demonstrated that portion of the project but we understand that there are confidentiality concerns for some startups so if you would like to submit confidential deliverables to the third party technical consultant who will then screen the deliverables without showing us any of the files but let us know that you have demonstrated and completed the work but you said you would that is that is an OK way for you to retain your privacy while also making sure that we have visibility into the work actually being demonstrated the final portion of the project work plan is the budget important components here all of the light blue cells are formulas you will not need to edit any of those cells the cells that you will be editing are the light green cells so starting with the cost share again there's a 50% cost share requirement for this program so in that portion of the budget you would list out who is providing what cost share from your side that can be coming from your startup it can be coming from your project partners it's okay if it's across multiple organizations provided that we have approved you to work with those organizations as a part of your scope of work and they are listed here in the cost share portion of the template the direct labor template is where you would list who is doing what from your team on this project we do not want specific names in the team member column the name and title column on the Left we want the roles that people will be working under your project in in the event that you switch out staff we don't want to have to do a contract amendment to switch the names to later date so just list them the professional title that will be performing the work the hourly rate column is really self-explanatory this is where you fill in the rate at which that role will be paid the number of hours that they will be contributing to the project and then the allocation of grant dollars that will be going towards paying that person and the cost share amount that you will be providing for that role as well the subcontractors a portion of the budget is for people not in your company that you'll be looping in to work on on the project similarly the name in title should not be specific people spits like first and last names but just the roles and the hourly rate the number of hours the grant amount and the cost share amount are all the same as in the direct labor portion of the spreadsheet finally there's the direct materials and cost portion of the budget where you'll list out the direct materials and cost that are necessary for completion of your project the more specific the better so that we can understand what exactly it is that you're purchasing sorry what exactly it is that you're purchasing or what's necessary to demonstrate your technology so in terms of what we're looking for for projects that we would like to fund we want projects that demonstrated real technical merit the technology should be new and interesting it should be innovative it can be innovative in the sense that it's never been seen before or it can be innovative in the sense that it's a combination of existing technologies that create a new use case that hasn't been seen before we also want a project that in technologies that have strong commercialization potential in your application you need to demonstrate to us that you clearly understand the market and the customers the this media actually exists within the market and identify any commercialization barriers that this demonstration project might help you overcome we also look for strong project work plans this is demonstrated through the portions of the application form that we just walk through you know we want to see a project that is achievable within the time line in the budget we want to see that the demonstration is going to result in improved business case the technology in the product and that you have delineated or listed out a project workflow that has reasonable milestones that can be accomplished within a reasonable time frame all of these factors together contribute to a high language of success which is ultimately the kind of project that we want to fund we also look for projects that have a strong programmatic fit which is demonstrated through benefits to Massachusetts you know will your project or your technology aligned with Commonwealth energy policy does it provide additional and state benefits like contributing to facilities contributing to workforce development more jobs created manufacturing brought to the state things of that nature and importantly we are again a clean energy center so we need to see that there is a real climate impact for your product which is again demonstrated through the total addressable carbon analysis which is a portion of the application in which you will identify how big is the wedge of this this project addresses in terms of the total addressable carbon that the technology can affect and methodology that you use to determine how impactful the climate impact is is a important part of the application so again we want to see a high likelihood of the success actually mattering for the environment and for climate change so in frequently asked questions that we get how does the cost share work again 50% of your grant request needs to be matched by cost share from your company or your partner's out of that 50% cost share requirement 20% of that is required to come from cash and the remaining 80% can come from in-kind labor or in-kind contributions what qualifies as clean energy there is a definition that you can look up this in the general laws of Massachusetts section 1 chapter 23 J it is basically a significant reduction in non-renewable resource use coming primarily from sources like Sun wind hydro biomass things of that nature with fossil fuels or other non renewables and also nuclear not counting as clean energy so what is the expected duration of the project awardees are given 24 months to complete their demonstration project your product does not have to be 24 months it can be 12 in the 18 it can be 6 again the the project timeline is something that will evaluate as to whether or not it looks like you have listed out a reasonable amount of time for you to demonstrate your technology other frequently asked questions is the spotlight a carve-out so the the data science and machine learning spotlight and all other spotlights for future and pass rounds are not carve-outs if you submit an application under the data science and machine learning spotlight we will evaluate you against the entire application pool just as everybody else is so it is no guarantee that we will a
