Anecdote: I've applied twice with NASA's SBIR program and been denied twice. It has the advantage of being 'free money', besides your time required to apply (th

Anecdote: I've applied twice with NASA's SBIR program and been denied twice. It has the advantage of being 'free money', besides your time required to apply (the first time I took about two months of weekends and evenings to put together an application; the second time I did 1/2 week full-time), and the disadvantage of being extremely competitive. The competitors are often firms which do little but SBIR, full time, and they have serious advantages from knowing the system. (Example of not knowing the system: on my first application, I put forth a very ambitious workplan in order to entice NASA with a high bang:buck ratio; this backfired completely as they loved my proposal except for its unrealistic workplan. D'oh!) However, I'd still say it was worth the time, as they forced me to do a lot of explicit planning about where I was taking product development, and now I have two well-written proposals that I can cut-and-paste into various new incarnations for other audiences. That said, my company will never be doing that again. :)