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S. HRG. 113–738 

EXAMINING FEDERAL EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE 

SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND 

ENTREPRENEURSHIP 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

AUGUST 19, 2013 

Printed for the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana, Chair 

JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho, Ranking Member 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

MARIA CANTWELL, Washington 

MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire 

KAY R. HAGAN, North Carolina 

HEIDI HEITKAMP, North Dakota 

ED MARKEY, Massachusetts 

DAVID VITTER, Louisiana 

MARCO RUBIO, Florida 

RAND PAUL, Kentucky 

TIM SCOTT, South Carolina 

DEB FISCHER, Nebraska 

MIKE ENZI, Wyoming 

RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin 

JEFFREY CHIESA, New Jersey 

JANE CAMPBELL, Democratic Staff Director 

SKIFFINGTON HOLDERNESS, Republican Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS

Page 

Shaheen, Hon. Jeanne, a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire ............................ 1 

Ayotte, Hon. Kelly, a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire ................................... 4 

WITNESSES

Torbick, Ph.D., Nathan, Applied GeoSolutions, Newmarket, NH ....................... 5 

Gittell, Ph.D., Ross, Chancellor, Community College System of New Hampshire, Concord, NH ............................................................................................... 9 

Oliver, Ph.D., Manny, Director, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) 

and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, DC .......................................................................................... 14 

Rauwerdink, Adam, Business Development Manager, SustainX, Inc., 

Seabrook, NH ....................................................................................................... 18 

Reder, Ph.D., Jake, Co-Founder, Director, and CEO, Celdara Medical, LLC, 

Lebanon, NH ........................................................................................................ 21 

Ferneau, Philip, Borealis Ventures, Hanover, NH ............................................... 30 

Chynoweth, Graham, Chief Operating Officer, DYN, Inc., Manchester, NH ..... 38 

Brown, Jr., Hon. Edsel M., Assistant Administrator, Office of Technology, 

U.S. Small Business Administration, Washington, DC .................................... 43 

Bundas, Jason, Manager, Infrared Systems, QmagiQ, LLC, Nashua, NJ .......... 47 

Kline-Schoder, Ph.D., Bob, Creare, Inc., Hanover, NH ........................................ 52 

ALPHABETICAL LISTING

Ayotte, Hon. Kelly 

Opening statement ........................................................................................... 4 

Brown, Jr., Edsel M. 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 43 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 45 

Bundas, Jason 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 47 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 49 

Chynoweth, Graham 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 38 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 40 

Ferneau, Philip 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 30 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 33 

Gittell, Dr. Ross 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 11 

Kline-Schoder, Dr. Bob 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 52 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54 

Oliver, Dr. Manny 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 14 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 

Rauwerdink, Adam 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 18 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 19 

Reder, Dr. Jake 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 21 
Page

IV 

—Continued 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 23 

Shaheen, Hon. Jeanne 

Opening statement ........................................................................................... 1 

Torbick, Dr. Nathan 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 5 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 7 
(1) 

EXAMINING FEDERAL EFFORTS TO 

ENCOURAGE SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION 

MONDAY, AUGUST 19, 2013 

UNITED STATES SENATE, 

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS

AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP, 

Manchester, NH. 

The committee met, pursuant to notice, 1:17 p.m., in the 

Windermere Conference Room, 4th Floor, Southern New Hampshire University, College of Online and Continuing Education, 33 

South Commercial Street, Manchester, NH, Hon. Jeanne Shaheen, 

presiding. 

Present: Senators Shaheen and Ayotte. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEANNE SHAHEEN, A U.S. 

SENATOR FROM NEW HAMPSHIRE 

Senator SHAHEEN. Good afternoon, everyone. You have to hit the 

gavel to make it official, you know. 

[Laughter.] 

I want to call this hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on 

Small Business and Entrepreneurship to order, and I want to 

thank you all very much for coming. And I’m delighted to be joined 

today by Senator Ayotte. 

We are here to discuss a topic that is very important to New 

Hampshire businesses, to the future competitiveness of this country, and that is how we can support innovation in our small businesses. 

I am very pleased to be joined by Senator Ayotte to hold this 

hearing today, although she is not a member of the Small Business 

Committee. And some of you may have been here several years ago 

when we did a similar hearing when we were both members of the 

Small Business Committee. She, however, is now on the Commerce 

Committee, and they also have jurisdiction over many of the issues 

that we’re going to be discussing today. 

So it is very nice to be here with my co-Senator from New Hampshire. And as Dean Kamen said earlier this afternoon, we do work 

together in the interest of New Hampshire. So just to reassure everybody who thinks that none of us talk in Washington, the New 

Hampshire delegation actually does talk to each other. 

I also want to thank everyone who has come today to New 

Hampshire to share your thoughts and your expertise, and thank 

Paul LeBlanc and Southern New Hampshire University for hosting 

us this afternoon. I think Paul is here somewhere. There he is. 
2 

Thank you very much for having us here and for all of your help 

in setting this hearing up. 

I also want to recognize a few people who are in the audience. 

We have Seth Goodall, who is the new regional administrator for 

New England at the Small Business Administration. Seth, thank 

you for being here. Jeff Rose I think is here, although I have not 

seen him. He is the commissioner of the Department of Resources 

and Economic Development. So if he is not here yet, I think he will 

be here shortly. And, of course, Dean Kamen. It is always nice to 

have you join us, Dean. 

I also want to point out that this is an official hearing of the Senate’s Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, so this 

hearing will be on the official record of the committee, and will 

help inform the committee’s work going forward. We have an official reporter from the committee who is here. She is a staff member 

of the committee, and actually currently serves as the Small Business Committee’s Ranking Member, Senator Jim Risch from 

Idaho—she is on his staff. So very nice to have you here, Meredith. 

We also have staff from Senator Ayotte’s office. I will let her introduce them so that I don’t make any mistakes and miss anyone. 

And also am pleased to have staff from my office—Mike Vlacich 

who is my State director is here. And Scott Merrick and Chris 

Neary are also here, and they all worked very hard to help put together this hearing. 

I wanted to begin by talking a little bit about how the process 

is going to work for the hearing this afternoon. Senator Ayotte and 

I will give opening statements. Then we would like to have each 

of our panelists give a statement of about two minutes to start off 

the discussion and give your perspectives on the topic. And we 

have a number of innovative New Hampshire companies from the 

software industry, to energy, to biomedical science here, so we are 

well represented. We also have our community college system represented, as well as venture capital, and members of the New 

Hampshire High Tech Council, and Federal agencies, including the 

Small Business Administration and the Department of Energy. 

We have two of the major R&D agencies, the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, who were invited but 

who were not able to be here this afternoon due to the budget challenges of sequestration. So we are especially excited to have Manny 

Oliver from the Department of Energy and—Edsel Brown from the 

SBA here. So thank you both for joining us. 

We are looking forward to an open conversation where not only 

are we asking questions, but you all are also talking about the 

issues that you’ve seen and responding to each other as part of this 

roundtable. So it is going to be a little bit modified from the traditional committee hearing in that we will ask all of you to engage 

in the conversation. 

If you have a point that you want to make, if you will just take 

your placard and put it on its side like this so that we can know 

to call on you. We will know who wants to weigh in at a particular 

time. 

I also should note that this hearing will stay open for two weeks 

on the record, so anyone who would like to submit a statement or 
3 

any other comments, you will have the opportunity to do that, and 

it will be added to the record. 

So as you all know, we are here to talk about innovation. It is 

a critical issue as we think about the future prosperity of this country. We need to continue to be a leader in science and technology. 

If we do not do that, it will be challenging for us to continue to 

compete because we are not going to compete with some of the developing world—India and China—in terms of low wage manufacturing jobs. That is not where we are going to be able to continue 

to be a strong country. We need to continue to innovate if we are 

going to create good jobs and remain competitive. 

Our future is to be the global leader in science and technology. 

We make the best, most innovative products and services, and that 

ingenuity and excellence is our chief economic strength as a Nation. 

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, especially in 

New Hampshire, and they are often the drivers of innovation and 

new technologies. They employ nearly 40 percent of America’s scientists and engineers, produce more than 14 times more patents 

than large businesses and universities, and they produce patents 

that are of higher quality and more than twice as likely to be cited 

according to the National Academy of Sciences. 

Now, I understand that it is business and not government that 

creates good jobs. But I do think that Federal policies, as well as 

State and local, have a role to play in how we can help our small 

businesses create jobs. This is especially true in innovative and 

growing fields like biomedicine, energy, software, and other critical 

areas that will lay the foundation for our long-term economic 

growth as a Nation. 

One of the very successful programs that has happened at the 

Federal level is the Small Business Innovation Research program. 

And we feel especially proud of this because Senator Warren Rudman is the senator who introduced the legislation. And it is not 

just a typical grant program. It helps small businesses compete for 

research and development that Federal agencies need to accomplish their missions. 

Even though small businesses produce more patents than large 

businesses and universities, they receive only about four percent of 

Federal R&D dollars. Because of the SBIR program, small businesses that otherwise would not be able to compete for Federal 

R&D funding can win competitive awards that help them develop 

new products and customers, and create new jobs. SBIR leverages 

the entrepreneurial drive of small businesses to encourage the development of technologies and the commercial applications. 

Now, for years the program operated on short-term extensions, 

which was bad policy both from the business perspective and from 

the Federal agency’s perspective. Fortunately, two years ago the 

Small Business Committee was able to pass a six-year reauthorization that significantly increases the amount of R&D dollars going 

to small businesses, as well as provide some certainty that businesses need in order to plan. Both Senator Ayotte and I supported 

that because SBIR has proven to be such a highly successful public/ 

private partnership. 
4 

And it is no surprise that New Hampshire businesses compete 

very well under the program, and we will hear from many of you 

this afternoon to talk a little about that. 

So, we are looking forward to this discussion. We also want to 

hear from you about changes or ideas that you have for what we 

can do better in Washington. And when we did this hearing two 

years ago, Senator Ayotte and I took the information that we got 

from people testifying, and we went back to Washington, introduced legislation, and several of the provisions of that legislation 

have actually been voted on in the Senate. So, this is a real opportunity for us to look at what we can do to address the concerns that 

all of you have. 

So, thank you very much. I will now turn to Senator Ayotte. 

STATEMENT OF HON. KELLY AYOTTE, A U.S. SENATOR FROM 

NEW HAMPSHIRE 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you so much, Senator Shaheen. It is an 

honor to be here with you today and to work with you on these important issues that impact New Hampshire small businesses. And 

it is great to be together in another one of these hearings because 

as Senator Shaheen just said, we got great feedback from the last 

hearing we had, and were able to translate that into legislation to 

make sure that we were doing things more effectively with the Federal agencies that you interact with. 

So I am honored to be here today with you, Senator Shaheen, 

and thank you so much for including me in this. 

I also want to thank Southern New Hampshire University and 

Paul LeBlanc for hosting this. I think this is an appropriate setting 

to host this topic with the importance of education and, as Senator 

Shaheen has mentioned, particularly in the STEM fields where we 

see gaps that need to be filled to make sure that we continue to 

be the most innovative Nation in the world, which has driven our 

economy. And we are so proud of it. 

I also want to thank very much the Federal agencies that are 

here, the SBA and the Department of Energy, all of you who are 

here today. I know so many entrepreneurs are here from New 

Hampshire, small business owners. This is a wonderful opportunity 

for us to hear from not only the public side, but particularly the 

private side, to get your viewpoints on how we can do better in 

Washington, as Senator Shaheen just said. 

