Venture Stories

Ben Van Roo (@DavidNorthStar), co-founder and CEO of Yurts AI, joins Lucas Bagno on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- The Small Business Innovation Research program was originally developed as a grant program to allow small companies do innovative research. The gene for cystic fibrosis was discovered from the program.- If you’re a small company and you get an SBIR contract, you should not count on getting a government contract.- It has been very difficult for software companies to get a program of record contract because that has not been the typical model of defense in the past.- The nature of war is shifting away from large platforms and big garrison-style bases.- There have been 20-30 “SBIR mills” that have taken $3.5B combined in phase 1 and 2 contracts. Ben would put hard caps on the amounts that companies can get from the program and the types of companies that can apply to the SBIR program.- Commercial technology has outpaced the defense industry by far.- It’s very difficult for small companies to