cept at least one or two data science or machine learning projects it just depends on what it is that that is submitted does the project side have to be in Massachusetts no does not the project can take place on any relevant site that will help demonstrate your technology but we will consider the benefits to Massachusetts in the evaluation as in is the demonstration site actually something double demonstrate your technology is relevant to the Commonwealth and then finally of what defines the massachusetts-based company again companies applying to innovate mass must be based in Massachusetts in that definition is contingent upon majority of the following categories of being based in Massachusetts so every company that applies should have at least three of these four components so if your primary if your company for example has company headquarters which it should primary manufacturing operations and primary research and development operations but you don't do any sales or marketing at least two of those three must be based in Massachusetts and if your company has all four of these components that at least three of the four must be based in Massachusetts a success story an example of an innovative project is Raptor maps so Raptor Maps is a Summerville based company that received an innovative mass grant to demonstrate their UAV systems thermal cameras and its capabilities of detecting defects in PV systems their demonstration partner was an allegory in power in North America where they demonstrated their UAVs thermal cameras capabilities over a Nell's 3.3 thousand megawatt renewable energy portfolio other examples of recent awardees these are all awardees that were awarded under the past round of innovative apps last winter's Blackburn energy is a company based in Ames Barry they're partnering with a variety of demonstration partners listed there Algonquin Industries high-tech medals for star connections Bergstrom Inc Maxim liftgate Corp a new math Bowl they were awarded one hundred twenty seven thousand two hundred and seventy dollars that are cost share requirement or the cellular cost share contribution was slightly over 50% as you can see and there the grant is to demonstrate their product real gen which is a software driven hardware that harvests wasted kinetic energy from a spinning driveshaft in heavy duty freight trucks other examples are cambridge-based carbon 0 Advanced Research also Nizar power partnering with ice on energy boston solar and ever source they were awarded the max that can be awarded under innovate Mass a quarter of a million dollars to demonstrate their combined inverter and EB charter that can except both solar and great power concurrently and the final awarding from last round was Easthampton based soul block with inter tech group they rewarded just over 150 K to construct and demonstrate a training program for their solar wall system at MIT and vocational high school which will help them get ul certification which is necessary to sell their their solar masonry units in the US so timeline and logistics for anime math you can look at the application at the URL there all the application materials that we went over today are listed on that webpage questions regarding the program are due May 9th we'll be posting the responses to those questions on a rolling basis to the main program webpage listed there video applications for this round event of a mass are due June 10th at 4 p.m. Eastern we're going to outreach for the spotlight partners in the National Grid under the data science and machine learning spotlight those are due next week may 13 2015 2 i third every company invited come to pitch day must undergo mandatory pitch coaching between July 8th and July 19 the actual pitch session will be Tuesday July 30th in Boston so if you disobey you have a strong application I would mark that date on your calendars and then we'll announce the winners of the pitch day the final selected awardees sometime in August of this year and so with that I will hand it over to Arielle who will now talk to you about the program pink slogan and thanks Cory so first I'm going to apologize to everybody I'm getting over a cold so I have a little bit of a croak in my voice at the moment so thanks very much to the team for supporting on this webinar so deploy masks the second program that we're going to talk about today is highlighted here in red on this version of our program overview slides as you can see this is the most for commercialization focused grant program that we offer it's really targeted at technologies that have that TRL level eight to nine and a commercial readiness level that's similarly up there at that kind of seven eight level this program is targeted at products that are have been demonstrated there's no more for product development left to do but there are there may still be four market barriers specific to the product that that could benefit from some additional source support from SEC so again an overview of this program the program is enabled to provide grants of up to $250,000 although contrary to innovate