With me are two members of my staff, Tom DeRosa and 

Samantha Roberts. And so, obviously after this, if there are any 

particular issues that we can help you with or that you want to 

talk to us about, I would be honored to do that. 

As Senator Shaheen mentioned, as members of the Senate Small 

Business Committee in 2011, we worked together, along with our 

Senate colleagues, to ensure that the Small Business Innovation 

Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs were 

at long last given long-term reauthorization. So much of what happens in Washington is done on such a short-term basis right now, 

and one of the things we understand is that it is very difficult for 

you to plan with your business when we keep doing the short-term, 

whether it is a continuing resolution in terms of funding the government. 
5 

But an important program like this that, of course, Warren Rudman, who was just such a wonderful senator for New Hampshire, 

and unfortunately we lost this year, came up with this great idea. 

And we are going to hear about the impact of this here, not only 

in New Hampshire, but across the Nation, on entrepreneurship, on 

innovation, and the spinoffs in jobs that the private sector has created as a result of this important program. 

Finally, I come from a small business family. I appreciate very 

much how difficult it is for many for you. In my family, we took 

our savings. We relied on credit to start a family business. And I 

know that many of you took significant risk to start your business 

and to be where you are today as successful business owners. 

So we would like to hear also the obstacles and worries you have 

as small business owners, and how the Federal government can 

make sure that we create the best climate for you to innovate, to 

grow, because the foundation of the American economy is innovation and entrepreneurship. And if we do not continue to be a leader 

in innovation and entrepreneurship, we will not see the growth 

that we have seen. We will not see the wonderful technologies and 

products that this country has produced. And, most importantly, 

we will not be able to put the next generation to work. 

And so, I very much want to hear from you today on any regulatory challenges that you face, anything that you think that we 

can do better as a government to make sure that we continue to 

be the most innovative country in the world. 

So thank you so much for being here today. And I want to thank 

you again, Senator Shaheen, for all of the work that we have been 

able to do together and for inviting me to this hearing. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you very much. Let me just introduce 

our panelists this afternoon before I turn it over to you all to make 

your statements. 

We have Dr. Bob Kline-Schoder, who is the president of Creare. 

Next, Jason Bundas, who is the manager of Infrared Systems for 

QmagiQ. Edsel Brown, who is the assistant administrator of the 

Office of Technology of the Small Business Administration. Thank 

you for joining us. Gray Chynoweth is the chief operating officer 

from Dyn. Thank you. Philip Ferneau, who is with Borealis Ventures, a venture capital business. And at this end, Dr. Nathan 

Torbick, who is from Applied GeoSolutions. Thank you for being 

here. Ross Gittell, who is the chancellor of the Community College 

System of New Hampshire. Very nice to have you here, Ross. And 

Manny Oliver, who is with the Small Business Innovation Research 

and Technology Business—the Small Business Technology Transfer 

programs with the U.S. Department of Energy. Nice to have you 

here. And Adam Rauwerdink, who is the business development 

manager from SustainX. And finally, Jake Reder, who is with 

Celdara Medical in Lebanon. 

Thank you all very much for being here. I will ask, Dr. Torbick, 

if you would like to go first. 

STATEMENT OF NATHAN TORBICK, Ph.D., APPLIED 

GEOSOLUTIONS, NEWMARKET, NH 

Dr. TORBICK. Thanks for inviting me here. My name is Nathan 

Torbick. I am from Applied GeoSolutions. And also thanks to 
6 

Southern New Hampshire University. I just want to say I hear 

their soccer team is ranked seventh in the Nation, so I just want 

to make sure I got that on the record. And I will be very brief, very 

direct. We have a lot of people here, and I am sure we have many 

things to talk about. So I will not just reiterate my resume at this 

point. 

The SBIR program has been instrumental in having the agency 

go from a pure R&D company to working with economic institutions, to truly commercializing that, to opening up new revenue 

streams. Our first SBIR was in 2005. We started in 2002 with basically one professor. We started consulting after we spun off from 

the University of New Hampshire. From that, NASA phase one and 

phase two awards in 2005 and 2008, to about 15 people today. We 

have had a threefold return on our investment from that original 

SBIR, so it does work. There are companies out there that move 

onto phase three and continue and continue. 

And just at the top level, kind of the two or three main issues 

that I would like to emphasize is, one, just if there can be more 

uniformity across agencies—NASA, USDA, EPA. They all have 

their own hoops to jump through. My total office is 15 people. If 

I have to spend half my time kind of just doing different paperwork 

for different agencies, that really takes away from my time working 

on technologies, working on innovation. 

Consistency, which I think you both mentioned. A continuing resolution makes it hard to plan. Phase ones are very short. I’m thinking can I hire somebody, can I not hire somebody? If I do not know 

what revenue streams are coming through the door, it makes it 

tricky for me to take that step and hire somebody new. 

And then, just three, I think more connection between some of 

the program managers and some of the small businesses out there. 

If we can get them to our shop, to the field, if I can get in their 

rolodex more just to hear about what we are hearing, what they 

are doing. So better connection between some of the managers and 

some of the small businesses. 

Thanks. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Torbick follows:] 
7 
8 
9 

Senator SHAHEEN. Great. Thank you. 

Dr. Gittell. 

STATEMENT OF ROSS GITTELL, Ph.D., CHANCELLOR, COMMUNITY COLLEGE SYSTEM OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, CONCORD, NH 

Dr. GITTELL. Yes. I am on this panel from a different perspective 

than the other panelists. I’m not a business person, but as chancellor of the community college system, I interact with businesses 

quite a bit. The community college system in New Hampshire is focused on aligning education and training programs with skills required by small businesses across the State of New Hampshire. 

I would like an increase in the Federal government’s focus on 

skills development, particularly for innovating companies. This 

could help create well paying jobs. 

The reality when I talk to businesses across the State—innovating businesses—is that small businesses cannot innovate, nor 

compete effectively, without an appropriately skilled workforce. The 

skilled workforce for business innovation includes highly skilled engineers and scientists and Ph.D.s in the sciences and engineering. 

But it also includes so-called middle-skilled workers, those who 

have more than a high school degree, but less than a bachelor’s degree. 

A recent Brookings Institute study, released in June of this year, 

identified that over 50 percent of science, technology, engineering, 

and mathematics jobs—the STEM jobs—go to people with less than 

a bachelor’s degree. This is the core workforce for many of our innovating companies. These workers, with the middle skills, require 

specific education and training in the effective application of technology at the workplace. And this is a focus area for the community 

college system of New Hampshire, and we are seeing a lot of opportunities to expand our programs in partnership with industry in 

this way. 

The community college system includes seven regional colleges 

and three academic centers geographically dispersed across the 

State. This is very important because we cannot have innovative 

companies across the State of New Hampshire if we do not have 

an appropriately skilled workforce for those innovating companies. 

So whereas the SBIR program has been very successful, and, as 

Senator Shaheen mentioned, New Hampshire ranks very high in 

terms of SBIR awards in Phase I and Phase II. Awards concentrated around the greater Hanover-Lebanon area and close to 

UNH—they are not widely dispersed across the State of New 

Hampshire. And part of that is these companies have difficulty 

finding appropriately skilled workers throughout the State of New 

Hampshire. 

So the community colleges across the State are focused on education and training programs in skills required by innovating businesses across the State of New Hampshire. And, by doing that, we 

hope to provide the workforce for these companies to grow, and also 

to launch the next generation of entrepreneurs across the State of 

New Hampshire across a variety of fields. We are focused on advanced manufacturing, we also have programs in computer programming, and other fields related to innovation. 
10 

An area where we see an opportunity for growth is with regards 

to the capability of community colleges to be involved in so-called 

tech transfer activities. We have highly-innovative companies in 

the State of New Hampshire, and some of the new technologies, 

some of the new technological processes that they are inventing 

could be applied across a broad range of industries in the State of 

New Hampshire, including many small businesses that then could 

enhance their competitive position. 

I was fortunate to take a trip recently with Chris Way with the 

Department of Resources and Economic Development and others 

into Quebec. And Quebec has a very interesting model for tech 

transfers in their community college affiliates, where their 40 community colleges across the province provide tech transfer capabilities for businesses to come into the community colleges, work with 

community college faculty and students, and, transfer technology to 

the companies, and enable innovation to take place more readily. 

So, I will end my testimony there. I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand what we do in the innovation base across the 

State of New Hampshire. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gittell follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. Oliver. 

STATEMENT OF MANNY OLIVER, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, SMALL 

BUSINESS INNOVATION RESEARCH AND SMALL BUSINESS 

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, 

WASHINGTON, DC 

Dr. OLIVER. Senator Shaheen, Senator Ayotte, thank you for the 

opportunity to participate in this roundtable today. As Senator 

Shaheen mentioned, I am director of the Department of Energy’s 

Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Can I just ask you, do you have your mic on? 

Dr. OLIVER. Can you hear me? Okay, sorry. Leveraging small 

business innovation is really the objective of the SBIR and STTR 

programs. They foster technological innovation in areas aligned 

with the DOE mission, which is clean energy, scientific leadership, 

and nuclear security. They also increase private sector commercialization of innovations derived from Federal R&D, thereby increasing competition, productivity, and economic growth. In Fiscal 

Year 2012 with a budget of $188 million, DoE issued five SBIR and 

STTR solicitations and made 257 Phase I awards and 110 Phase 

II awards. 

We have worked aggressively to streamline and increase the 

transparency of these programs and to increase flexibility as provided by the recent National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal 

Year 2012. Over the past two years we have decreased the time to 

review and select awardees from five and a half months to three 

months. We have also posted our solicitation schedules one year in 

advance, and we have made extensive use of webinars to educate 

small businesses about our topic areas and also the application 

process. 

In addition, we have included tech transfer opportunities both 

from universities and DoE National Labs in our solicitations. And 

finally, we have—to eliminate the funding gap that occurs between 

Phase I and Phase II—implemented this past year a Fast-Track 

application process, which is essentially a combined Phase I and 

Phase II application. 

Over the past two years we have also placed increased emphasis 

on commercialization outcomes, while at the same time preserving 

the emphasis on addressing high risk R&D opportunities aligned 

with the DoE mission. We have added a requirement for a brief 

Phase I commercialization plan. We have provided additional flexibility in our Phase II commercialization plan to accommodate 

longer time horizons for commercialization. And finally, we revamped our commercialization assistance program to be more accommodating to the wide variety of needs we have heard from 

small business. 

I am happy to take feedback or questions about our programs, 

and look forward to contributing to this discussion. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Oliver follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Mr. Rauwerdink. 

STATEMENT OF ADAM RAUWERDINK, BUSINESS 

DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, SUSTAINX, INC., SEABROOK, NH 

Mr. RAUWERDINK. To the Senate Committee on Small Business 

and Entrepreneurship, good afternoon. I am Adam Rauwerdink, 

the manager of business development for SustainX, Inc. out of 

Seabrook, New Hampshire. And on behalf of SustainX, I would like 

to take a quick moment to thank you for your broad efforts in support of small businesses like us, and to share how the SBIR program, in particular, has played a critical role in our development. 

Back in 2008, SustainX received both phase one and phase two 

SBIR awards. When we received the initial phase one award in 

2008, that allowed us to hire our first full-time employee, to move 

into a 2,000 square foot facility in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and 

to quickly leverage $500,000 in additional private funding. 

