Brainstorming / Hot Seat: Earning my first SBIR Grant
A Talk by Stacy Swider , Russ Long and Dave Lutian
About this Talk
Listen in as one lucky entrepreneur gets advice from SBIR advisors and grant writing experts on how to repurpose a non-defense commercial solution to fit warfighter needs.
SolarFlexes was started in 2018, when Dave Lutian invented a ground-mounted solar array that is pre-fabricated in a factory, transported in shipping containers, and rapidly deployed at a project site. The portability of this technology lends itself to military and disaster relief applications as the array can be rapidly packed away in the container and moved to a new site.
To date, SolarFlexes has received a $150K CalSEED grant from the California Clean Energy Fund and is part of a pre-accelerator program at the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. Initial prototypes are under construction, but not yet developed.
Mr. Lutian plans to discuss his experience in leveraging a military contractor background to create new products for the warfighter that utilize a similar business model, balancing a stable career with starting a new venture, and strategically seeking funding opportunities that enable founders to safely de-risk a hardware startup without losing momentum in the process.