Also the burn rate, 500k and upto 1 million from SK just isn't much when you have 10 employees, legal, offices, 'development', manufacturing. And now it looks like they are looking for some government $$ (https://www.sam.gov -> search records -> DUNS:079962092). If they don't ship right away... money likely to go poof if hasn't already.
Interesting.
What were they applying for?
Not sure, they may have not applied yet. The DUNS application is often the first step for companies interacting with the government. This DUNS application says "Purpose of Registration: Federal Assistance Awards Only", which you probably saw.
Initially came across from a database on the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) / STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) site in a miscellaneous excel sheet. A clean entry is here
https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/828467, but basically same as the DUNS information except stating no awards yet (which they wouldn't have even if they applied right away.. 6 month cycles for SBIR).
The SBIR program is designed to attempt to drive and commercialize technologies in usually broad areas of interest the government has, usually benefiting people / economy / defense / health care or whatever.
Program is broken into three phases. 1st phase you get $150,000 for 6 months, if you do well, meet your goals, and your program manager likes you, you can apply for phase 2.
Phase 2, if you're accepted,
you get $1,000,000 over two years. There is a third phase with no cash, but puts you in a position to approach other programs for more $$$, and they expect you to enter the market. You fail too hard or too many times, you can be blacklisted.
I've worked with a few companies in the SBIR 1 and 2 phases. SBIR can be very good but also annoying. You have to meet everything you said you would, otherwise you jeopardize phase 2... and you want phase 2. You are also checked during phase 2. So it makes it more difficult to 'pivot' if you need to because you've already promised certain things upfront. Stuff like accounting must be done 100%, so somethings become more tedious.
But if you make it into phase 2..... you're likely doing much better than if you took $1,000,000 from somewhere else.
Also, the SBIR companies Ive worked with, entered phase 1 earlier compared to Batteroo (Batteroo says they will be in the market next month, while the companies I worked with were a few years out)...don't know if this is what they are really targeting, if anything, but maybe a possibility if you need cash.
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