How Can I Sign Nebraska Banking RFP

How to industry sign banking nebraska rfp

matt is a program director in west nebraska where he leads the combine agri-food incubator the biotech connector and assessment management adventure portfolio with that i'll turn it over to matt to get us started awesome thank you kate and thank you off the bat to the water for food institute for the planning preparation and marketing for this event and thank you for everybody either joining live this morning or if you're listening to this record it after the fact the goal of this morning is to provide some overview of the business innovation act and then specifically some time for q a in regard to companies that might be working in agriculture and value-added ag but i wanted to start by giving some background on invest nebraska invest nebraska and the department of economic development are the founding partners of the combine incubator which many of the people on this column later watching this call will be familiar with i'd say what invest nebraska is probably most formally known for is providing financial assistance to high growth companies across the state um but for this short couple of slides before we get into the business innovation act um information i'm gonna focus on kind of the back end of our mission statement and that is advancing the entrepreneurial economy and specific and specifically entrepreneurial infrastructure and agriculture and if you go ahead and hit to the next slide please so for those of you who aren't aware the combine is a state initiative led by invest nebraska and the partnering comp development as well as partners like the water for food institute nebraska farm bureau nebraska department of agriculture and our goal is to help early-stage high-growth entrepreneurs that are working in the ag industry help move forward in commercialization better connect with customers networking partners investors and those in the industry that can help move their business forward if you go to the next slide please what we do is in addition to the incubation space where i'm located now at nebraska innovation campus is operational assistance that probably doesn't look much different from many of the other accelerators incubators and technical assistance programs across the country what we really try to strive ourselves and being the best at is bringing the producers and farmers very early on into this program and connecting those in agriculture with the entrepreneurs provide valuable rapid feedback next slide please a couple of companies that we work with either across the state virtually or in the incubator at nebraska innovation campus these companies come from a variety of background and industries and solving are you and are solving unique problems and the goal for them is to not only solve the problem specifically in their industry but to continue to build a strong company in the state of nebraska hence the economic development focus from the state as well as from invest nebraska and maybe i think of one or two more slides the final thing i just wanted to put a plug in for this group in this recording is a ongoing annual event the onramp agriculture conference it's a partnership with department of economic development invest nebraska in a group called generator out of uh madison milwaukee on-ramp is an annual event it's a virtual event that connects startups into kind of a speed dating style with corporations all across the country as well as some local corporations here in the states and it's our opportunity to hopefully give um the companies that are interested in getting a pitch or a spot in front of some of the corporate vc as well as corporate business development folks in various industries and i think that is all i have for me um with that i will make an introduction over to ben kind of for the bulk of the programming today ben as mentioned leads uh business innovation act program training department economic development what we're going to be talking about today is primarily relevant to the prototype grant but he will touch on a couple other programs and then we'll leave plenty of time for questions ben thanks for joining the call and i'll hand it over to you thank you matt um as matt said i'm half of the business innovation team at the department of economic development for the state of nebraska so economic development is a state agency we have about 60 people we touch upon a lot of things that try to bring economic health through the state uh that includes innovation which is myself and nisha avey we have an international team a recruitment team some general business assistants but we also cover housing community developments which is a large portion of what we do and a good portion of what the department of economic development does is handle pass-through funds for today's discussion we are discovering business innovation act that is a state-funded program we have about 5.7 million dollars per year uh it sometimes varies a little bit but it's a fiscal year program that runs from july 1st through june 30th and uh nation i do all the application intake marketing and uh kind of application review we'll talk about the process a little bit as we go on here i've been with the department since 2012 in some capacities i've been working on the innovation program since 2014 um the and then the business innovation programs really kicked off in 2011 they were passed in 2011 approved and they we started taking applications and approving projects in 2012. when we talk about business innovation actually as government we tend to view things as what authorizes it so that's the business innovation act which was passed in 2011. also it might be called the talent and innovation initiative uh or innovation programs uh really you're looking at the program level this is a suite of programs and it shares that pool of funds that we're talking about that uh a 5.7 million uh this year usually it's between five and six million and that's uh state general funds so the i would say the most popular program we have and the one that occupies most of my time is the prototype grant program it's probably the most appropriate program for the majority of businesses that are starting up and need some