[Orcnet] Do you know anything about small business grants

[Federici Business Group]

Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 03:32:05PM -0800, Federici Business Group wrote:
> ...
>   
>> article published by the Commerce Department's Minority Business 
>> Development Agency on their website titled, "The Myth of Free Government 
>> Money: a Perennial and Pernicious Scam".  The URL for this article is:
>>            
>> http://www.mbda.gov/?section_id=3&bucket_id=101&content_id=3286&well=entire_page
>>     
>
> Great article!  It mentions SBIR grants, which might be available
> for some kinds of engineering work, but my one experience with 
> those was that they are not a solid basis for building a business.
>
> I was engaged for consulting work for a local engineering company,
> allegedly to design a chip to go in a product.  It turns out that
> the company lives off SBIR money;  they did not have a specific
> customer need in mind, they just wanted a chip (because that was
> a condition for an SBIR grant).  After a couple of frustrating
> months attempting to build a specification for a chip with no
> real application, I refunded their money and walked away.  There 
> seemed like no way this was going to turn into a real product.
>
> What happened to the old fashioned "please customers and get paid"
> business model?  It seems like a lot of people prefer to get
> something for nothing.
>
> Keith
>
>   
Thanks, Keith!

    Actually, I was involved with a data warehouse software company in 
Boston for a couple of years that also sought to live off of SBIR 
funding.  It was about the most frustrating experience of my consulting 
life!  They kept insisting that I write proposals for them that did not 
disclose the nature of the work they wanted to do.  As it turned out, 
they truly didn't know what they wanted to commercialize.  Two years 
later, I was in possession of 1,250 shares of worthless stock.  Live and 
learn, I guess....

    Thanks, again!      Ciao!----Susan




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