Today we are on the cusp of commissioning our first commercialscale system. The initial technical validation that was made possible through the SBIR program enabled us to create nearly 40 

high-quality, full-time jobs here in New Hampshire, to leverage 

over $30 million in additional funding from both the private and 

public sources, and to move to our current facility, which is a 

40,000 square foot facility, in Seabrook, New Hampshire. 

Likewise, I would also like to thank the State of New Hampshire 

through the Borealis Ventures’ Granite Fund from Mr. Phil 

Ferneau, as well as the Green Launching Pad, which Ross was instrumental in, and also our members of Congress for their support. 

Despite our rapid growth and our success, we are still a small 

business, and we can still benefit greatly from the programs made 

possible through the Small Business Administration. One recent 

change I would like to highlight in the recent changes is the clarity 

in the new SBIR size rules, which allows small businesses, like us 

and others, to continue their culture of innovation, even after initial venture capital funding. 

I thank you once again for your efforts in support of small businesses like us, and ask for your continued support going forward. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Rauwerdink follows:] 
19 
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21 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. Reder. 

STATEMENT OF JAKE REDER, Ph.D., CO-FOUNDER, DIRECTOR, 

AND CEO, CELDARA MEDICAL, LLC, LEBANON, NH 

Dr. REDER. Good afternoon Senator Shaheen, Senator Ayotte, 

and members of the committee. My name is Jake Reder, and I am 

the Chief Executive Officer of Celdara Medical. Thank you for 

hosting this discussion and for seeking direct input from the small 

business community. 

Celdara Medical is an independent biotechnology company located in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Michael Fanger and I co-founded the company in 2008 to address the challenge of translating academic innovations into products and services that can help patients. The SBIR program has helped us bring a diagnostic service 

to market, prepare a cancer therapy for the clinic, and advance 

four other therapies, all of which are at different stages of development. 

Our thesis is that valuable medical innovation can be found at 

great universities across the country. However, in the absence of a 

local ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors, the process of 

translating discoveries into products and services must be actively 

managed, and we manage this process. 

We work in the life sciences sector where open innovation has 

been the rule for decades. Through licensing agreements, joint development agreements, joint ventures, financial investment, and a 

myriad of other contracts, companies now work within a highly 

interconnected value chain rather than relying solely upon internal 

staff. We are a link in this value chain. 

The cost to bring a new drug to market is over a billion dollars. 

These costs start low, then rapidly escalate. Each step forward in 

the value chain is significantly more expensive than the previous. 

Each link in the value chain also relies upon different sources of 

funding. 

Universities rely heavily upon Federal funding. Small businesses 

use a combination of Federal funding, angel or venture investment, 

and partnerships with large companies. The NIH budget is just 

over $30 billion, but the amount dedicated to small businesses is 

less than $0.7 billion, while the number of scientists and engineers 

working in small businesses is more than double the number working in the American university system. 

Of course small businesses can access other sources of funding. 

Venture capital is an obvious one. Unfortunately this is an industry in severe contraction. Only 20 life sciences companies received 

venture capital funding for the first time in the first quarter of 

2013, the fewest since 1995. Compare this to the 1,129 firms that 

received funding from the NIH SBIR program in Fiscal Year ’12. 

The SBIR program is outstanding and could be improved. The 

question is not how are we doing, but rather what could we do 

today to maximize our impact on the future? We greatly appreciate 

the opportunity to make the following recommendations: 

First, significantly expand funding to the SBIR program. The 

dearth of alternative sources of capital has tightened a pre-existing 

bottleneck between academic discovery and the marketplace. Open-
22 

ing the early development stage bottleneck will result in non-linear 

benefits not only to small business, but to the entire innovation 

value chain and American society at large. The pace of innovation 

is overwhelming the SBIR program. 

Second, increase agency flexibility. SBIR firms participate in 

most sectors of the economy, and each sector has its own dynamic. 

The recent reauthorization has resulted in a rigid application of 

rules, including award size rules, across agencies. It is well appreciated that a technical proof-of-concept or, indeed, any technical 

milestone, has different costs in different sectors. Agencies should 

be allowed to exercise judgment regarding the appropriateness of 

award size. A one-size-fits-all approach is unsuitable. 

Third and finally, continue to improve the efficiency of the innovation value chain itself. The open innovation model not only highlights the importance of Federal structures and laws, but also directly benefits from them. For instance, technology transfer offices, 

born of the Bayh-Dole Act, are one form of technology market, but 

one whose efficiency could be improved. We recommend that additional effort and focus be brought to bear on these aspects of the 

national system of innovation and the SBIR program, with a goal 

of significantly improving the efficiency of the entire innovation 

value chain. 

Thank you for allowing Celdara Medical to participate in this 

roundtable. We appreciate the opportunity to share our perspectives with the committee, and I am glad to answer any questions 

you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Reder follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. Ferneau. 

STATEMENT OF PHILIP FERNEAU, BOREALIS VENTURES, 

HANOVER, NH 

Mr. FERNEAU. Unfortunately, I am not a doctor. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mister. 

Mr. FERNEAU. Senator Ayotte, Senator Shaheen, I appreciate the 

opportunity to be here to share in this discussion and highlight 

these important issues that you have tabled for today. 

I echo many of the comments that have been made about the 

SBIR program, but I want to highlight another aspect of access to 

capital that is important to many of our emerging companies. 

By way of background, I am a managing director of Borealis Ventures, a venture capital firm based in New Hampshire that I cofounded in 2001. Working from offices in Hanover and Portsmouth, 

New Hampshire, my two partners and I have invested in over 30 

emerging companies over the past decade, and half of those have 

been based in New Hampshire, covering sectors like software, life 

sciences, mobile, and digital media industries. My particular investment focus has been commercializing technologies out of Dartmouth and other research institutions, particularly in the life 

sciences. 

Besides my work at Borealis as an investor, I am an adjunct professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where I have 

taught venture capital courses and entrepreneurship topics since 

1999. I also was the co-founder and executive director of the Center 

for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship. And I am also a trustee 

of Dartmouth’s local incubator, the Dartmouth Regional Technology 

Center, a non-profit business incubator in Lebanon. 

While there are a number of ways in which the Federal government has successfully encouraged small business innovation, and 

should continue to do so, I wish to focus just now on one of these: 

increasing access to early stage capital. 

My partners and I established Borealis Ventures because we believed that New Hampshire’s entrepreneurial potential was being 

held back by its dependence on out-of-state investors. To put that 

into perspective, at the time before we started, less than one percent of all venture capital invested in New Hampshire came from 

in-state sources. 

Over the past decade, we have been the most, or one of the most, 

active venture investors in the State, and we have demonstrated 

that investing in New Hampshire’s entrepreneurs can produce attractive financial returns. But even with this successful track 

record, it remains a challenge to convince investors from outside of 

the State to allocate capital to a New Hampshire-based firm. 

So, New Hampshire’s innovative emerging businesses are still 

lacking adequate access to local sources of early-stage capital. That 

one percent figure that I quoted earlier of—coming from New 

Hampshire-based sources of capital—still persists, even with all 

that we try to do at Borealis. 

Fortunately, one initiative that I want to highlight, the State 

Small Business Credit Initiative, which is part of the Small Busi-
31 

ness Jobs Act of 2010, is helping to address the situation. Senator 

Shaheen, we thank you for your efforts on that initiative. 

The SSBCI provided Federal funding to strengthen State programs for small business financing. While the SSBCI emphasizes 

lending programs, the State of New Hampshire worked with the 

Treasury Department to use SSBCI funds to promote venture investment in the State. This innovation was administered by the 

New Hampshire Business Finance Authority, and they really took 

a leadership role, along with the State legislature, to make that 

possible. 

Borealis Ventures partnered with the BFA under this program to 

establish the Borealis Granite Fund, which is the first and only 

venture capital fund that has been solely committed to building 

New Hampshire’s emerging technology companies. Since we 

launched late last year, around Thanksgiving, we have already invested in five entrepreneurial companies. Actually, we have invested in seven companies, but two of these investments have not 

been announced yet by the companies themselves. Two of our portfolio companies are participating in today’s roundtable: SustainX 

and DYN. Our other investments include two life science start-ups 

(one focusing on molecular diagnostics and the other, a bio processing company) which we have been involved in helping to get 

launched, as well as an early-stage cloud-based software firm. 

We expect that we will continue to invest at this active pace, 

thanks to the Granite Fund’s support. We have a great pipeline of 

promising opportunities going forward, and overall we expect that 

the Granite Fund will be able to invest in at least 20 New Hampshire-based technology companies in the years ahead. 

We think these companies will have a meaningful impact on the 

State’s economy, through not just the skilled jobs that they will create, but also the innovations they will bring to market and the 

downstream ‘‘cluster effect’’ that we can create in the State as well. 

While we invest locally, these are companies that have a global impact, and we have seen that broader impact consistently. 

I hope that the Granite Fund’s example will encourage addition 

Federal initiatives to increase access to early stage capital, particularly outside of the traditional venture capital markets. New 

Hampshire historically—and we can talk about the statistics 

later—is somewhere between 25th to 35th out of 50 States in terms 

of venture investment, but we still have the smallest share of instate capital. And I think we can all appreciate that things are different when you have a local partner than when you have a distant 

partner. 

In the interest of time, I only will highlight three other things 

that are important to small business innovation. One is, as we 

have heard, the importance of SBIR/STTR programs. Many of the 

companies in which we have invested have taken advantage of 

these programs. At the same time, I think those companies all 

would find that there are opportunities to make the program more 

effective, and particularly more accessible for the earliest stage 

companies. 

A second point to highlight is infrastructure investment for entrepreneurial ecosystems. The Commerce Department’s EDA was 

instrumental in helping us get the Dartmouth Regional Technology 
32 

Center established. And, again, Senator Shaheen, we appreciate 

the effort that you and your staff put into getting that off the 

ground. The DRTC has been very important in building an ecosystem around the center—biotech companies in particular for the 

Upper Valley. 

And third I would just highlight that immigration reform is an 

example where we do not need to spend more money. We just need 

to adjust Federal programs to allow human capital to rise to the 

entrepreneurial potential that we have. Also, the JOBS Act has 

been important in a number of ways downstream for making IPOs 

more accessible to growing companies, and also opening up the universe of people who can invest to provide additional access to capital for emerging companies. 

In closing, I want to thank the committee. I want to thank Senator Shaheen and Senator Ayotte and your staffs for making this 

roundtable possible. This is a really valuable opportunity to highlight the important role the Federal government does have in advancing our Nation’s innovation economy and our entrepreneurial 

ecosystems. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Ferneau follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Mr. Chynoweth. 

STATEMENT OF GRAHAM CHYNOWETH, CHIEF OPERATION 

OFFICER, DYN, INC., MANCHESTER, NH 

Mr. CHYNOWETH. Good Afternoon. Thank you very much for having me, Senators. My name is Gray Chynoweth, and I am the Chief 

Operating Officer at Dyn, which is an internet infrastructure technology company. Through traffic management, message management, and performance assurance, Dyn is connecting people 

through the Internet and ensuring that information gets where it 

needs to go faster and more reliably than ever before. The crossroads of consumer behavior and enterprise performance is where 

Dyn delivers. 

We started in Worcester and came back here because a number 

of the leadership of the company were based in New Hampshire. 