math our average project size is much smaller under this program again because we're really trying to target those sort of specific commercialization barriers on a specific product by product basis we do maintain the third-party technical support as part of this program unlike innovate mass the deploy math program is rolling we're always accepting applications there is a two-step application process that I'll go over a little bit more in a moment in just to reiterate we're focusing on technology that's really ready for commercialization and sort of scale up so the application process only clean-energy technology companies are eligible to apply for deploy mass so this is a technology provider grant program not a technology customer grant program there's two phases to the application process to get funding for a deployment project under this companies that are seeking project funding first apply for inclusion of the specific product that they're seeking funding for on our commercially ready technologies list so this is a list of technologies that a third-party technical consultant has vetted for us to say yes these are really ready for primetime and that we have also reviewed and found to be sort of within our programmatic goals and guidelines companies that have a product on the CRT list or companies that are seeking technical assistance which I'll talk about a little bit more in a moment may apply for funding using a letter of request template that we have that we'll talk about a little bit more on a slide or two so the CRT application the commercially ready technologies list application again it only accepting onto this list only qualifies a product for potential future project funding there is no funding attached to acceptance to the CRT list in and of itself it's a fairly lightweight application only a couple of pages long and when you fill out this application we're basically asking for an introduction to the company who are you where you base what kind of a company are you a description of the product and description of the product benefits companies on the CRT list as I mentioned don't get any specific funding for that but do get permission to use our logo and the program name on marketing material companies that have a product on the CRT list are eligible to submit a letter of request for funding all of those requests for funding must include a specific qualified customer site with a letter of support or a letter of commitment from that customer site the requests also again from introduce the applicant have to describe what the project is discuss the potential benefits of the project to the customer estimate the greenhouse gas impacts and include a budget justifications or how much is this going to cost and why is it going to cost that much potential customers sites can reach out to CRT less qualified companies and provide strong letters of commitment to a company funding requests in order to support that that's or project application on our end so we have a particular definition of eligible customer sites under this program unlike in innovate math all the projects that we fund under deploy masks have to take place in Massachusetts and then in addition to that in order to be eligible for funding applicant companies have to secure a public or public interest customer site so what this means is that the customer has to be either public a municipal state or federal building or customer public school municipal lights we and any federal lands or Department of Defense installations for example would count for this for public interest and defining a customer as public interest is really at the discretion of math CEC but some examples of this would include things like private universities privately run affordable housing hospitals really sort of entities that are there to serve the public and again all of those customer sites must be located in Massachusetts so that's for project funding the deployment program also Awards technical assistance grants for eligible company and customer site pairs those grants can be used for things like feasibility studies detailed engineering scopes and market analysis study requests do not require a preliminary CRT with application that's because from RN part of the study itself is sort of would be determining the commercial commercial readiness of the technology or it wouldn't necessarily make sense to do for example a detailed engineering scope for something that isn't isn't technologically and commercially mature enough to support that kind of engineering analysis but again we do require that there be a letter of support or a letter of commitment from the customer or sort of public or public interest proponent of that study so just again to go over a little bit of what we're looking for under this program for the CRT list applications we're looking for commercially ready technologies the products are ready to be sold to a customer they're not sort of alpha or beta versions this is the actual marketable product their innovative compared to the market so there's a market need for the product and what is novel about the product is clear so for example we would not support under this program sort of installation of a of a conventional rooftop PV system because we already have a vibrant market for that technology we would mean any applicant to really demonstrate what's novel about their their technology compared to the state of the market we're also looking for a strong benefit profile so a strong potential to reduce greenhouse gases especially within the Commonwealth and potential savings for customers usually we would consider those to be financial savings so in sum we're looking for something that's a good candidate for market entry when we evaluate letters of request for funding we're really checking to see that the project makes sense for the customer