product development and that's what we focus on is cost related to project development or product development you need to have a scope of uh in order to apply for this you kind of need to have something budgeted scoped out a planned uh scope of work and we can provide up to 150 000 in funding uh per project that we haven't gone that far that was actually uh the cap on the program was 50 000 until 2016 or 2017 when a cleanup bill was passed and modified that um at the same time we did not get any additional funding and we typically fund about between 30 and 40 projects a year um and that's what we can do with about you know our kind of soft cap of that share of that pool of money because there are other programs to touch upon and we'd rather do 30 or 40 rather than six or seven at a 150. so our meeting awards both fifty thousand dollars um it can really it really depends on the the need the nature of the project um and kind of what else is there's some intangibles there that we touch upon but uh historically the lowest we've gone is six thousand dollars the highest we've gone to date is a hundred thousand dollars um it's open to businesses with 500 employees or less so this is not just for startups but i'd say the majority vast majority of the companies that we fund are startups that either are pre-revenue or in their infancy um their first few years of formation the other kind of customers that we focus on are companies that are bringing new products to the market so if you're under 500 employees and you have a nebraska's significant uh nebraska presence on in that case be headquartered here um we have worked with some companies that are doing a new product development they need some assistance with that so we can reimburse uh two-thirds sixty-six percent of project costs it is every all of our programs are matching programs and reimbursement base for prototype that which is two-thirds or eighty percent if it's agriculture related we also have a another focus which is bioscience and there was a separate fund for that which most of the funding is exhausted but that was a 50 match of one to one so uh unfortunately we don't set the rules so the the legislature sets the rules and that means that we follow them um so there are some idiosyncrasies with all these different programs and some uh some pitfalls but the nice thing is that with agriculture related which is the focus of the discussion today um that is an 80 reimbursement rate so it's a it's a four to one match where ded can pick up that four parts of and the fifth needs to be from the company that can be any private funding that can be a loan that can be personal capital that can be revenue it can be an investment from a not the state um but it can be a federal grant if you can manage to match something outside of the sbi-rs ttr arena which we'll touch upon in a minute but there are some things what we can't do is we can't match state funds so if there's another state agency that is receiving funding we have to look at that pretty closely and make sure that we're not using at least state general funds as the match and then because there needs to be some private components some skin in the game uh numbers as of i believe this was march of 2020 so before this fiscal year started awarded about 12.3 million most of that has been utilized over 253 projects and that's since the inception of the program so that's about nine years so that's pretty significant a couple notable companies there uh matt mccord out of lincoln company camo lincoln that's a good example mama is a bioscience slash uh animal health company they they do genetic testing dna rna sequencing in a new fashion um and they have developed a machine they started in 2014 we received a prototype grant for that and took advantage of some of our other programs later on down the line now they're growing and they have a significant staff than in north lincoln company cam was also around the 2014 area their software company and i will say about 60 percent of the companies that apply for this program are doing pure software development um so that's uh company cam is a good example of one of the groups they do they're uh they do sorry it's for contractors they take pictures and kind of do assist with uh making sure that materials are dropped off work is being done it's a it's a lightweight style thing it's composed of something like builder trend but they've had significant traction and retention of of uh customers and they're up to 30 or 40 employees so the goal of these is to get things launched build out a product um in the initial stages we focus the the use of funds is just for product development so if you're doing software that's paying for software engineers um ui ux maybe some licenses or server expenses like aws things like that but what we don't cover or if you're sorry if you're doing hardware that would also include materials engineering design uh you know any sort of contract work we focus on things that are happening here to the point where we really don't fund things that are happening outside of state so if you're you know if you have an existing relationship with a offshore developer or something like that that's not something that we're really interested in funding um but if you want to reach out to a developer here that could be internal or external either a development firm or a 1099 or employee doing that but those are kind of what we focus on we don't cover general business expenses with this program so rent utilities marketing legal all those things that go all the costs associated with starting up uh we're focused just on product development well well the other uh programs in the next slide is seed investment so um when we get there we'll talk about that a little bit but that's with invest nebraska so matt is one of the three person team in west nebraska uh nisha ave at the department of economic development handles most of the activity around seed investment we're the funding arm but invest nebraska makes the decisions in terms of who they would like to uh fund so they do the due diligence they do they have a board that reviews and approves projects and they make and hold the investment as a non-profit venture capital firm with that is