So with that preface, I would just get to kind of the things that we 

see sitting as a company that has never received Federal funding 

and participates in the New Hampshire ecosystem aggressively because we see it as in our corporate interests to have a vibrant innovation ecosystem in New Hampshire. 

And I think the first thing that I will kind of key in on is talent. 

There are three pillars—talent, capital, and community—that we 

believe engage and enliven an entrepreneurial ecosystem and an 

innovation ecosystem. 

So the first one is higher education. And if I had a recommendation or an encouragement, it would be to enact things that encourage universities and community colleges to have institutional flexibility to meet the needs of business. You know, much is—you know, 

long has been the discussion about the kind of ivory tower. And I 

think as you see innovation—the pace of innovation increasing, 

what that means is that educational institutions become more and 

more and more out of touch with, especially information technology, with what the needs are of businesses. 

So encouraging them to think about how do we get classes—you 

know, how do we get degrees in classes that are suited to today’s 

business out more quickly? How do we ensure that we have flexibility as an institution to allow that to happen? 

The second thing on talent would be immigration reform. You 

know, we do not view ourselves as competing with Boston. We are 

competing with Bangalore. We are competing with Brussels. So it 

will in the long run serve the United States’ economy and all of our 

citizens if we allow the most talented people to come here. We have 

had our own challenges and have had to wind the path through immigration to get some of the most talented people we have, and 

those people have brought in lots of money to the company and 

have created lots of jobs. So they are creating jobs for us in America. 

Capital. I could not emphasize more Phil’s comments. You know, 

that really—the Granite Fund is incredibly important. Getting that 

release stage capital happening in New Hampshire is really important and has really not been a very successful place for early stage 

investing. And that is a big part of making that happen. 
39 

On community, I guess kind of two points. One, I think the exact 

type of thing that you did with the DTRC, it would be worthwhile 

if we could figure out how to do it in other parts of the State, because when you have people that are specifically dedicated to fomenting that type of entrepreneurial activity, it breeds lots of excitement and activity, and you need to kind of bring people the innovation life cycle. 

Most people are not risk takers initially. You have to encourage 

people to have the ideas. You have got to bring them through different stages of entrepreneurship to that moment when they feel 

comfortable to quit their job, and go off and start something new. 

That is not something that just—most people just wake up and do. 

Some people do, but a lot of people need to be brought through the 

process to a place where they can feel confident in doing that. 

The last thing that I would say in addition to kind of community 

is, you know, welcoming this. This is the perfect example of focusing—of using your platform to focus the community on entrepreneurship. 

And the last thing would be cost. I think, you know, there is a 

lot of discussion about taxes in Washington and taxes in New 

Hampshire. And I think our position is that assuming that we can 

get the same services from government, we would always like to 

pay less for them. But if it is the case that, you know, you take 

the tax dollars and you put them to good use, I think that most 

businesses would agree that that is an important part of enabling 

us to grow. So whether that is, you know, infrastructure like rail 

to Boston, or whether it is ensuring that we have internet all over 

the State, those type of basic level services that are enabled by government investment certainly make it easier for us to succeed as 

a business. 

So, thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to the 

discussion. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Chynoweth follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you very much. And if I could just ask 

everybody to get close to their mics so that people throughout the 

room can hear. 

STATEMENT OF EDSEL M. BROWN, JR., ESQUIRE, ASSISTANT 

ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY, U.S. SMALL 

BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, WASHINGTON, DC 

Mr. BROWN. Hi. My name is Edsel Brown and I am the Assistant 

Administrator in the Office of Technology at the Small Business 

Administration. I want to take this opportunity to thank Senators 

Shaheen and Ayotte and other distinguished members of the committee who are not here for the invitation to participate today. 

I have submitted a statement, but I am just going to shoot from 

the cuff and give an overview. 

I have been involved in the SBIR program for approximately 10 

years now, and I have gone from a period where I struggled to understand what the acronym meant to 10 years later. And I will suffice that to let it speak for itself. 

I went through the period before the reauthorization, some of the 

major issues that came up during the reauthorization, like venture 

capital, going directly to phase two, and other issues, which we are 

all familiar with here, access to capital, et cetera. Needless to say, 

we have grown by leaps and bounds over the last 10 years and, of 

course, even further than that over the course of both programs, 

SBIR in 1982 and STTR in 1992. 

From where I sit, the question is, where do we go from here? We 

had the reauthorization in place, and on behalf of the administrator of SBA, Karen Mills, I would like to thank you all for your 

leadership in getting that through. But we are in the process of implementing that. We have been working very closely with small 

business, but even more closely with program managers, such as 

Manny across the aisle here, to fine tune the reauthorization legislation and try to get out of it what you all have set forth when you 

established the reauthorization. 

The National Academy of Sciences found that the program is successful with their last evaluation, and, of course, they are in the 

middle of starting another evaluation as we speak. But again, 

where do we go from here, and how do we fine tune what we have 

now? 

My major emphasis this morning or this afternoon is listening to 

the concerns of the small businesses that are here where the rubber meets the road. I mean, I could almost quote you line and verse 

of the reauthorization, the SOP, the policy directive. But again, it 

is good to hear what issues that the small businesses have out 

there in the field when they are trying to apply for SBIR, or they 

are trying to find out where the opportunities are. 

Let me point out, before I forget, that I am very proud that we 

have one award winner here. We have awards program with SBIR 

for those of you who may not be familiar. We have the Tibbetts 

Awards, and also the SBIR Hall of Fame. Creare, if I have not mispronounced the name, was a 2002 Tibbetts Award winner, and I 

am sure there are two other company names that will be familiar 

with you, Symantec and QualComm. They are two members of our 

Hall of Fame. So the successes of our programs speak for them-
44 

selves, but again, what can we do here, even in this brief time 

today, to move the envelope forward? 

In closing, the one area that I am looking at that I have a lot 

of emphasis on in terms of interaction with small businesses is 

phase three, and what happens with a firm when they come in and 

they believe that an agency is giving the award to a firm other 

than a firm that developed the technology. And I think whatever 

we can do to fine tune that section of the reauthorization, and I do 

not know what can be done at this point in time. But again, that 

is a major issue, phase three appeals. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Brown follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Mr. Bundas. 

STATEMENT OF JASON BUNDAS, MANAGER, INFRARED 

SYSTEMS, QMAGIQ, LLC, NASHUA, NJ 

Mr. BUNDAS. Thank you, Senator Shaheen and Ayotte, members 

of the committee, for inviting me here today to speak and to join 

in this discussion. 

QmagiQ is a small business for sure. We have six founding members plus two employees. We are based in Nashua, New Hampshire. And actually Labor Day weekend will mark our 10-year anniversary. Our core expertise is in designing and manufacturing 

focal plane arrays for infrared applications, mainly thermal imaging. 

We have grown the company over the years from starting in 2003 to current annual revenues that are a little over $4 million. Roughly half of that is from commercial sales, primarily focal plane arrays to camera manufacturers who then build systems, typically for 

military or other paramilitary applications, some industrial use as 

well. The other half of the revenue today is primarily from SBIR 

funding that we use to continue to advance our technology to stay 

at the forefront of infrared technology in general. 

2013 specifically has been a landmark year and an interesting 

one for us. As of February this year, we have our first devices in 

space aboard the LANDSAT 8 satellite. We have also had successful field tests of prototype camera systems by the Army for aiding 

pilots to fly helicopters in degraded visual environments, basically 

when they are flying over dry, dusty soil and coming into land. 

One other note is that we have advanced our new detector technology to a point where I would say we have officially commercialized it, marked by issuing firm fixed price quotes and receiving 

purchase orders, which we are filling today. And that is really what 

we view the SBIR program as a means to do. Additionally, it has 

helped us temper fluctuations in commercial sales, which has happened over the years. 

Since about 2005, which is when we submitted our first phase 

one proposal, we have continued to submit for more phase ones. As 

we perform well on phase ones, and subsequently phase twos, we 

have built relationships with various agencies that enjoy the results that they get from a relatively small amount of funding to a 

small business in a high tech arena that is generally dominated by 

the large defense houses. 

So we provide an opportunity for various government agencies to 

play in the sandbox, if you will, for a modest amount of money to 

try out a new idea with a phase one project. As a small business, 

we can actually make hardware and sometimes deliver hardware 

on a phase one proposal, and then move the project into a phase 

two where we further the technology development and/or deliver 

full systems. So the value that the government can get through 

SBIRs working with small business, especially on cutting edge 

technology, is phenomenal, in my opinion. 

Another area that we make use of government support is in the 

facilities that we use. Fabricating and developing these devices, especially doing the R&D, requires access to tools that are incredibly 
48 

expensive to both purchase and to maintain. They need to be 

housed in facilities that are very high class cleanrooms, which are 

also expensive to construct and maintain. We do have our own 

cleanroom facility, a relatively small one, down in Nashua for doing 

unique aspects of our fabrication process. 

The National Science Foundation has started the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, which has spread to a little 

over a dozen universities nationwide. These technology centers of 

excellence include fabrication centers and laboratories where taxpayer money has been used to set up state-of-the-art facilities. This 

is great for the universities, but along with this funding comes the 

charter that it is the university’s job to go out into industry and 

find people who will pay for access to come use these facilities. 

That works out perfectly for us and for other small businesses, 

where the prospect of capitalizing the equipment to do this is just 

cost prohibitive. I mean, you are talking tens of millions of dollars, 

and there is just not a business case, at least on our level, to support doing that ourselves. 

So with these facilities that are out there, our own engineers can 

go in as needed and use the equipment to do the development in 

order to stay at the forefront of our technology. So specifically, 

there is one at Harvard that we use and another one in Santa Barbara. 

Access to those facilities has been absolutely instrumental in 

really getting QmagiQ off the ground and maintaining it at the 

forefront of the technology class that we operate in today. Additionally, the funding provided by SBIRs has kept the development 

wheels turning, so that has also kept us right at the forefront of 

this infrared technology space where we are playing in the same 

field as NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory, Raytheon, other similar 

groups where these are all the large houses that are generally expensive to do development with. So, being a small business in this 

area is unique, and the agencies that we work with on our SBIRs, 

I think, appreciate that and try to leverage our talent as much as 

possible to get the most value that they can out of their SBIR dollars. 

So in a nutshell, that is QmagiQ’s story. I am happy to be here 

today. Thank you again. I look forward to the discussion. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bundas follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. Kline-Schoder. 

STATEMENT OF BOB KLINE-SCHODER, Ph.D., CREARE, INC., 

HANOVER, NH 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. Good afternoon Senator Shaheen and Senator Ayotte. Thank you tremendously for asking me to be here. It 

is a real honor to partake in this discussion of New Hampshire’s 

small businesses and the effect that the Small Business Innovation 

program, as well as other programs, have had on our business. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. Can I just get you to pull your mic 

closer? 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. Okay, thanks. I remembered to turn it on 

at least. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator SHAHEEN. Yes, good. All these soft-spoken panelists. 

[Laughter.] 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. As you may know, Creare has had a long 

relationship with the SBIR program, actually starting before it 

even began. Our President at the time in 1982 actually worked 

with Senator Rudman on the original legislation that helped establish the SBIR program. Since then, the program has played a key 

role in our business and in the local economy up the Hanover area. 

SBIR has helped Creare to establish successful spinoff companies, 

develop new products for government missions of national importance, and license SBIR-funded technologies to existing product 

firms so that they could go commercialize and enhance their products that they have already in the marketplace. 

I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the functioning of the 

current program, how it is working since reauthorization, as well 

as to provide a few comments on the future of the program. 