that the customer is really committed to sort of championing this project and seeing it through and that there's a clear value proposition for that customer we're also checking that the project makes sense for math CEC so that there's good greenhouse gas reduction potential and that the project has good replicability and visibility so again what we're really looking for here is that there's a specific market barrier that's preventing this beneficial commercially ready technology from really diffusing out into the market on its own that there is some kind of barrier or inefficiency in the market that we can overcome through a targeted use of grant funding the other thing I should mention here is will we place a special emphasis or going forward on the Commonwealth energy policy priorities around for example existing buildings and clean transportation energy resilient storage those are all areas that that the Commonwealth is putting a lot of emphasis into in terms of our our overall funding activities and policy going forward so in sum were looking here for a good customer a good match between the customer the product in the program itself just to briefly go over the budget form that we use this is a little bit of a unique budget form for all of the technology development programs that we run so we do ask for a budget on the overall project that's very similar to the budget form that Logan showed for innovate math in addition we ask for this kind of perform our economic analysis that really demonstrates what the value of the specific product is in the specific project to the customer and really that the goal of asking for this kind of analysis is making sure that there is a business case there so that we understand what the role is of the grant funding going forward the reason that we ask for this sort of analysis under this program and not under innovate math for example under innovate math we don't necessarily expect that companies have fully worked out what their cost profile is on a product for a commercially ready product such as we would be looking at under the deploy math program we really expect that you know what your cost of the product is to go over the funding limit as I mentioned this program can do up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars in grants that depends a little bit on sort of who's applying we have different funding limits for Massachusetts based startups Massachusetts based large companies Massachusetts based distributors of technologies that were developed most likely outside of the country and then technology developers outside of Massachusetts that are seeking to make an entry into this market we do require cost share again that sort of scales along with that level of support that you see there and we have a total cap on how much of the product can have been sold before it's no longer eligible for grant funding under this program which is fewer than five deployed projects or less than $500,000 in sales whichever is larger and again the goal there is really to make sure that there's a specific market barrier that we are helping to overcome through funding with this program so FAQ for this program can I submit multiple products or technologies to the CRTs yes the CRT whist is product suspense suspense is a product specific not company specific but you should submit a separate application for each product and in terms of timeline it takes around one to two months to get approved for the CRT list and similarly around one to two months for us to evaluate an application for project funding we use the same definition of massachusetts-based under this program as under all of our technology development programs it's the same surah T based definition that Logan mentioned earlier we do get asked a lot how customers can participate really the way for customers to participate in this program is to support companies in their application what defines a massachusetts-based present for for companies of outside of Massachusetts as you may have noticed we have a provision under this program for supporting companies that are located outside of the state that are seeking to sort of open up the market here and we require that those companies in order to receive funding under this program have to hire at least one full-time employee in Massachusetts and then how soon after the award does does that have to happen we put that at about within three months so a success story under this program austin-based XL hybrids received a deployed mass grant in 2017 to demonstrate their for hybrid retrofit kit for for conventional internal combustion engine vehicles following their project Excel Hybrid has closed successful Series C and D financing rounds with some very large partners in a couple of recent awardees you can see here I won't read all of them in detail but we have a range of soar project funding and feasibility for technical assistance funding that we've done under the program recently okay I'll hand it back to Cory and then we'll get into some questions just to quickly highlight some of the other funding opportunities that could have potential synergies with our program the NYSERDA national offshore wind consortium recently opened they are accepting applications on a rolling basis until December 2019 for demonstration and development of technol