focused on improving the uh underlying economic health of the state of nebraska they have a double bottom line of improv of return on investment and any return would go into an evergreen funds they could continue this if the business innovation tax programs go away invest nebraska could still exist as an entity and make early stage investments um and they also have are focused on economic development in the sense that they can are might be interested in projects that are longer term they're going to be held for longer than that five to seven year window that a vc might typically want to see an exit in um they would like to see exits i don't want to advance them but they also want to see the the project is going to be a benefit to the state of nebraska so they they need to focus on nebraska-based companies it is not a grant program it's uh it's an equity investment we get that question a lot it's up to five hundred thousand dollars that also needs to be matched they need to be part of a round i'd say the typical uh first time uh funding is usually between a hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand as opposed to that full five hundred 000 but that's something to discuss with invest nebraska if we have the capacity and the project merits it then we could go up to that half a million dollars in investment it doesn't need to be that one-to-one match so it needs to be uh 500 dollars of or a one-to-one match on any sort of investment um invest nebraska also provides technical assistance so um in addition to the combine uh ben williamson and ann hoffman uh will also meet and and help people and early stage companies with uh negotiating things and syndicating deals as well so they have a network of uh people that they communicate with to assist i always recommend that they be if you're looking at raising money you talk to invest nebraska at least to see about structuring any sort of deal even if that's angel if even if they're not involved they provide technical assistance and that can help you navigate that minefield without any cost to you so this and that funding can be used for commercialization so that is your operating expenses those are things and prototype is kind of a feeder program i would say a lot of the companies that started uh via prototype grants where they might get some initial capital together uh they leverage our grant program to develop a product get some traction and then they apply for seed investment so um it is there's no requirements obviously but it's a it's a great um opportunity to kind of move forward um we've done 13.9 million dollar invested 61 investment rounds they're having some follow-on rounds i say rounds instead of companies invested since 2011. ops compass is my example there they started with a prototype grant um a while back into then they're focused on providing a cloud framework for uh or an azure compliance uh for compliance framework for microsoft azure i might be a little bit off there foley but you're you're nodding along so i'm pretty close uh it's not something that um it's a good example of something that you you don't see a lot of in nebraska which is these high high growth high high-tech companies and i think that's a good example of what we're looking for is an opportunity to uh to get some of that things happening that's they're based out of omaha uh next slide slide please uh the other program that i manage directly uh so i'm prototyping academic r d for the vast majority of the time although we kind of cross over since we're a two-person team is the academic r d grant this is for companies that are doing applied research and development in conjunction with the nebraska college university so this is a great opportunity to get some of that information out of that that off the shelf or out of the minds of the academics and into the marketplace and i always em hasize the applied research and development we have had projects where the person doing the r d is also a university professor but this needs to go to a business that has a plan to commercialize it so we don't do pure research in our primary research just for research sake it is something that where you're doing essentially research and development or validation of an existing product that will lead to commercialization um so that's up to and this is the the biggest program we have this is up to 100 000 for phase one and four hundred thousand dollars for a phase two it's a one-to-one match program but we still retain that four to one match for value-added agriculture so we either reimburse fifty percent for majority of projects that are not really into agriculture or 80 for the agriculture religion one so uh if you do the math you get up to a half a million dollars in grant funds for 125 000 if you're in agricultural space i will say that we don't do a lot of phase 2 because of that is a shared pool of funds and we've done some kind of lower value phase 2s in the past and but we've done i was just looking yesterday one of the projects that is approaching completion commercialization we did a total of 414 000 over two phases um virtual incision is down the hall from matt they are a university spin-off that is uh or founded uh working with new tech and they are a surgical robot uh we did a phase one and a phase two to assist them with their fda trial preparation and because they had to develop a number of these devices to do testing for fda approval new tech food science is also based out of innovation campus and they also have an omaha location they did a lot of research with the food processing center under the value-added agriculture umbrella which we'll touch upon a little bit more here and uh they uh so they've done uh i believe two or three projects where they've done uh food stuff or uh food additive um product development with the food processing center i like to point that out because the food processing center is university adjacent it is not a department necessarily while they have professors and people who work there they also have staff that work there that work with private industry so ops compass actually worked with nebraska applied research institute out of omaha which is a cloud computing security um and focused on operational ot sorry