Since reauthorization, the program continues to behave and act 

much as it has since its beginning. It is a very efficient contracting 

mechanism for small business to help support the U.S. government 

in Federal contracting in research and development, as well as in 

product development. 

The increased award sizes, coupled with the increase in the setaside in the reauthorization has truly strengthened the program by 

expanding the scope of work that can be performed for a given 

award, while maintaining the number and breadth of awards and 

technologies that can be supported. In addition, the flexibility provided in the reauthorization to allow multiple phase two projects 

to result from a single phase I across agencies so that you are not 

stuck if you have a phase one in the Navy. Now the Air Force can 

actually pick up the phase two if they are interested in the technology as well. And we have seen that happen in the last number 

of years. 

In our opinion, the areas for improvement in the program include, and you have heard some of these before, so I am sorry if 

I am repeating myself. But the first one is actually, even though 

it has been two years, 2017 is coming up pretty fast, as we all 

know, and reauthorization—doing that before it expires would be 

really very helpful for the small business community for the reasons that people around this table have already mentioned, the 
53 

consistency and the reassurance to the small businesses, as well as 

to the clients in the government. 

The other thing that we find is very important and we think is 

a real key to the program is that it is a competitive, completely 

open, non-political program where you submit—many companies 

are allowed to submit their great ideas. There are folks who vet 

those ideas, try to determine which are the best ones and the most 

likely to succeed. And then those programs are supported. And that 

competitive nature and very open nature is very important to the 

functioning of the program, and, I think, one of the reasons why 

it has been so successful over the long term. 

And finally, continuing to increase the set-aside, consistent with 

inflationary pressures, as well as the award sizes, so that—I think 

it had been 10 or 15 years before that step had been taken, and 

continuing to do that as is currently in the current legislation and 

the reauthorization, continuing that forward would be very helpful. 

On behalf of our employees, I would like to thank you for your 

efforts to reauthorize the SBIR program in the past and your continuing work to preserve and enhance the participation of small 

businesses in Federal research and development. As a result of the 

program, through every economic downturn of the past 30 years, 

Creare has remained strong and continued to develop technologies 

and create jobs, due in large part to this program. 

Thank you for allowing me to participate, and I look forward to 

the discussion. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kline-Schoder follows:] 
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Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. Thank you all very much for your 

statements. Now the fun begins because we will begin—I will 

throw out a question, and then I will ask Senator Ayotte to do that, 

and hopefully that will generate some conversation. 

I want to go back to an issue that Dr. Torbick brought up when 

he talked about the importance of more uniformity across agencies 

in terms of how the application process works, and ask Dr. Oliver 

and Mr. Brown if this is something that you have heard before, I 

assume, from businesses, and whether there has been an effort to 

address that concern, and what might be the impediments to doing 

that, and whether you think there is an opportunity to provide for 

more uniformity. And maybe I will ask you also to talk about the 

flexibility piece, too, because several people raised that in their 

comments. 

So Dr. Oliver, do you want to go to first? 

Dr. OLIVER. Yes. With regard to the consistency, I think first I 

would divide the agencies into those who do contracting versus 

those who do grants, because we handle those very differently. And 

so, among the granting agencies, we do use the central application 

process of grants.gov. And so, for example, the Department of Energy, which issues grants, the National Institutes of Health, the 

Department of Agriculture, and the part of the Department of Education that uses grants, all apply through grants.gov. We use the 

same set of forms, and those are actually controlled quite a bit to 

keep them from changing too much year to year and to provide 

some simplification. 

When you move on the contracting side, things are very different. 

And I do not have as much exposure to that, so I cannot really 

comment. But for those mission agencies who do contracting, those 

rules are different than the financial assistance for grants. And I 

cannot really address, not knowing the contracting side, what we 

can do to kind of merge those, but I believe there is quite a bit of 

statutory guidance in place which limits how much flexibility we 

have there. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mr. Brown, do you want to add? 

Mr. BROWN. I think Manny hit the ball right on the head. One 

thing I will point out, though, and I was speaking with Dr. Torbick 

earlier before our session on this exact topic. Believe it or not, this 

is a priority for us, and we have been working with the other agencies to try to figure something out. But I would be less than honest 

if I said that we have really come up with a formal answer to the 

problem. 

But before this reauthorization came out, we had something 

called SBIR 2.0, and we divided several topical areas that we could 

make inroads on before the reauthorization even came about. And 

this was one of those topical areas, how can we streamline and expedite the process that it will be less burdensome on small business? 

Now, you know, since the reauthorization, we have been busy 

trying to implement the reauthorization, but we are still trying to 

make inroads on this issue. But we are not there yet, to be perfectly honest. 
62 

Senator SHAHEEN. So any businesses who are recipients who 

want to weigh in on ways in which you think they could provide 

some more flexibility? Yes, Dr. Reder? 

Dr. REDER. Yes. So the balance between uniformity across agencies and flexibility within agencies is a tough one. From our perspective, uniformity in administrative aspects—what the forms look 

like, what are the necessary components, et cetera—should not be 

an impediment to the any of the agencies. 

However, the required flexibility is really key. This gets back to 

my point in the brief. Every sector is different. It costs different 

amounts of money to do different types of science. It takes different 

amounts of time. And so, putting a one-size-fits-all rule over top of 

all the agencies is nonsensical. 

The realities of each sector have to be reflected, and the needs 

of each agency have to be reflected in what the actual policies are. 

That says nothing about what the administrative process needs to 

look like. But NIH is a great example—the study that the NRC did 

on this said over and over again that flexibility, flexibility, flexibility is what is making this program so successful. 

The agency personnel and the program officers themselves are 

really smart people. They are constantly looking at their portfolios 

and thinking, ‘‘Well, what can we do to improve this to achieve our 

mission?’’ The NIH’s mission, of course, is to increase knowledge 

and improve human health. They have been able to respond to 

those challenges over the years by significantly altering the way 

NIH administers their SBIR program versus the way many of the 

other agencies do. That is to the benefit of the program and to the 

American people. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Great. We can actually make the NRC study 

part of the record, which would be helpful. 

[The study referenced, ‘‘An Assessment of the SBIR Program,’’ 

can be found at http://www.nap.edu/ 

openbook.php?recordlid=11989.] 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mr. Bundas, and then I am going to turn it 

over to Senator Ayotte. 

Mr. BUNDAS. Yeah. We have specific difficulty in this area being 

a small company that primarily deals with DoD agencies. So you 

can imagine the paperwork above and beyond just simple government accounting that is involved there. Fortunately I am not directly involved with the accounting side of things, but I hear about 

it nonetheless. 

Every time that we seek an SBIR—sometimes phase ones are 

pretty straightforward, but the goal of a phase one is to get to a 

phase two. And when you start working with a new agency that 

you have not worked with before, you almost have to start all over 

again and start working with whomever the accountants are on the 

other side, and explain how we as a small business run our accounting system, and how that is different from the defense contractors that they are used to. 

Eventually, we can come to some sort of system that works, that 

is not so cumbersome on the small business side that it keeps us 

from being agile and efficient, but it gets all of the information that 

the agencies need on their end. But if there was a central—you 

know, once you have made it into the SBIR realm in general, even 
63 

if you have not worked with a certain agency before, if they can 

go through the SBA office and know, okay, this is how QmagiQ 

does their accounting, this is an approved method, and just streamline that whole process, it would save a lot of headache on our end 

in both time and effort. 

I do not know for sure if we ever declined an SBIR award just 

because the accounting was too cumbersome for us, but we have 

had at least one instance where the recommendation was to hire 

a full-time person just to do the accounting. I mean, we are eight 

people. We are all technical, right? We have different hats that we 

wear to cover our own administrative parameters, and to do something like that is just not a viable option for us. 

So, yeah, this is definitely an area that I would love to see some 

improvement. It would help us a lot. Thank you. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Senator Ayotte. 

Senator AYOTTE. As a follow-up to that prior discussion, I noticed 

in your written testimony, Dr. Kline-Schoder, that you had said, 

and obviously Creare has a long history with the SBIR program, 

that we need to streamline contracting, which, while still faster 

and more efficient than most government procurements, is beginning to slow down due to inefficiencies that have crept into the 

process. 

So, if you can help us with your thoughts on what inefficiencies 

are in the process so that we—I think it dovetails to the discussion 

we just had. I wanted to get your thoughts on that to see if we can 

really try to cut through this for all of you. 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. Sure, Senator Ayotte. Thanks for bringing 

that up. 

Yes, in the last couple of years, and part of this may have been 

due to some of the extraneous things happening in Washington 

with budgets not getting reauthorized and so on. But we have seen 

in this year in particular a lengthening of the time between when 

we are told that we have received an award and when the contract 

is actually signed. 

And, you know, every instance probably has a slightly different 

story, but they range from things like having to have, similar to 

what my colleague had to say about audited rates taken care of. 

So you might go to one agency and the DoD does a good job of auditing our rates for the DoD. But then if you get an award at NIH, 

they do not take the DoD’s audits, and so, they have to do a separate audit for themselves. And even sometimes within the DoD 

they do not accept the DCMA, the Defense Contracting Management Agency’s, audited rates, and they will do their own local review of our rates. 

And so, they start on that path. And then what has happened in 

the past during this past year is three months go by, and then the 

contracting officer changes. And so, then they have to go back and 

start from scratch again. So some of that uniformity that we have 

been talking about here and that we have heard about here actually extends into the contracting realm, and causes difficulty there 

and causes things to slow down. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Can I just interrupt for a minute and ask you 

about the auditing piece? So when one agency within DoD does not 
64 

like the audit that has been done by another agency, do they give 

you an explanation for what they did not like about the audit? So 

what do they say is missing that they would like to see? 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. Right. Well, so the interesting thing is, audits actually are not—do not allow you to get approved rates. They 

will accept your rates. And so, it sounds like semantics, but in the 

contracting world, apparently if the DCMA does not approve your 

rates and they are not willing to approve your rates, they are willing to accept your rates, the contracting—the local buyers need 

what they would consider approved rates. And so, they will send 

a letter to DCMA saying do you have approve—does Creare have 

approved rates, for instance? And they will say, well, we have reviewed their rates, and we accept them. 

In some instances, that is not good enough for the local group because, you know, and I do not know why certain DoD groups might 

accept them and others will not. I can speculate that there maybe 

are some people at certain places that just have rules that they 

have instituted that they require something. And if it is not exactly 

what they require, then they need to go back and do that analysis 

themselves. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thanks. 

Senator AYOTTE. I also wanted to follow up on—I know that several of you mentioned immigration reform, which is another whole 

topic. But it gets to the topic of workforce and making sure that, 

particularly in the STEM fields, that we have the best and the 

brightest to be able to start these companies, grow them, extend 

them. 

So, I wanted to get—I guess I would start with you, Philip, and 

Gray as well, just to get your thoughts on how the immigration 

system is working, how important is it that we expand, for example, the H–1B visa quotas, which I know now are around 66,000, 

and the bill that Senator Shaheen and I both supported would dramatically expand those caps. 

But how is the system working now, and how would you like it 

to work? 

Senator AYOTTE. And why is this important for our economy? I 

think sometimes there is a discussion as to, you know, why—how 

does this work in terms of us growing our economy? 

Mr. FERNEAU. Thank you, Senator. With regard to immigration 

reforms, I have had the opportunity to work with Senator 

Shaheen’s staff on this topic previously, and appreciate the support 

from both of you for some of the initiatives that were included 

within the Senate legislation recently. 