gies that innovatively remove barriers and address issues essential to the offshore wind industry there's also the bird energy program with the Department of Energy and the israel ministry of energy and the israel innovation authority to kind of co develop clean energy technologies and then you can see at the bottom we have our amplify mass program mentioned which accepts clean energy focused applications on a rolling basis I'll leave this here for a moment and then we will begin to answer questions all right so kick it off our project is clean tech with strong public interest impact but with a difficult to measure greenhouse gas reduction is it necessary to show greenhouse gas impact yes so as they do your best on this one just show the logic of where greenhouse gas reductions would be coming from one thing that we should say is that we are legally barred from considering we're so commonly considered to be co-benefits like we can take them into account but we can't make a funding decision to something that only reduces for example particulate matter but does it reduce greenhouse gases um thank you what constitutes establishing a Massachusetts presence for both innovative mass and deployment so for deployment if you are seeking to be conservative massachusetts-based company that's the same definition that Logan went over earlier in the in the session I'll let him serve repeat that in a moment if you're outside of the state and seeking to sort of establish a presence but still be considered based outside of Massachusetts you have to hire a full-time employee that's based in Massachusetts yeah so the requirements for being based in Massachusetts there's sort of four categories that all companies should have at least someone working on which are primary sales and marketing primary manufacturing operations primary research development operations and also a company headquarters so of those four a company must have at least three of them if they have three of those four at least two must be based in Massachusetts if your company is involved in all four of those operations at least three of those four must be based in Massachusetts so you can think of it as a majority of those operations listed on slide 16 thank you for innovative mass do applicants need to submit a letter of intent and if so when is the deadline no no letter of intent is necessary letters of support from demonstration partners are encouraged right if project partners are out of state does that disadvantage applicants no again if a project partner is outside of the state that's that's absolutely fine we just want to see or hear rather what is the story or the narrative of how that demonstration outside of the state would be replicable in some way in Massachusetts or what are the benefits of your technology to the Commonwealth we should say also not every project that we support is going to have a market in the state we understand that there are some industries that are not sort of pursued here versus other areas in the country or other areas in the world that they have large greenhouse gas impacts and there I would just say what we want to see is again a demonstration for the company's connection to the state where the benefits for the state from from crime and economic development side okay do applicants need to have the funds for the cost share existing before the submission of the proposal to innovate mass you don't need to have the funds in a bank account we highly encourage you to have the funds committed if you don't have the funds committed that would be a problem if you were awarded and then we were trying to contract because we do right that cost share into the contract so awardees are at that point kind of legally obligated to to have that cost share available at the time that they would contract and then be invoicing us we require a cost share certification along with each invoice and we do have an audit provision under all the tracts in part for this purpose great um are a no and National Grid interested in partnering on clean energy projects not involving data science and machine learning so potentially um really the spotlight opportunity and what they the proposals that they agreed to review were for data science and machine learning but I'm you can still reach out to them with your project proposal to see if they might be interested and if they're not then you can just submit a regular innovate math application could you please repeat how we can find the email and National Grid contact information finished program sure so on the RFP website so it's math CC comm slash request - proposals - innovate masse there are there's a clumping of six links with the application forms which are located just above the timeline table the bottom most link it says the data science and machine learning spotlight invitations for partnership and now a National Grid that is a document outlining what NL and National Grid are looking for in these partnership opportunities and their contact information is listed at the bottom of their respective pages good to know um for an innovative match as well as deploy I suppose I could or how would benefits be included in the hourly rate we list out what um what's able to be included in terms of what tax contributions benefits and so forth in the RFP that's a definition that comes straight from our legal department so encourage you to look at look at that section of the RFP in terms of allowable expenses and cost share and reach out by email if you have any specific questions on that thank you do you need names and addresses of angel investors the car share work plan though no you do not need these addresses in your cross your work plan and you can list them collectively as like angel investors we understand that that's a common source of funding for startups at this stage how do you define technology readiness level do you have your own definitions or use the standard NASA produce definition we use the standard NASA the produce definition the main different series that we we replace the word space with like a general definition of what it means to be in the field we do not generally expect these projects to go into space on the subject of TRL how do you like to see the advancement of a project TRL by the end of innovate mass and how do you balance software versus hardware solutions it's a good question I would