operational technology as opposed to informational technology they did a project with that group uh we've done projects with the cloud the holland computing center out of which is technically unl but located at unl and food processing center has seen their fair share of projects with uh foodstuff development and that would be our preference for food stuff developments that they work with the university the uh um other projects we've seen is the animal science department does really well with doing validation studies we've done a lot of feed trials for cattle swine chicken different you know as an agriculture state that is a value-added agriculture thing where you're moving it up the value chain you're looking at different feed stocks for um either animal or biotechnology and that's when the animal science department has actually done really well in leveraging our programs to assist with companies that are are seeking their expertise we've done 10 million dollars from 93 project phases since 2011 a little bit more since that is we're probably over 100 at this point because we've approved some in the last little while next slide please uh and the last program which nisha handles my colleague is the sbir or sttr small business innovation research small business tech transfer these there's i believe 11 federal agencies that uh have solicitations their open calls for submissions uh to the and they're trying to solve it do one of two things either they're trying to solve a problem or get technology into the marketplace that assists the uh is focused small business related uh in the sense that small businesses are the ones implementing it and they usually have their own emphasis so usda is focused on agriculture nasa might be focused on weather or rocketry or whatever i mean there's there's all these different agencies that do this of those 11 about half of the funding goes to the department of defense there's a company out of roca that has done really well they have their ex-military and they um are leveraging this and they've developed a number of different things i will say dod is looking to usually looking to implement whatever they're funding so they might be looking for an anti-torpedo system or a new shower for a battleship whatever it might be a lot of times the federal government is mandated to kind of approach us through the sbr program um and try to get small businesses a chance to uh contract with the government especially the military side or in other cases uh the usda and the more open agencies sometimes they have omnibus solicitations where they're saying well give us your best pitch see is how this will help you as a business and and move you know uh what's novel about it's more like our programs than that so the phase zero program is up to five thousand dollars um just to hire a grant writer or a technical reviewer um to assist with your chance of receiving an sbi or sttr and the difference and i don't get too far down the rabbit hole because it's not my program but small business innovation research is small business tech transfer is usually taking a technology from the university and bringing it to the marketplace sbir doesn't have to be university related uh our phase zero program will pay up to five thousand dollars no match required to hire somebody uh hopefully locally to assist with that application review or preparation um we do need to get a request and that's like a three page application it's very easy from you 30 days before that solicitation closes that's written into statute you do need to have a good chance of receiving it you have to have a good plan and team put together so i would work with nisha if you have questions about that each agency they do solicitations maybe every six months and it takes about three to six months to hear back from the federal agency that you apply to whether or not you accept it like i said it is competitive that's why we have the phase 0 program i've heard anywhere from 1 out of 8 or 1 out of 12 applications are actually funded if you receive a sbr or stcr and you notify us within 45 days of that letter being issued you can get a matching grant from the state for up to 65 percent of that federal award up to a hundred thousand dollars so anything near or above 150 000 can get you another hundred thousand dollars you can use that for similar activities that you would under our other programs which is uh employee wages you can do uh materials you can buy equipment you can you know there's and it's a little more permissive because i think we can cover some of those things that are operational related uh that are our other programs that kind of kind of carved out and the reason for that is because this is a multi-phase program as well usually there's a phase one phase two the feds definitely do a winnowing process where if you're uh you know they they might have a phase one uh and they might fund four to six people at the phase two level especially if they're looking to um purchase that then they might go down to one or two um and reach a final decision um on who they're going to go with um so the phase two is competitive as well and maybe one out of three actually get funded we feel that if you get a match for a phase one you're going to be able to expand that scope of work we're getting some federal dollars of assistance in there into the state and uh and that really uh hopefully can make you more competitive in the phase two level as well um you do need to be doing 51 of the project within the state so if you have a disseminated team or something like that that's across multiple states we need to know that you have a significant presence here and that at least 51 of the work will be in nebraska since this program is contingent upon uh receiving a federal award we've only done 4.8 million dollars of that over 107 project phases including sbir bay zeros which are probably the at least two-thirds of those projects um with a match of about 18.4 million dollars in federal funding so that's a great one for us a great way to leverage some of that so uh the two examples there same with diagnostics and therapeutics is out of unmc they're doing cancer research or cancer detection for pancreatic cancer using a blood test ignis