I think there are two pieces to it. One is increasing the number 

of H–1B visas for highly skilled STEM workers, you know, students 

and other bright people who are coming out of our universities. 

They come to the U.S. from around the world, the best and the 

brightest. They get a great education. And then, they have a challenge actually staying in the U.S. to work at the DYNS of the 

world and other emerging companies. 

I have seen that challenge with some of our companies. I have 

also seen that situation through my role at Dartmouth on the faculty where in the engineering school and the business school you 
65 

have highly skilled students who find it difficult to remain in the 

U.S. and take the positions they would like to. 

The other piece of the solution is something like the Invest Visa, 

where you can actually enable a talented entrepreneur from elsewhere who wants to come to the U.S. and create jobs, create a company, high-growth business. Finding a means to allow that person 

to come and create an entrepreneurial company in our economy is 

important. 

That initiative is about creating jobs. That is not stealing jobs. 

By definition, that should be a good thing for us, and it is unfortunate that these sorts of important real value-creating initiatives 

within our immigration policy have been held captive to other immigration-related issues. 

Mr. CHYNOWETH. Yeah, thank you. So, I would, I guess, just a 

kind of color story that I could give on a person we hired, H–1B, 

out of college, with us for 10 months, discovered another way for 

us to kind of deal with one of the technology pieces we were doing, 

and two months later started producing about $400,000 in revenue 

for us. 

So, I think you can see—now, you could say someone else could 

have done that. You could say that it could have come from anywhere. But that is a very tangible example of how we are able to 

grow, you know, about $5 million a year in revenue off of one person’s idea. So, that allowed us to hire a lot of other people who are 

not—you know, who are, native, you know, Americans. 

And I think it is just an example of how much leverage we can 

get on technology with talent, you know. And if we are not bringing 

those people into this country and allowing them to stay here and 

help grow our companies, then they are going to go elsewhere and 

grow other companies. And that is what we certainly view this as. 

And even more interestingly, to the extent that you think that 

hiring someone who is born in another country here displaces an 

American job, with the increased availability of telecommunications, I do not have to have that person here in order for them 

to work for my company. 

So, you know, we got one. He came and joined the company, and 

we were able to navigate the H–1B process. But let us say that you 

wanted to reserve that for a person that was born in the United 

States. What we might have very easily done is, you know, what 

a lot of companies do is they simply employ the person, and he 

would have gone back to India where he was from, and we would 

have employed him there. So it is not like you would have saved 

the job for an American person, you know. 

And so, you know, what we are losing out on is the economic productivity that those people bring, you know. He is buying a house. 

He is getting married. He is, you know, having kids. All these 

things are driving certainly our company forward, and we think 

driving the American economy forward. 

So, you know, to view—it is almost anachronistic to think about 

the talent environment as having a lot of lines. And, you know, 

they could go elsewhere and start companies, and we want to keep 

them here. 

The other thing that I would say that is kind of connected to this 

is, it is not just—on the STEM fields, it is not just that we have— 
66 

that there is a shortage like in New Hampshire or in California. 

It is a global shortage of this talent. There is no possible way that 

even if we had all the workers and everyone re-trained in America 

to do these—to work in these fields that we would actually be able 

to satiate the opportunities that we have. So we need to kind of 

keep pace with innovation, and as we—it is kind of a both/and solution, you know. 

We need to be re-training folks who are—you know, get into the 

middle skills and are, you know, changing careers. But in order to 

really capture that fast-moving dynamic, economic opportunity, we 

have got to be able to get the people trained right now today. And 

those are the people that are graduating, and those are the people 

that are here on H–1Bs. So hopefully that provides more context. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Dr. Gittell. 

Dr. GITTELL. The comments really highlight the need to have a 

two-pronged strategy. And I think the Federal Government has 

been supportive through the H–1B programs that it funds, which 

then get recycled into workforce training here in the New Hampshire community college system. 

And New Hampshire has benefitted from the Trade Adjustment 

Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) 

Act. Specifically, we have taken advantage of the TAACCCT in the 

community colleges, including a nearly $20 million fund to upgrade 

our advanced manufacturing training across the State where we 

are training the next generation of manufacturing workers across 

the State of New Hampshire in machining and precision manufacturing, which is critical. 

We have to address the current workplace needs, but also we 

spend a lot of attention on our primary and secondary schools, to 

build that pipeline for the next generation of skilled workers and 

entrepreneurs in the State of New Hampshire. 

I do not think you can do one without the other. Federal programs that link some immigration policy to funding for training 

and re-training in STEM education in New Hampshire would be 

very beneficial. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, I am sure you are all probably aware 

that the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate included 

funding for STEM programs, which was a great benefit that I think 

if we could pass the bill—I would encourage all of you to talk to 

the House members, which is where the bill is held up. But that 

could have some real benefits for us in the future, not only in New 

Hampshire, but across the country. 

Senator AYOTTE. Which I will also say, by the way, with the bill, 

because of the economic growth that comes from the bill, a huge 

deficit savings over not only the 10-year window, but the 20-year 

window. So on—if you look at it as an economic in terms of driving 

the fiscal challenges we face in the country as well, that is a very 

important component to it. 

And the STEM programs are funded, as Senator Shaheen mentioned, through the parts of the fees for the new extension of the 

H–1B. So, it is a great example of how another area where we 

could, if we can get this done, very much be an infusion not only 

of talent, but help us create more jobs here, all of you, give you 

more opportunities to create jobs. 
67 

Senator SHAHEEN. One of the questions that we got from somebody in the audience—we are not sure who—relates to an issue 

that a number of you raised, and that is access to capital. And I 

know, Mr. Ferneau, you talked about that in terms of how much 

more we need in New Hampshire. 

But one of the major issues when we reauthorized the SBIR program had to do with the role of venture capital firms in the program. And I just wondered, we may not be far enough along to 

have a sense of whether the changes that were made have been 

helpful and are helping to address that concern. And I did not 

know if any of you have any views on how the program was 

changed to accommodate venture, and whether you think that has 

been a good thing or not. Anybody, any thoughts about that? 

Mr. FERNEAU. I cannot say that we have encountered any examples yet of the expansion or the carve-out with regard to venture 

capital backed companies specifically. It has been too soon for that. 

What I can tell you is that when I put the question of SBIR effectiveness out in advance of appearing today at the roundtable to a 

whole range of companies, some of which we have invested in, as 

well as technology transfer officers with whom I have worked, the 

highlight issue for all of them was that at the earliest stage, companies are still being frustrated—they are finding the SBIR program increasingly a less useful source of funding for their innovative research. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Say that again. I am not sure I—— 

Mr. FERNEAU. The success rate of their SBIR applications has become sufficiently low, 15 percent for Phase I for many of these, that 

applicants no longer view the program as a viable path to think 

about how to get something started. 

It is one thing if you are a more established company and you 

have been successful—you are already in the market with some 

product—to use SBIR funding to introduce new products, and extensions of a product or a new technology. You can build that into 

your budgeting in a predictable way now that the SBIR program 

has reauthorization. If you are a first-time principal investigator 

with a new idea to be the basis for your company, the yield on your 

application effort now is so low that you cannot think about using 

that as the predicate for getting your business funded or even 

started. 

And then, the timetable is too slow, even if you do succeed with 

your application—even with the fast track where you put Phase I 

and Phase II together, it is still such a long span of time and there 

is still uncertainty, that you cannot really think about that as the 

way that you will get off the ground. 

I think what is happening is that the SBIR program initially had 

multiple objectives. One was to advance innovative research. The 

other one was to help small businesses. I think there is a subset 

of small businesses for whom the SBIR program is not reaching effectively. I know that we have had many life science companies 

that historically would have started with SBIR programs to get out 

the lab. Now, they say we just cannot depend on that, and so we 

are wholly dependent on other sources of capital, which exacerbates 

the access to capital issue that I flagged earlier. 
68 

What I will say is that to the extent the SBIR program ever restricts the number of SBIR programs or dollars that are available 

to any potential companies by looking at their ownership or source 

of funding (where it is venture-backed—majority venture-backed 

funded) you are further reducing the value of the program to some 

of our highest growth or highest opportunity companies where the 

private sector has already indicated these are valuable high potential businesses. 

And in some companies, the development requirements for their 

technology is so high, in the life sciences in particular, it is not uncommon that over time, you will find that outside investors have 

invested more than half of the company’s equity. To arbitrarily restrict those companies from access to the program seems self-defeating to me. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. 

Dr. Reder. 

Dr. REDER. I will take a slightly different view and tell you about 

a few tactics that I have actually seen used in the market and the 

life sciences industry, one of which is some investment firms will 

just hire a full-time grant writer. If you look at the return on that 

investment, it can actually be quite good. 

What is wrong with that? Well, if the idea and the concept is not 

mission critical enough or important enough to the company to go 

out and do this themselves, but this is a bit of icing that their investor is providing, there is a real question of impact. Just how 

much impact are those dollars going to have, or is it just some padding that is going to help this particular portfolio? 

The other very disturbing trend that I have seen, again, in the 

life sciences industry, is what are referred to as walking dead companies. These are companies, some of which have had over $100 

million in venture money put into them. They did not make it, and 

now they are down to a handful of staff just trying to keep the 

lights on, while the majority owner investors are trying to find 

someone to buy this from them so they can recoup some of their 

investment. 

At that point, your operations are really not functioning, and you 

have a few people around with an enormous number of patents and 

other assets that can write grants. And so, then the question is, if 

you have put $100 million into this particular firm, what is the 

value of adding a $150,000 Phase I SBIR? What kind of impact are 

you going to get for that? Well, you are going to keep the lights on 

for another six months while the investors try to recoup their capital. The impact for my tax dollars is going to be zero. 

And so, there needs to be some way so that when you have a 51 

percent owned company that is really on that up curve and is really doing well, and expanding and building their first pilot plans, 

that they are still eligible. But you have got to avoid these types 

of games that investors will play, because their goal as an investor 

is to provide a maximum return for their shareholders. They do not 

have any sort of altruistic goals associated. 

So, the ultimate question I think is how to maintain the impact 

of the program without simply diluting the field with very talented, 

very smart, but ultimately non-productive applicants. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mr. Rauwerdink. 
69 

Mr. RAUWERDINK. And I will continue on the previous two comments. And I can speak as a company that has been fortunate 

enough to secure SBIR funding, and that was, as I stated, critical 

in our formation, but also been successful and then leveraging additional private capital. 

And though we have grown substantially and are very strongly 

on the up curve, there are two conditions that are very, very similar to when we first got the SBIR award. We are still a very strong 

culture of innovation, and that has not changed, and that continues. And we are still, despite having more capital and more access to capital, are still restricted in our ability to really chase new 

angles and new innovations that come about. 

And that is where some of the new size rules that have come 

about for the SBIR have allowed us to turn a new eye on the SBIR 

and not have to look elsewhere to some of the other programs, but 

to take new innovations that come about and pursue them, and 

have the route to grow bandwidth, grow new personnel, to grow 

new expertise, and pursue those angles. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Would you just explain to everybody what you 

mean by ‘‘the new size rules?’’ 

Mr. RAUWERDINK. Yeah. I am not going to go into detail. They 

are on the record. But it has to do with how ownership is viewed 

from companies that have received venture capital funding. We 

have received it from a number of sources. 

