Client Challenge
A leading non-profit foundation supporting SBIR-STTR applicants set out to address a critical gap: founders and entrepreneurs struggled to efficiently identify and pursue relevant funding opportunities across federal agencies. This resulted in wasted time, fragmented discovery, and missed funding potential. The foundation needed to create a scalable, secure platform from the ground up that could simplify funding discovery, provide AI-driven recommendations, and enable cross-agency visibility, ultimately improving outcomes for a diverse community of innovators.
Our Approach
- Built a secure, scalable SBIR-STTR discovery platform from the ground up, starting with a single agency’s data, then systematically expanding to support cross-agency search and recommendations, ensuring broad and inclusive access for founders.
- Scaled technology solutions, including vector database architecture, to match growing data volume and performance demands by upgrading to a production-grade vector database for faster search, improved reliability, and easier future scaling.
- Engineered automation-first data management workflows, drastically reducing manual effort for data preparation and enabling timely, accurate funding updates at lower operational cost.
- Strengthened security and governance architecture, applying best-in-class cloud protections, encryption, and access controls to safeguard sensitive data and ensure compliance.
- Enhanced user experience and decision support, introducing advanced search filters, active solicitation focus, and AI-guided recommendations to reduce guesswork for applicants.
How We Helped
- Delivered a cross-agency SBIR-STTR discovery platform that broadened opportunity visibility and improved funding match rates for entrepreneurs.
- Reduced ongoing operational burden with automated data ingestion pipelines, cutting costs and enabling faster updates.
- Positioned the platform for future growth and easy integration of new agencies as funding ecosystems evolve.
- Improved confidence in the platform through robust security, reliability, and system transparency.
Result and Impact
3X
faster funding discovery for applicants
Advanced search, filtering, and AI recommendations streamlined opportunity matching.
2X
agency coverage expansion
Evolved from single-agency to cross-agency SBIR-STTR discovery.
~60%
reduction in data update costs
Automated funding data preparation minimized manual processes.