was a also university spinoff out of unl or at least a couple of university professors and i believe they did and worked through new tech for that uh they do drone uh prescribed burns so they they have a little hopper on top of a drone they can drop small ping pong size uh balls that ignite so if you're doing wildfires which are obviously or while management of state or federal lands or private lands they can go out there and either under a service or a sales model they can assist with doing prescribed burns to prevent wildfires um obviously something that's topical to remain now so they've had great success with the department of the interior i believe federal park service so uh next slide please so everyone wants to know what's our application review process uh we use an online application portal uh the easiest way to find all of our programs go to opportunity.nebraska.gov bia that's the shortcut or you can just go to our website and search for ford r d sbi or whatever you are interested in uh we have an open application cycle so unlike the the feds and a lot of the other programs that dd manages we don't have deadlines per se we start taking applications on on or before july 1st of every year um and we go until our funds are exhausted last year we had a uh fun day it was kind of anomalous year we had a funding shortfall uh we had to we could we awarded our final awards last year uh from july first was november 18th so uh then we had a waitlist that we put together um and we kind of we had about 100 people uh waiting this year when we opened things up on june 1st so it's open we review projects every one to three weeks uh we're kind of due to everybody working virtually it's kind of throwing wrenching normally we'd have a every other week a standing meeting to review projects um we try to get an answer to you in under a month so i would say that that's the that's the longest timeline you're looking at uh unlike the sbir program or some of the federal programs you're hopefully not going to be waiting a long time uh but something you should be aware of is that because we try to expedite the review process and because of the way the statute is worded we only pay for things that are incurred within the contract period so if you have a project that you uh with some significant expenses um anything that's incurred or invoiced prior to the date of approval which would be after our review is not eligible for reimbursement uh with the way that we and we have a three-person internal review committee with a made up of employees at dede they look at everything it's an advocacy model so typically when you apply nisha i take an initial look at the application try to anticipate questions from our review committee have a discussion sit down see if anything needs to be modified changed or expanded upon mostly if we need additional information we'll seek that once it's ready we'll lock it in send it to our three-person committee and then we facilitate the discussion either in hri and they uh they make the decision whether to fund it what level of funded at so for prototype a lot of one of the questions i get a lot is what should i ask for you can ask for whatever you need uh whatever your product development if you can substantiate you think it's going to cost 300 000 you're more than welcome to ask for the max but you have to understand that we're going to come back with an offer and say well we can't do 150 but here's 60 here's 70. whatever it might be and you need to try to rescope if you want to utilize the program so that's something to be aware of if you are approved your you can start incurring costs as the day of approval as soon as you get an email we do a contract and we set you up in ach and w9 so that we can do direct deposits you make requests on an ad hoc basis whatever the timeline you feel comfortable with but they need to be accompanied by documentation of expenses so uh invoices timesheets proof of payment is also a component of that so you do need to pay for that thing if you are working in a normal uh prototype grant and you incur a cost of fifteen thousand dollars for software development you would pay that you'd submit that invoicing proof payment to us we would pay ten thousand dollars to your business bank account if it was agriculture related be twelve thousand dollars because of that eighty percent um the guidelines have the contract timelines for specific programs be aware that for prototype we can't go past two years so this is not intended to support companies for a long period of time is intended to rapidly accelerate the pace of development and we expect we are standard contract timelines 12 months most of our grantees are done within six and nine months and that's the hope that you know most of the projects would take about that long there are some retention and clawback information in the program contracts when you sign a contract with the state to utilize these programs do be aware that for the majority of them you need to maintain a presence with the state for a minimum of three years and make a good faith effort to commercialize the product um and the second one is very easily satisfied by providing some information about uh how the project went and how you're moving forward if for some reason the project is not working out we'd rather know ahead of time and part ways and cease development work and we don't have a tend not to try to claw back any funds there we've never had to exercise the clawback provision if you do decide to leave the state relocate voluntarily or you have an exit event where um somebody decides to acquire you and cease operations within the state that would trigger a clawback of the principle that we provided uh next page please slide the evaluated agriculture that that match just to further elaborate upon that um it is 80 for any program so if it's uh it just doesn't really affect sbir because of the uh the award numbers you still capped at 100 000 you still need to apply for one of the programs so if you're doing product development for agriculture you should probably apply for prototype if you're working with the university or you should be working at the university you should apply for that it's just we would reimburse instead