And so, one of our—one of the investors, for instance, is General 

Electric, a portion of it. Are we considered X hundreds of thousands 

of employees, or are we still a 40-employee small business? So that 

is where some of the clarity can help and define where we are positioned, how we are viewed. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. Can I just ask Mr. Brown, and 

this probably does not apply to you, Dr. Oliver, because, as you 

said, you are not doing contracts. But what kind of a screen do you 

look at to address some of the issues that Dr. Reder raised? Well, 

how do you look for whether the company has had $100 million invested, and now they are—you called it the walking dead—a walking dead company. That is pretty descriptive. 

How do you screen for that kind of a company that may not be 

the best candidate for an SBIR award? 

Mr. BROWN. Well, what we usually do is if there is a complex 

case that has multi tiers of ownership and, you know, VC ownership, et cetera, what we will do is we will ask them—we will get 

as much information as we can. We will have a conversation, and 

we will get them to send something written in terms of their ownership structure. 

And we will go back and forth, and we will just break it down, 

and dig down, and drill down until we are satisfied that we understand the nature of the structure. And then we will give them feedback on it. 

Senator AYOTTE. I wanted to follow up with that, Mr. Brown, 

based on something that Dr. Torbick said, which you talked about 

establishing a better connection between the small businesses and 

the managers. 

So when you talk about sort of more of a paper correspondence 

between the two, how do you then know what is really happening 
70 

in the company? So as I understood what you were saying is you 

want the interactions so that they can see very much what you are 

doing and the productivity that you are bringing to this by your 

award. 

So how much do you actually visit or make that connection, because I think some of that actual connection piece would probably 

bring to light the walking dead. So, I wanted to get your thoughts 

on that, Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Well, to be perfectly honest, you know, as I outlined 

earlier, that is one of the major benefits that I personally am getting from this session today. That is why you see me taking copious 

notes is it is good to hear what is happening where the rubber 

meets the road. 

I mean, as you well know, we have the reauthorization legislation, and, you know, SBA as well as all 11 participating agencies 

have a great deal of responsibility in getting the framework out 

there, let alone start making inroads on some of the major provisions, like venture capital participation, of which NIH is the only 

agency that has signed on from that vantage point. 

But in terms of drilling down with a company, such as my colleague here, I mean, that is very rare, unless, as I said, we get that 

interaction from them either directly, or frequently a program manager will contact us. We have this issue; could you please contact 

Mr. Torbick, and we will work it out between us. 

Senator AYOTTE. Dr. Oliver. 

Dr. OLIVER. Yes. I just wanted to echo Nathan’s comments. We 

view that it is very important to have onsite visits between program managers and the small businesses. One of the challenges we 

have had is, as you are aware, the fiscal pressures on travel budgets. Generally, the agencies’ travel budgets have come down as a 

result of that. 

So, we actually are thankful for reauthorization, the administrative funds that we are able to use. And we have set a small amount 

of those administrative funds just for the site visits to make sure 

that that is not sacrificed as we move forward. 

Senator AYOTTE. Thank you. You know, one other thought I had, 

how much do you leverage—I know the Department of Resources 

and Economic Development are here from the State level. And is 

there is a connection between the State government piece, because 

they are out in the field quite a bit. For example, in our State, and 

I am sure in other States. And is there a leveraging between reaching out to the State agencies and saying, what do you know about 

this company, have you visited it recently, just to also get that 

input? 

Dr. OLIVER. I will comment. In terms of the application process, 

we currently do not do that level of digging. Again, the current 

process is for the companies to certify to their eligibility, so that 

it is a self-certification process. That takes place if they have an 

award. Given the timelines we are under today, we rely on that as 

the initial check in moving forward with applicants to know if they 

are eligible or not. 

If there is any question about ownership or that would compromise their eligibility, I think we, like most agencies, defer to 
71 

SBA. So we would send the company to SBA to get a ruling as to 

their eligibility. 

Senator AYOTTE. It just occurred to me that there are a lot of 

great State resources, too. For example, I know how involved our 

DRED is with local business, that they may even be good avenues 

just to establish those relationships and connections in terms of 

what are good candidates, and encouraging using the DRED as another way to leverage what the Federal government does. It was 

just a thought I had. I was just curious how much interaction there 

was. 

Dr. OLIVER. Yes. So, at least with our agency, we have to base 

the review of the application on what was submitted. So all of the 

information must come in with the application. We are not at liberty to go out and get additional information to make someone’s application look stronger or weaker from that point of view. So we do 

not have the flexibility right now to do what you are describing. 

I would add that we do work with the small business development centers throughout the country in terms of identifying new 

potential applicants. But that is, I think, very different from what 

you are saying. 

Senator AYOTTE. Yeah. Thanks. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Dr. Kline-Schoder, did you have a comment on 

that? 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER. This was on the previous comment—— 

Senator SHAHEEN. Okay. 

Dr. KLINE-SCHODER [continuing]. Related to—I just wanted to 

echo what Nathan had said, that our experience is when a program 

manager is actively involved, those are the most successful 

projects. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Let me ask you, because Dr. Oliver referred, 

and I referred in my opening statement, referred to the fact that 

we also invited NIH and the Department of Defense to participate 

today, and both of them were forced to decline because of the travel 

restrictions on their budgets due to sequestration. 

Have any of you gotten concerns as you are looking at the potential for the program down the road—I assume Mr. Brown and Dr. 

Oliver might comment directly. But the businesses who are represented here, are you hearing concerns that sequestration, those 

automatic cuts, are having an impact either now or concern about 

the future? I assume, Mr. Bundas, that you were going to comment 

on another issue. 

Mr. BUNDAS. I was going to comment on an earlier topic, but I 

can move onto this topic. 

What I have heard from some of our SBIR contacts and the folks 

that I work with at the Department of Defense is that they have 

discussed things that they can and cannot do because of uncertainty in the budget and potential sequestration coming up. But I 

have also seen on the small business side where that set-aside 

funding for small businesses is more protected. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Right. 

Mr. BUNDAS. And it gives the agencies that may have their larger budgets pulled back due to overall budget issues the ability to 

still use this pot of SBIR money as a way to potentially support 

some of their larger objectives and main programs. 
72 

And for us, I think if anything, it may have helped a little bit. 

Given the type of devices that we can develop, manufacture, and 

deliver, and the level of support that we can offer directly into 

these larger programs, then when agencies do not necessarily have 

the money to work with somebody else because of the main budget 

line item reduction, they can leverage the SBIR funds with the 

small business, and potentially accomplish the same objective. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Good. Dr. Torbick? Either on that issue or, 

yeah, I assume you wanted to respond to the other issue. 

Dr. TORBICK. Yeah, I will try to link a few and be brief. Just in 

terms of the travel restrictions, you know, webinars, going to meetings, you can easily get around some of those types of restrictions 

just getting an hour a month. 

And just that communication, I want to emphasize also sometimes some of these solicitation topics get a little stale because you 

are just kind of doing this paperwork through this administration 

process. But by having that continued dialogue with those managers, I think you are going to kind of keep up with the speed of 

some of these technologies and innovations. 

What I am doing now was kind of old six months ago, so if I have 

to wait a whole other cycle just to have a chat with a program 

manager, I might as well—it is not worth my time frankly. 

And then one quick comment about the walking dead companies. 

As a small—you know, a very small business—I do not know if 

Jason has similar feelings—I do not have time to fight phase three 

appeals. I do not have time to kind of explore if or compete with 

a VC if they are really just a walking dead VC. So that is a concern. 

I do not know exactly how that is all going to play out yet, but 

one day I might be fixing a printer. I could be taking phone calls. 

I could be on the phone making sales. I do not have time to kind 

of discover whether or not a company is a walking dead company. 

So, anything to reduce that would be greatly appreciated. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, hopefully it is not you who is worrying 

about those walking dead companies. It is the Federal agencies 

who are providing the—yes. Did you want—— 

Senator AYOTTE. One of the things—one of the topics I think 

when I heard—when we were talking about the issue of venture 

capitalism and capital to start new businesses, and you talked 

about this walking dead issue, you know, with so many entrepreneurs here, and particularly with the Small Business Administration here and I know others in the audience, how do you view 

the regulatory climate, and what is the regulatory climate’s impact? 

In other words, the Federal regulatory climate overall, how does 

that impact your ability to thrive and grow? And what thoughts do 

you have for us on the impact of Federal regulations and how we 

can help that, because obviously it is something that I know that 

both of us hear about quite commonly, and I am sure Mr. Brown 

hears about it, too. But I think with so many entrepreneurs here, 

it would be very helpful to hear your feedback. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Gray? 

Mr. CHYNOWETH. Yeah. So, a couple of things, just one data 

point. I know the JOBS Act had some things relating to IPOs and 
73 

the ability to privately register. And I think interestingly that it 

has not actually—it has not really changed the experience that 

much for IPO track companies. So I think there was a lot of hope 

that that would enable people to get on track and file earlier. 

But actually, I think that it has not really—the experience, at 

least from when I talked to counsel—to those companies and 

ibankers about it—that it has not really changed the track for the 

companies. So you are still going to be essentially on the same path 

that you would have otherwise before. But that is just an example 

where it has not actually changed the experience for folks, although that could certainly be just the perspective of the folks that 

I have talked to. 

The second one would be just to give you kind of our—so we, you 

know, as an internet services company provider, we have thought 

a lot about, you know, do we want to go after, you know, government contracts. And I think that, you know, while it just always 

seems for us at least that it has been dramatically easier to figure 

out how to get money from customers than money from the government. And, you know, that is not to say that it is not really important, and this, I think, goes to the flexibility that Dr. Reder was 

talking about, you know. It is very easy to figure out how to stand 

up a website and do some of these information technology services, 

you know. 

But I think, you know, that is just our experience, and I am not 

sure you actually ever even could compete. I would hope it would 

never be as easy to get money from the government as it is to get 

it from customers, you know. And so, that has just been our experience, and I think it highlights why in some fields it is even more 

important to get it right, like in health sciences, where there is significant capital investments. And other places are more suited for, 

you know, kind of turn and burn, and you would spend six months 

on an idea, and one person can bring something, you know, bring 

a concept to market. 

So it really is a wide variety, and if you think about them, you 

know, they are all in the same space, but if you tried to put them— 

categorize them, I think you are going to—it is going to be under 

inclusive and over inclusive, so. 

Dr. REDER. FDA defines the entire life sciences industry. That 

regulatory path is the source of the billion-dollar plus cost in order 

to get a product to market. 

FDA has, I believe, been improving significantly over the last few 

years. Everyone has a horror story but there have been a number 

of new initiatives at FDA, for example, breakthrough designation 

for new therapies that are truly first in class and have the ability 

to really help. It has been a wonderful thing. 

Regulatory expertise is the flip side of that, and as a firm with 

10 people, we do not have the bandwidth or the ability to keep inhouse regulatory experts, and so, we need to use consultants and 

contractors. One initiative that I have seen recently at the National 

Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute has been very encouraging. They 

have hired a full-time regulatory expert, someone with, I believe, 

about 30 years of experience doing this. They are available to SBIR 

awardees, and that is just a wonderful thing. 
74 

Now, of course, one person cannot serve the whole community, 

but it is a pilot program. I would love to see more of this in any 

of the highly-regulated industries where you could, for a very small 

amount of money, serve the entire SBIR community with regulatory expertise. You could even think about extending this into 

areas like intellectual property. There are certain service providers 

that are absolutely critical to our success that are also very, very 

expensive to us. If the Federal government, either through programs like that or through its purchasing power, can help, that 

would be wonderful. 

