Turning a robotics startup's funding deadlock into a $1.1M DOD award and a manufacturing partnership.

The situation

A startup with robotic technology ($2M private investment dollars raised) had received some promising initial traction, but was running into roadblocks getting their technology to breach the "valley of death" between laboratory testing and a fully-functioning product integrated with enterprise customers' BOM / supply chain. Customers from a risk-averse industry didn't want to take a bet on new technology, even though there was large potential upside in terms of reduction in cost and weight (a major performance metric), while improving product performance. Additionally, investors were hesitant to fund a deeptech capital-intensive organization at such an early stage without taking a massive part of the cap table.

What we did

The Ibex Government Programs team sat down with the CTO and the VP of Product to understand the product roadmap, and what the biggest challenges were to de-risk the technology in the eyes of their target customers. During the discussion it became apparent that this was truly a platform technology with many potential applications, and though the client team had tried internally to find relevant non-dilutive funding opportunities before, searching for keywords was hard because of the breadth of applications their technology could be relevant in. After speaking with the tech team:

• The key technical milestones for commercialization were identified, and searches were broadened to any opportunity that could provide key 3rd-party testing that would validate the technology to the appropriate level of rigor that key technical stakeholders at target customers wanted to see, even if it was for a different application / industry.
• Dozens of opportunities were reviewed by the Ibex team, and down-selected to a list of 10 most-relevant solicitations that were scored and ranked, with three suggested applications, all from the DOD (two AirForce, one DHA).
• The team decided to apply for two solicitations with assistance from the Ibex team, and were successfully awarded a ~$1.1M Direct to Phase II SBIR award through the DHA.

The result

Over the course of 24 months, not only was the client able to fund a decent chunk of the R&D spend via a non-dilutive source, but the conferences attended as part of the requirements of the SBIR led to a connection with a customer / strategic investor from a different industry that was so enamored with the capabilities of the technology that they invested in the client and signed a manufacturing partnership agreement to produce components embedded with the client's technology for an entirely different application, shifting the beachhead market, driving immediate revenue, and ultimately making the decision to pursue additional VC funding an option, not a necessity for survival.