of 66 for a prototype or fifty percent for r d we could do up to eighty percent uh there's a whole page and a half of information on what constitutes validity in statute um we leave that the way that dd approaches it is you can make that request and all it is is a line like a check box in the application form uh for prototype r d whatever um so if you're applying for the value addag match you just check that box and then we decide as an agency whether it fits and we if we need to consult their legal staff we will but essentially they need to increase the efficiency or profitability of farming ranching in nebraska so be using it developing a product here that you can sell it doesn't have to be sold just here and it probably shouldn't just be sold here but it needs to either move something up the value chain or increase the efficiency which would be something like equipment so examples agreement manufacturing precision ag with sensors and things like that animal health industrial biotech moving a feed stock up the value chain ethanol production is an example of that animal feed uh animal science department at unl does a lot of that and food products to move anything raw material at the value chain processing beef into another uh higher value product a consumer product that would be something or any sort of feedstock the application and as i said application is similar to a r gular bi project dd verifies the value added agriculture eligibility i can give a judgment call and i do to people that ask does this make sense and then give you a you know fuzzy answer as to whether or not you should apply for that so if you have questions you can you're definitely welcome to consult with nature i um we have a lot of people who might try to get that match by saying well you can use it in agriculture that's not always the best my analogy i go to as i say like a pickup truck a pickup truck can be used on a farm but it's not just meant for a farm a combine is something that is only used really for agriculture and is principally for agriculture so that's kind of where you're at if you have a product that um the use case is intended for agriculture then we can maybe um if that makes sense and that's what the pitch is then um that makes sense but if it's uh if there's a lot of different uses and that's just one of them then it probably doesn't fit the value and agriculture mold uh next slide please a couple of recommendations just for me this is my personal thoughts and uh something that from my experience in managing these programs um something was requested uh for this specific webinar and i think it's valuable for not just our programs but also kind of every grant program or investment thing that you are undertaking as entrepreneurs um so here's my thoughts my bullet points one is understand your audience and for dd you need to acknowledge the goal of the program which is that we want a return on investment for the state for a state funded program we want to see uh development of the you know the we're looking to create jobs and add revenue that can be taxed so what is it what does that look like we uh we don't want low income jobs we don't want to create things we're not this is not a um something that we're doing out of the goodness of our heart necessarily uh we want to choose projects that are going to hopefully benefit the state over time and if you're applying for seed investment then they might be looking for return on investment in the form of a multiple exit so as uh you need to go into it and knowledge what they're looking for the feds are looking for you know you need to answer a solicitation for the sbir program that is appropriate for you and they feel that you have a good chance of accomplishing so uh understand what the goals of the program are and acknowledge that and focus your business plan about that um also you're applying to in our case you're applying to lay people so if you're a highly technical company or solution or product you do need to explain any sort of jargon or acronyms uh in your business plan um and and kind of keep it to a level that's understandable i would say that that's usually not an issue as much but it's something that we have encountered in the past if you're applying to sbrs ttr they have groups of subject matter experts and you really should uh target that technical language and and be fully you know in depth and answer according to their guidelines so uh ours is a little bit higher level then you should be able to answer those questions but you know look at who you're applying to and get to know them um have an open narrative be clear about what the project entails and be honest about your possible efficiencies so we for prototype we ask for a business plan an application and evidence funds we also are allow you to submit uh letters of interest or intent or from customers and other things but no one project is perfect your team might be a little bit deficient address that don't try to sweep it under the rug say okay we're missing this but we're going to solve it via this thing really go out there and get some some budget details a lot of people will ask for funding but don't really have a use for it they might just say i would just like 60 000 well that's that's not going to get you funded you need to know exactly how you're going to use that and understand that might get thrown all throughout the window as soon as you receive funding but um do you need to have a plan or plan validation is a big thing that's the lean startup method methodology and matt touched upon as well so validate your assumptions uh go out there and talk to people uh get potential customer feedback and prove that to us is a a much higher chance of getting funding especially for prototype if you talk to people and you submit some sort of documentation email letter saying hey this is a problem i have as a customer and this is a solution i want to see in the marketplace um without that absent that it's really hard because you're you're making a statement that we don't necessarily know is true so um and then build out your budget based on real bids that touches back upon the the you know what the project entails is go out there and get bids i don't spit ball necessarily