Senator SHAHEEN. That is great. 

Mr. FERNEAU. I would echo the importance of creating that kind 

of infrastructure, making those resources available to people, to applicants. Borealis Ventures itself has just three partners. We are 

a very small business ourselves. 

Security regulations have become more complicated and now 

apply to our business. And unfortunately, we often are treated the 

same as Wall Street firms, billion-dollar firms. The regulatory requirements that I personally have to undertake on behalf of our 

company are significant. They may not seem significant to Morgan 

Stanley, or to SAC, or other huge multi-billion hedge funds. But 

they require days of my time on a regular basis whenever we have 

to file a report. 

The significance of that burden relative to what we are talking 

about today with small businesses more generally, is simply that 

I think it is always a challenge for the officials who have the difficult task of trying to administer billion dollar programs in Washington that span the entire economy to fully appreciate the order 

of magnitude difference—multiple orders of magnitude difference— 

in scale of a person managing one, two, three, or 10 people, dealing 

with a hundred thousand dollar kind of mind frame, or just tens 

of thousands of dollars even. And then you have other officials who 

are dealing with hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, or trillions of dollars, in the budget at the Federal level. 

You can never do enough to work hard to reduce the regulatory 

barriers to the smallest companies participating. I know this is 

really hard if you are an administrator and you have to handle 

hundreds of thousands of applicants. But things like the Phase 

Zero program of the SBIR where you actually try to push some of 

the decision making on the application to the local level, or providing easier access to small amounts of capital to help improve 

Phase I application approval rates, can be very useful where you 

basically push resources out to the field. 

To your point, Senator Ayotte, where you involve partners in the 

State at the local level who are involved with these applicants, that 

could be very useful. It could be very cost-effective. It can also increase efficiency. And it also hopes to address the reality of firsttime principle investigators applying who do not already have 

SBIR expertise. He does not have the means to hire the kind of expert that Dr. Reder just referred to, much less the institutional experience that Creare has. 

And so, I think if you can find ways not just to reduce the regulatory barriers, but also to partner applicants with other sources of 

expertise, whether those resources are going to be funded by the 
75 

agencies themselves or supported through partnerships in the communities, that would be helpful. 

Senator SHAHEEN. It is now 3:00, which is the time that we had 

promised to end this hearing. I am going to ask Mr. Bundas and 

then Dr. Gittell, if you would like to go ahead and respond since 

you both had indicated you would like to. And then closing 

thoughts before we wind up the discussion. 

Mr. BUNDAS. Sure, I can be quick. One area of regulation that 

we run into often is that of export licensing and export control specifically for dealing with the types of devices that we are making. 

I mean, it is thermal imagery. It is night vision. Tactical advantage 

is important. National security is important. 

But a lot of the technology that we started the company with has 

been around for a while, yet it is still classified under DoD or Department of Commerce as a dual-use item. I get a call from a guy 

in China every six months, hey, has there been any movement on 

this. 

I mean, it is a huge market of potential industrial applications, 

at least that is what he tells me he wants this for. I run into people 

all the time at trade shows from Europe or from India or from 

Asia, and I just say, ‘‘You know what? It is not going to happen.’’ 

I have made a call here and there, but, again, we are a small 

business, and I do not have the time or the resources to chase 

down trying to get approval for every potential market that is out 

there only to find out that it gets denied, and I have wasted a couple of months of my time. 

So if there is a way to potentially streamline that process, especially with the small business in mind where the resources are not 

available on our end opening up these markets, I think it could be 

potentially huge because it is a global market nowadays. For the 

advanced technologies that are being developed here in the U.S., 

we have got to open that up. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Yes, and the reason you saw Senator Ayotte 

and I smiling is because we have heard this before from a lot of 

companies in New Hampshire. And there is actually a reform 

under way to address the whole export control system that is making some progress. There is a lot more that still has to be done. 

But there is an effort to simplify it in a way that certainly is going 

to help small businesses, because it is—as you point out, it is very 

important. 

Dr. GITTELL. I just wanted to follow up quickly on the points that 

Philip and others have made about the difficulty for small entities 

at times to interact effectively with Federal agencies and regulators. I think that applies to public entities in the State of New 

Hampshire, as I am sure you are aware of, and to quasi-public 

agencies, like the community college system of New Hampshire. 

We at times have difficulty competing effectively for Federal Department of Labor and Department of Education grants because 

the expectations are that we have a similar bureaucracy of larger 

states such as New York and California and Florida. We need the 

recognition that smaller States, that are less bureaucratic and 

smaller in scale, have difficulty administratively competing effectively for Federal grant money. Maybe a program to look at which 

has been effective is the EPSCoR program for competitive research 
76 

that the NSF has, that recognizes that some States have been 

funded relatively low on a per capita basis. And there is a special 

effort made to make those programs and services available to 

smaller States. 

Senator SHAHEEN. I think that is a really good point. And the 

whole issue, which could be the subject of another hearing, is procurement that several people have raised, and the challenges of 

trying to figure out how to navigate the Federal procurement system in a way that can help small businesses take advantage of 

some of those Federal contracts. So that is certainly a topic that 

I think is worth future conversation. 

Any final thoughts from any of you as we close out the hearing? 

Dr. REDER. I think we have heard many times about this early 

stage gap in capital, and in the life sciences industry it is acute. 

The venture capitalists are moving to later stage, and they are also 

moving out of venture capital altogether. That whole industry is 

contracting significantly. To say that there were only 20 first-time 

deals done in the first quarter of 2013 across the country is astounding. It was a total of $98 million. 

This is the seed corn that eventually grows into new therapies 

and new businesses. Whatever the Federal government can do to 

help to address that problem will pay dividends. In the absence of early stage funding, we are putting $30 billion 

a year into NIH research, which will not get developed. 

Mr. CHYNOWETH. The last comment I would make would just be 

to kind of underscore the theme of the community when I talked 

initially about town, capital, and community. Senator Ayotte, your 

comment about, you know, using this DRED to kind of facilitate 

that local conversation, provide information. That is one example, 

but there are also others, like New Hampshire Technology Council, 

ABI, ICC. All of these things really do capacity building at the community level. 

And by far, the best way to—that we experience, you know, trying to navigate complex systems, like the government or like, you 

know, raising money for VCs, is to have an entrepreneur that is 

next to you or that is one person removed from you that you can 

talk to about that experience. 

And so, the things that you can do, whether it is small grants, 

like the DRTC, or supporting these type of community organizations, really goes a long way to spreading that knowledge. And, you 

know, I think is even more effective over the long run than hiring—maybe even than hiring a dedicated staff person to be, you 

know, part of DRED. Just getting it out into the community and 

letting that kind of take the message forward. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Mr. Brown. 

Mr. BROWN. Yeah. My closing comments in listening to what everybody has had to say today would be I encourage you to reach 

out to SBA and to the other agencies, and I would say especially 

SBA, because we meet regularly with Manny, as he well knows, 

and the other program managers. We have, you know, rather vigorous discussions on all types of issues. 

But, you know, in a lot of the cases, those discussions are driven 

by the agendas that we have in terms of the regulatory environment in Washington as opposed to the issues that I am hearing 
77 

today. It is not to say we do not get calls from time to time, but 

it is good hearing it from the entrepreneur, you know, yourselves 

in terms of exactly the issues that you are having. 

And again, with this reauthorization still being put in place and 

many of the provisions being fine-tuned and oiled, I mean, anything that you see that may need to be tinkered, you know. We are 

still updating the policy directives, et cetera. So I just encourage 

you to bring your issues to our attention. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. I would also point out that Mary 

Collins from the SBDC is here, as is Greta Johansson, who is the 

SBA director here in New Hampshire. So if you do not know them, 

you should. 

Other final thoughts from anyone on the panel? Yes? 

Mr. FERNEAU. Just real quickly. One of the strengths of New 

Hampshire you will appreciate, Senator Shaheen and Senator 

Ayotte, is that while we may be small and have these pockets of 

expertise throughout the State, we now increasingly are working 

together very effectively, and that is a great strength. 

And part of that effectiveness that I just want to call out is how 

responsive you and your staffs have been when our companies or 

communities have needed help getting the DRTC started or addressing various regulatory issues. And that is the strength of New 

Hampshire. Part of our New Hampshire advantage is that our community is relatively small and connected. The ability to bring us together today in this roundtable format to highlight these issues, I 

think bodes well for the future. 

We have come a long way in the decade since when we started 

Borealis. Based on what we have seen across the State, it is exciting looking forward. The Federal government has been important 

along the way, but it can do even more, I think. We are not asking 

for a lot, but I think there are high impact opportunities for the 

Federal government to support the continued growth of the economy here. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Thank you. Senator Ayotte, closing thoughts? 

Senator AYOTTE. I wanted to thank you so much again for holding this hearing. I thought it was great to hear from all the panelists today. And I know that there are also many business owners 

in the audience. 

And we will take this back to Washington. And, you know, I really took to heart some of the ideas that you brought up on the uniformity across agencies, for SBIR, the better connections between 

the program managers and the businesses, the importance of the 

skilled workforce and making sure that we are obviously educating 

the next generation, particularly in the STEM fields, and streamlining regulations to make sure that we can make it more effective 

and efficient for you to be able to grow jobs to start your business. 

And it worries me when I hear about the lack of capital, that if 

we do not have that seed corn for the next generation of businesses 

and entrepreneurs, then we are going to have difficulty really starting the new great ideas that I know many of you probably have in 

this room. And I think that we can do better in the Federal government because I do hear so many stories from businesses about regulations that are holding back entrepreneurship. And so, that is 
78 

something that I want to continue to work on, along with Senator 

Shaheen. So thank you all for being here today. 

And finally, I would just say that my office, I know as well as 

Senator Shaheen’s, are here to serve you. And sometimes unfortunately when you do run into some of that red tape in Washington 

that we want to cut through and eliminate, we can help cut 

through it more quickly. And we would be honored to do that. So 

thank you for being here. 

And thank you again, Senator Shaheen, for holding this important hearing. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Well, thank you for joining me, and thank you 

very much to all of our panelists. It has been a very helpful discussion, I think. And as we think about the challenges, particularly 

today, as we are still recovering from the recession that hit us, and 

we think about the potential for our small businesses to grow and 

to create the jobs that are going to take us out of the recession, the 

more we can do to be helpful to ensure that if we are passing legislation in Washington, that is in response to concerns that we have 

heard here at home, and that we are not hurting small businesses, 

but we are helping them is very important. 

So thank you all very much. Thank you for everybody who came 

from far away today, to Mr. Brown, and Dr. Oliver, and for everyone who has traveled from far parts of New Hampshire to be with 

us as well. 

And I would just like to echo what Senator Ayotte said about the 

importance of our offices and being able to help you address both 

concerns you may have about how agencies or departments are operating, and also in terms of cutting through red tape. We are really here to try and be a resource for the people of New Hampshire, 

for the businesses of New Hampshire, as you look at the challenges 

you face. So we may not always be able to help you, but we certainly want to try. So make sure you identify Senator Ayotte’s staff 

and my staff, and know that you can talk to them. And we will try 

and help you in every way we can. 

So again, thank you very much. I would just remind you the 

record will stay open for two weeks before we submit it to the 

Small Business Committee. 

Senator SHAHEEN. Good afternoon. 

[Whereupon, at 3:09 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

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