I'm fairly certain this won't make the front page, but... I have a friend who bootstrapped his company using the SBIR program. Doing so requires some extra work/bookkeeping, etc., but it's worth it for risky projects and, based on his experiences, I'd highly recommend it. His project was risky and required a major amount of research and there is no way he would have received traditional funding because it seems almost like an impossible project at first glance. It took him almost a decade of work to bring it to market and he's very close now. When I say "bootstrapping," I'm not talking living-off of ramen. I'm talking about being able to pay you and your researchers salaries, purchase required equipment, etc. -- you have to justify every dollar spent, but you don't have to live in poverty. In the end, you own all the equity, you own the IP and the final product, and I believe there's even a program where, under certain circumstances, the SBIR program will match outside investments if you are able to commercialize your work, but I don't know the details. It's not automatic, but it's not impossible either.
And, btw, he's an engineer and was able to manage the SBIR requirements without the help of a professional paper-pusher, etc.
I'm fairly certain this won't make the front page, but... I have a friend who bootstrapped his company using the SBIR program.
It's not a bad program for people doing certain kinds of things. I've actually submitted links to a number of SBIR RFPs—here's one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3751894—but I don't think they've ever gotten a substantial number of upvotes—which is really too bad, since they could be quite useful for HN readers.
Has your buddy written about his experience with an SBIR grant? If not, encourage him to. If he doesn't have a place to post it, we'd be happy to have it as a guest post here: http://blog.seliger.com.
I have the distinct displeasure of reading the Federal Register every week, so I usually see the RFP announcements.
And, btw, he's an engineer and was able to manage the SBIR requirements without the help of a professional paper-pusher, etc.