Innovation and R&D Escalator Workshop: Ronan Cunningham - Leveraging funding

1. Leveraging Invest NI and Innovate UK Funding for Strategic Growth

2. A Little Bit About Me and Why I’m Here
•18 years in the US working in the aerospace and defenceindustry
•Director of Business Development and Director of New Technology Development for a growing SME
•Currently EiRwith NISP Connect
•Work with a number of early stage tech startups
•Successful in leveraging government grants to accelerate strategic growth to >120 employees and $25M+/annum in revenues
•Lots of (hard) lessons learned along the way

3. Some Things We’ll Touch On
•When grants make sense
•How to use them as part of a broader strategy
•Preparing to write a strong proposal
•The importance of partnerships and collaboration
•Protecting your IP
•Getting beyond the grant and into the marketplace

4. Are Grants a Good
Fit For Me?

5. What Grants Are Not
•Revenue
•A quick proposal
•A sure thing
•Your first customer
•Enough money and resource to get to market

6. What Grants Can Be
•A platform that helps to launch your technology and business
•Pre-validation of your idea for VCs and investors
•Door opener to many new connections, government & industry
•Time-consuming
•Frustrating
•Distracting
•Unbeatable resource if used the right way

7. They Can Be Highly Competitive
•Depending on the funding type, win rate can be as low as 1 in 10
•Competition is good! It makes you test your assumptions and battle harden your business plan!

8. When Are They a Good Option?
•The technology is a core part of your business model
•Still need to de-risk the technology for private sector funding
•There is an identified market
•The technology is innovative and protectable
•There is not an immediate go-to-market urgency
•There is a good balance between technology push and market pull

9. Technology Push versus Market Pull
R&D
Production
Marketing
Need?
R&D
Production
Marketing
Expressed Market Need

10. Be Prepared For the Following
•40-60 hours of preparation time for a strong proposal
•Lots of writing and rewriting
•Lots of writing and rewriting
•Potentially long time lag between submission and award
•Mandatory contractual obligations and associated overhead

11. Fitting Them Into
Your Innovation
Strategy
They are most effective when part of an integrated plan

12. Don’t Let a Grant Drive the Company
•Too many people focus on “how can my business model be adjusted to fit into this grant/contract?”
•Leads to frustration and ultimately failure to launch the business you dreamed of
•Focus should be on “how can this grant/contract fit into my business model?”
•If it doesn’t clearly fit, you should not apply
•Be aware of the time lags that grants can add to product development

13. My View on Strategic Use of Grants
The real value of grants is when they allow you to get further along in your product development and market exploration in a timely fashion such that you have developed significant additional value in your product/company beforeyou seek external investment

14. Only Bid if You Can Answer Yes
If you had the same amount of money in the bank as you intend to submit a proposal for, would you invest it in the technology yourself?

15. Setting Yourself Up
to Write a Great
Proposal
It’s all in the preparation

16. It’s Not About Winning a Grant, It’s About Getting to Market
•Winning a grant is not a goal in and of itself
•Primarily an opportunity to fund deriskingof your technology
•Provides a platform to get your technology to market
•Proposal must be developed with bigger goal in mind
•Engaging with potential customers before proposing is key to a great proposal
•The government agency is not a guaranteed customer

17. 9 Questions You Need to Know the Answers To
1.What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
2.How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
3.What's new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
4.Who cares?
5.If you're successful, what difference will it make?
6.What are the risks and the payoffs?
7.How much will it cost?
8.How long will it take?
9.What are the midterm and final "exams" to check for success?

18. Understand Your Market
•Target industries and demographics
•UK and global market size
•Potential market share and value
•Typical business models (e.g., SaaS, PaaS, OEM, retail, etc.)
•Barriers to entry and typical adoption cycles
•Route to market
•Resources required

19. Understand Your Competition
•Avoid being a me-too business
•Must have an intimate understanding of competing offerings
•Identify competitors unique selling points
•Identify gap in the market
•Clearly differentiate your offering and uniqueness
•Technical
•Business model

20. Understand the Risks
•Technical
•Operational
•Commercial
•Financial
•Use to refine technical approach and business model

21. Have Peers Review the Proposal Before Submission
•Official review panel may be made up of a different skills and backgrounds
•If possible, have both people within your company/industry and people unfamiliar with your industry do reviews before submission
•Industry peers can help poke holes in your assumptions, clarify applications
•Non-industry peers help improve clarity of the proposition

22. If You Don’t Win, Don’t Despair
•The process you have gone through will strengthen your business plan and ability to secure other types of funding
•In general, feedback from the review panel is excellent and adds a lot of value

23. Protecting Your
Innovation
You need to have a comprehensive
IP protection plan

24. You Can’t Monetise What You Haven’t Protected
•Copyrights
•Trademarks
•Trade secrets
•Patents
•NDAs
•Proprietary markings

25. IP Protection Extends to Employees, Subcontractors and Partners
•Employee agreements include transfer of IP ownership
•IP transfer agreements for outsourced works (work for hire)
•Clear identification of IP and ownership in partnership agreements

26. Be Extra Careful When Using Open Source Software to Develop IP
•Benefits of open source must be weighed against licensing terms
•Derivative works are not always protectable
•“Copyleft”licensing agreements
•Consult with an IP professional if open source may be key part of your technology plan

27. Teaming and Commercial Partnerships
The right team with get you there faster

28. You Can’t Do It All Alone
•Partnerships reduce risk and are critical to your success
•Technical partners will:
•Improve and/or expand capabilities and potential market
•Commercial partners will:
•Shift your focus from technology push to market pull
•Allow you to develop a product that appeals to the end user
•Provide market entry point and sales and marketing resource

29. Big versus Small Partners
•Big companies are often ultimate goal but can be poor first partners
•Large and inflexible, long contractual timelines
•Impact of your technology on their bottom line too small
•Smaller (but right sized) partners are often better
•More flexible, hungrier to differentiate themselves
•Often times are suppliers to your target large companies
•Fast response times: don’t forget that this is a race to market

30. Sharing a Little Wealth Goes a Long Way
•A small subcontract makes all the difference
•Large companies need to have a chargelineto bill to to make it easy to support you
•Small companies have limited resources
•Puts some skin in the game for all involved
•Shows intent and provides reward for valuable contribution

31. Teams Work Well When Everyone is on the Same Page From Day One
•Before you start a project together, establish in writing:
•Responsibilities of each party
•Ownership of background IP and separation/inclusion
•Rules on new IP ownership, sharing or licensing
•Expectations for follow-on work partnering (e.g. Phase II)
•Never start a project assuming this will be taken care of later
•What is difficult to discuss now is 10X more difficult later

32. Bridging the
Valley of Death to
Commercialisation

33. Start Planning for Next Phase Immediately
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
TRL
Back of
napkin
Validated commercial product
InvestNI and InnovateUK funding
VCs, angels, etc.
Significant time lag if done in series

34. Lots of Programs & Networks That Can Help Smooth Way to Phase III
•_connect
•Springboard
•Cofounders Wanted!
•Invest NI Business Strategy Services
•Propel Programme