TIV mentors promising grantees under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of US Dept of Energy (DOE)

TIV was approached by the Larta Institute to serve as Principle Advisors (PA) to a selective group of innovators borne from the Small Business Innovation Research programs.  The initiative was downstream of a larger effort by the US Department of Energy Commercialization Assistance Program (DOE CAP), who tasked the Larta Institute to help identify, cultivate and develop nascent companies into successful, profitable enterprises.

The Larta Institute is an award-winning “System of Product, Commercialization Programs, Advisors and Startup funding Resources” with an impressive track record of assisting early stage companies (to the tune of 10,000 and counting), having raised more than 4 Billion US Dollars.

TIV’s PAs adopted a multidisciplinary, comprehensive approach. The overarching theme consisted of breaking down the fundamental facets of business into individual components, progressively demonstrating how they combine to create a greater whole. For example, TIV’s PA implemented commercialization services to provide companies with strategies to improve their marketability and consumer base. This incorporated overlapping benefits from TIV’s advisory on innovation development, competition analyses, and how to approach technical and market obstacles. TIV’s experts also provided unique insights on the role of technical transfer, patentability and intellectual property monetization, demonstrating how the grantees can protect and profit from organically developed products/services. TIV also helped participating firms to create detailed financial and revenue models including steps to obtain subsequent grants or negotiating term sheets with angel investors/VCs

Ultimately the grantees were given a framework to guide them through the various processes of the business lifecycle and taught how to achieve milestones in an iterative fashion. The fundamentals of documentation, value creation, sales forecast, and healthy corporate culture were instilled in the grantees. As a testament of the success of TIV’s assistance, the majority of mentees obtained subsequent rounds of financing and experienced encouraging company growth after the conclusion of the program.