say is software and hardware solutions are evaluated equally and the TRL advancement that we like and sort of expect to see is getting you past the demonstration stage so in terms of the TRL range you can think of innovate mass ideally getting you towards 8 9 would be great but it's getting past the demonstration stages is kind of the desired goal okay just in terms of the the software versus hardware question we do understand that what it means for something to be a field demonstration of software is going to be a little bit different than for a field demonstration of hardware I think you know what we've seen in the past with software projects is that compared to just having sort of synthetic training data sets for example you're using real customer data or compared to having only sort of the internal version of the UI you actually customer-facing UI so I think that there there are ways to evaluate that and we are aware of some of the subtleties around that for software versus hardware um in terms of evaluating the funding ask in innovative math applications does the amounting ask influence the competitiveness of the application for example an application asking for a larger amount compared to an application asking for a lower amount so we have a fairly fixed budget per round in in that sense it does make you more competitive to have a lower ask and to have higher cost share it's not obviously we have awarded projects in the past at the maximum with a minimum cost share if they're really highly aligned with the program and other ways but just as any other grant program structured in this way I would say yes to the extent that you can sort of allow us to do more with the the program budget that is appealing is there a single winner in the innovate master competition or are there multiple and also our proposals evaluated more against each other competitively or against the criteria of the round that's your question so typically there's a three to five awardees per round that's the normal range about 10 to 12 annually across the two solicitations in terms of evaluating proposals against the criteria of the competition or against each other it's primarily against the criteria of the program but there is of course a little bit of evaluation across the pool of applicants yeah I would say um you know we do a two-stage down selection as was as we sort of gestured at in the the program logistics slide we have a sort of a paper review stage and then a finalist pitch day when we're doing the paper review stage we're really trying to get down to only the programs that sorry only the proposed projects that we thinks are score well against what the program is looking for and then once we're at the finalist level then it's really more of a competition against each other is how I would think about it so in that sense both great is salaries an element factored into caution yeah it can be um we do accept in-kind cost share for both of the programs that we've discussed today and the the the only thing to keep in mind there is the the limit on what percentage of the cost share can be in kind for anime math how many letters of support does the typical applicant to innovate math have one two three general huh you're seeing more we went we would advise applicants to include letters of support from basically everybody important to the project success okay could you please go more into depth into the role that the third-party technical consultant will play sure so the the third-party technical consultant can be seen as having to correct me I'm wrong or I'll sort of main main roles or main priorities the first is project management they will be checking in with you at least once a month if not more to make sure the project is on track and to answer any questions that you might have versus how they can and then relay that information to us so that we are aware of how the project is progressing and then the second function that they they perform is the confidentiality screening so we as a public agency are are required by law to release documents under public records requests so if there is confidential information that is essential to determining that your project is actually on course we would have you send that to the consultant through a secure File Transfer Protocol we would never see the pot files we would never receive the files so that way a cab miss or sorry the technical consultant can screen and verify your confidential materials and then just let us know that they have done the review and that materials demonstrate the the milestone that they were supposed to great um kind of switching gears to deploy masts how long does it take for a eligible product to get on the CRT list and from there how long could it take to develop a project so they try to keep both of those at around one to two months in terms of the review cycle and sometimes it can depend on how complicated the analysis is that we have to do under each under each step so for example if you're close to commercially ready then it might take us a little bit longer to figure out how to handle that but in general we try to keep it at around one to two months great so if a company has multiple products or technologies they think could be eligible for the CI to is should they submit multiple proposals yeah you should submit one CRT list application per product that you want listed on the CRT list and then each sort project funding letter of request is is individual as well okay well a huge thank you to Ian Hughes and Eyal Horowitz for answering these questions and venting today a final reminder that we will be posting a recording of the webinar on our website as well as the answers to the questions in our you section thank you again for attending the RFP for innovate mass will close on June 10th and yes that concludes our webinar thank you you
