The Department of Defense (DoD) has extended the proposal submission deadline for its current SBIR and STTR solicitation from February 18th to 6:00 am Eastern Standard Time on February 25th. The decision to extend the deadline is associated with the brief period that the DoD SBIR/STTR website was recently down. Some within the SBIR community were surprised by the extension, because the problem that occurred was resolved well before the February 18th deadline.
The current extension has brought to mind a situation in 2003 when electronic submission of SBIR proposals was in its early years. The DoD’s computer server crashed on one of its submission deadline dates denying submission to some entrepreneurs. Following nearly two months of wrangling, the DoD was complelled to reopen the solicitation period for three weeks in March. One may speculate that possibly the latest extension is DoD proactively avoiding the same difficulties that occurred in 2003.
Looking back at the 2003 extension one may not dwell too long as to whether the extension for proposal submissions had any significant impact. But for one New Jersey entrepreneur the submission extension undoubtedly placed his startup on the pathway to success. In 2003 Peter Li, founder of Li Creative Technologies Inc. was an aspiring entrepreneur. Holding a PhD and a background in electrical engineering, Li had identified a few suitable topics in the DoD’s solicitation to pursue. The additional time to apply for a grant and potentially jumpstarting his commercial enterprise turned out to be pivotal in moving Li from “employee” to “entrepreneur”.
At the time Li hesitantly reached out to the NJ Small Business Development Centers’ (NJSBDC) Technology Commercialization Program for assistance in preparing his two proposals. However, by the DoD’s submission deadline he had successfully completed and submitted only one. When the DoD solicitation was reopened in March, NJSBDC notified Li who then completed and submitted a second proposal. Both proposals were ultimately funded. The company was successfully launched and it went on to win several more SBIR awards.
Almost a dozen years later Li Creative Technologies, Inc. (LcT) located in Florham Park, is now a successful business specializing in speech signal processing, voice biometrics, and natural language processing. The company has developed products and applications to improve the clarity of cell phone and VoIP communications, to control TV and in-car equipment by voice, and to perform automatic information extraction from text and video. LcT also won the International CES 2011 Innovations Design and Engineering Award.
It is often said that success in life is about second chances. For SBIR/STTR applicant Peter Li tapping into NJSBDC assistance and taking that second window to submit additional proposals made a dramatic difference in how he launched his first startup and how it improved his chances for entrepreneurial success.