you know if you're doing if you need materials figure out what that material list looks like and uh and really build your budget around that and then lastly don't operate in a vacuum uh build the team if you don't have a team have another set of eyes to review your business plan application that goes back to the jargon acronyms have your mom look at it have your spouse look at if they're if they're not associated with the project have a whoever you can get to look at it make sure that it makes sense to them um and then take advantage of the uh technic professional resources mbdc the nebraska business development center invest nebraska like i said they provide technical assistance there's also the startup collaborative in omaha and motion in lincoln is is relaunching there's a lot of different places that can guide you and uh and there's score out of greater nebraska so you've got a lot of different paths to go down a lot of people who will help you without any cost or with a minimal cost in the case of mbc i think they charge some negligible fees for certain things but they provide a lot they're funded by the sba um and they they provide a lot of free services as well uh lastly don't listen to feedback from us from the people the grant administrators if you're applying for a grant um from all those people you talk to uh take that to heart and really if you're and this is a selfish thing for me if you are applying for a grant and i say hey you need to focus on x y and z um do that because uh i've seen what our review committee is focused on and i know how certain things are going to be received so um not every project gets funded and i can't anticipate everything but we try to give you the best possible chance and that's why we have kind of an open application process is to um have one set of eyes look at it see if they understand it and then allow you to revise or add additional information necessary to kind of give you the best possible chance of being funded but with that um i think i'm done molly there's a contact information um you can it's best to reach out via email i'm happy to set up times for an informational session for about half an hour to talk about your project and what might be most appropriate nisha handles the sbir and sttr most of the seed work i would also encourage you to reach out directly to invest nebraska if you think that you can hand are ready for funding um she also handles micro enterprise which is uh if you're a uh traditional business and you're interested in a loan she can contact you with the company or the nonprofits that uh do some loan programs micro loans are between five and fifty thousand dollars of assistance um that uh businesses might not be able to receive traditional uh funding for so um i with that i will kick it back if anybody has any questions or matt if you want to have anything else i'd be happy to answer things now excellent thank you ben i have a couple questions i wanted to ask you before we wrapped up on the top of the hour but that being said if anyone does have questions feel free to throw them in the chat and do our best to get to them so specifically to the prototype grant you talked a little bit about use of funds um i feel like this is a question that i get from potential applicants or applications that have taken a look at the portal four use of funds eustress having a good team but also at the same time as capital that needs to be spent within the state of nebraska so can you talk a little bit about some of these applicants might have a technical co-founder that can do it themselves so in that case maybe this the money is spent within the team but other times it needs to be an outsource or a third-party contractor um can you tell us a little bit more some of the questions you receive regarding that area yeah a lot of people ask if they can draw a salary on this and the short answer is it depends um because it really comes down to we would prefer to the way i view this and the way the program has evolved is that we're trying to accelerate the pace of development and if you're bootstrapping this especially if you're a solo entrepreneur it doesn't make a lot of sense to to pay somebody to quit their job and do something we would rather they hire somebody they bring somebody on so our preferences to you know as part of our metrics is to increase employment um is to for somebody to hire somebody or contract with somebody to move things along faster and the other issue therein is that we don't have a lot of control if we're paying a founder over a good use of funds so we don't want to personally enrich uh somebody drawing us a creative salary if you're paying somebody else and you have skin in the game it makes sense you know that you would you know cap that at a reasonable level so um where the the the line blurs a little bit is when you do have a technical co-founder and maybe you have somebody who's the the head of the operation or the ceo um or or and their co-founder might be the back of the house person and they are spending the majority of their time uh your nose to the grindstone trying to get things done we'll look at a reasonable compensation level for that i think it's kind of we've gone back and forth on that it's not as strong of an application as and and really you should be looking at this from the the aspect of maybe you have a technical co-founder it's a full stack developer but they really are not great at ui ux development or maybe they their back-end skills are a little rusty so they need to hire somebody to bring somebody on and do that so i would say that that's one example where the we might look at compensating a employer but our preference for most is wages of employees um contract developers uh materials and and the materials can pretty much be sourced from anywhere um the uh that any sort of actual labor being done we would prefer that it would be done in nebraska and most projects that we approve are done in nebraska helpful thank you we had one question coming in this is with respect to the prototype grant can you explain how the hq or operations of the company is assessed it really depends on the how big the company is if you're one person like where do you live you know the uh uh