Space Pitch Day - And the other 11 Upcoming Air Force Pitch Events

Robert 🦄 Slaughter

Published Jun 24, 2019

Source information from this post can be found at the AFWERX SBIR Homepage.

The Air Force awarded 51 companies contracts with a total initial value of $8.75 million in a matter of minutes at the Inaugural Air Force Pitch Day event held on March 6-7, in New York City. Let that sink in for a second.....Air Force....Pitch Day....50 companies....$8.75 million ....... contracts in the matter of minutes. What was accomplished at this inaugural event was years in the making and yet was only the beginning of what the Air Force has in store for evolving how we work with small innovative startups and companies.

A couple years ago I was fortunate enough to work with some of the most innovative minds in the United States Air Force, namely Austin DeLorme, Jake Singleton, Chris Benson, and Steve Lauver in establishing the first of its kind Air Force Accelerators focused initially on Space and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Since its inception many companies and government champions to go through the program left with a common frustration. Similar to other accelerator programs within the startup ecosystem, the intent of our Air Force programs were to validate product market fit or in our case product mission fit. However, unlike commercial accelerator programs, once product mission fit was validated, government customers had a VERY difficult time getting companies on contract in any expedient manner.

Thanks to the hard work of innovators like Ryan Helbach, Zoe Casteel, Joey Arora, Dave Harden, David Shahady, and Jason Rathje the solution to this consistent problem was the establishment of the AFWERX/AFRL Special Topics. These "special topics" were Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) topics with a reduced barrier to entry (5 page white paper and 10 page PPT) and a focus on customer discovery leading towards a validated dual use solution with product mission fit.

A year into the Special Topic SBIR program, the Air Force Secretary of Acquisitions Dr. Will Roper pushed the entire Air Force acquisition enterprise to move FASTER, to explore the boundary on what is possible, and to think more like a venture capital firm. Part of this strategy was expanding the Special Topic SBIR program to include the Air Force's Inaugural Pitch Day, as a pathfinder for a new way of doing business. Targeted specifically at the "time to market" or the time it took a government contract to be awarded.

For many of us, the Air Force's Inaugural Pitch Day was a dream come true. A melting pot of DoD stakeholders, innovative companies, and venture capital firms all brought into a single room. A total of 60 companies pitched their ideas, with the Air Force awarding 51 of those concepts $150,000 contracts to explore and in some cases deploy new capabilities to our warfighters.

Following the success found in the first Air Force Pitch Day, the Air Force has announced 12 pitch events in the current SBIR 19.2 solicitation (Deadline 1 July 2019). These 12 pitch events are broken into two different categories.

Category 1 are Air Force Pitch Days focused on SBIR Phase I proposals (similar to the inaugural pitch day) with their own SBIR solicitation. Typical Phase I pitch companies perform the majority of their customer discovery AFTER contract award, $75K over 3 months.

Category 2 are Air Force Pitch Days focused on SBIR Phase II proposals. ALL of these Phase II Pitch Day proposals should apply to the Open Call for Innovative Defense-Related Dual-Purpose Technologies/Solutions with a Clear Air Force Stakeholder Need, Topic AF-192-001. Typically these pitch companies perform the majority of their customer discovery AFTER their Phase I contract award, $50K over 3-4 months, but BEFORE the actual pitch event. While a Phase I contract is typically $50K to fund customer discovery activities, Phase II awards can be as high as $3M (with $1.5M matching funds) and are designed to develop and transition a prototype into operations in many cases. And just like the inaugural event, these Phase II Pitch Days will also be targeting RAPID contract awards (think we can do them in a day?)

Source Document for the below information can be found on the AFWER SBIR page or more specifically here

Topics for Air Force Pitch Days focused on SBIR Phase II proposals are

NOTICE: ALL Phase II Pitch Days Link to the SAME Phase I SBIR 19.2 Topic, Topic AF-192-001.

The Air Force has combined the power of customer discovery and mixed it with the critical need to reduce the time for contract award. For many acquisition professionals across the Air Force, these pitch events represent a more modern way to do business. They represent the Air Force and the DoD having a better understanding of what it means to be a startup founder or a small business owner, and doing our best to become your ideal customer.

For many startups and small business owners, these pitch events represent something else entirely. They represent the opportunity of a lifetime. They represent a platform (literally a stage) for you to showcase your capabilities, your ideas, and your understanding of our mission needs. They represent the opportunity for non-dilutive seed funding and an introduction to an ideal early adopter. They represent an opportunity to take a validated commercial product and open up customer channels to entirely new markets.

For companies and military members, Air Force Pitch Days are a dream come true. And as CRAZY as all of this sounds, this is ONLY the beginning....

Thank you for your time and reading this post. If after reading this you have questions, please visit the AFWER SBIR page, which can likely answer many of your questions.

Special Thanks: Nothing in life happens without good leadership. So want to thank our early senior leader champions General Goodfellow and Col Russ Teehan for seeing something in a group of misfits that a thousand of other good officers would have (and had) looked past.