the if you're and and sometimes since we're focused on startups there might be a distributed team and it's kind of hit or miss whether or not it gets funded because we're looking at you know what is the what is the future plan for the people that are located here so we um we funded projects also where people have come in for incubators and then they might stick around for three months apply for a grant maybe even do some development work via grant money and then they leave and go on to the next incubator accelerator they go back home we want people with ties here or have a reason to be here and have boots on the ground so at minimum in order to qualify you need somebody here we have funded some projects under like academic r d where they have an individual uh working at with the university at unl and maybe there's a strong potential that they uh continue to uh grow that team here so um those are more on on faith um but there's no no hard and fast i would say the minimum you need to have somebody present um headquarters wise uh i think that's something that invest nebraska would look at more closely like where's most your team where's your founder live where are your offices at you know that's so that's i i would say it really it depends on the program and as the state of sbir just need to be doing 51 percent of the work here um and and i will say legally uh you need to be registered with the mass secretary of state in order to get any funds so hopefully that addresses your question um somebody needs to be physically present within the state um headquartered it that line can be you know we might need to make a judgment call on on on how that works yeah yeah that's a that's a good answer and for investor brass it's really the same i mean we use we use the term nebraska footprint but we also recognize that as you mentioned it's a double bottom line score card that we're looking at and the first priority is how many jobs could this create within the state of nebraska so i'll give you an example one company we invested in open doors they work with nfl mlb nba we know realistically for the company to do well they're going to have to have to hire folks in chicago boston new york that being said all their developers all their customer service marketing the entire kind of back end of the company is located right here in lincoln so we know long term for the company to do well it would not be in their best interest if we restricted them that every job has to be in nebraska but it's with the understanding of the founding team that they're always going to be continuing to hire nebraskans for other operations um i only had one final question so kate after this feel free to conclude but i guess then you have an interesting position because you kind of get to see the very top of the funnel for investor nebraska we see companies a little later stage maybe post prototype grant as you mentioned but just from personal professional opinion what kind of area of agriculture for this conversation is exciting most whether it be certain applicants are reaching out learning about the program um or an area of agriculture they see the most opportunity for innovation in and i'm a lay person and i'm not even a nebraska native i grew up in michigan i've learned a lot about agriculture and i think that what's most interesting to me is the a lot of the different sectors that we discussed is when we get companies and these are not things that the the general person might be aware of but industrial biotechnology is nebraska has such a strong opportunity uh to move feedstocks up the value chain since we we produce so much feedstock anything that can convert corn or wheat or soy into a product that is much more valuable either as a component or you know or direct to consumer um those are interesting personally and and sorry i think we also get a lot of reception for precision ag um anything sensor related i i tend to like the the idea of low-cost sensors and network uh reducing obviously labor is an issue um and anything that kind of does things more efficiently we get a lot of we've done a lot with precision ag we've done a lot with agricultural machinery which is neat i always like hardware projects because of um the fact that it's something tangible so we've done like a crop over cedar which is 120 foot boom arm attached to a trailer that seeds over the top of you know does the fills in and just cover crops in between row crops those are kind of interesting to me because you you can see the regulation between our dollars and what the output is and my probably my pet thing that maybe people aren't as excited about as uh or maybe our other members of dd aren't as excited about is um i like to see people who are passionate about bringing new crops to non-traditional crops to the nebraska market so people who are interested in farming something different and i think that if they can make an economic argument that it makes sense and they're doing a lot of research and one of the our grantees is midwest hops and they're out of plattsmouth i believe they essentially stood up the not just as a they did an organization a professional organi ation that was hops growers they built this from the ground up they've developed equipment for harvesting and processing hops and they have put in hops and done a lot of research on us with assistance from the university on what sort of hops will grow in nebraska that's kind of an interesting thing to me where you provide some diversity as corn prices go down people might be interested in hedging in certain ways and providing you know growing different crops and i think that from what i've seen a lot of the younger more entrepreneurial farmers are interested in maybe diversifying their uh operations um i may be off base there but it's personally i think it's uh it makes sense and it excites me more than uh some other projects awesome all right well thanks so much ben matt for the discussion um and all the great information that you shared everyone i hope you enjoyed this today and learned lots um ben and matt are both incredible resources in the state in terms of information for startups so i mean feel free to reach out to them moving forward thanks matt bed take care everyone