Every year, more than $2 billion is up for grabs nationally through the federal Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Enter the Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative (WSSI), helping to connect Wyoming businesses with 11 federal agencies looking for research.
While companies nationwide compete for Phase I and II contracts and grants, Wyoming is unique in that it offers a Phase 0 program funded by the WBC to help businesses. The $5,000 awards allow businesses to dedicate efforts to preparing their Phase I proposals.
WSSI Program Manager Gene Watson says the Phase 0 program is integral to WSSI’s success. “One of the key things is they also get a Wyoming mentor who has been successful in the program,” he says.
“People have received about $50 million in research contracts and grants statewide in a variety of industries,” Gern says.
Mountain Meadow Wool in Buffalo, Wyo., is one of the businesses that received Phase 0 awards. “This helped us become successful proposal writers, and we went on to receive four USDA [research] grants,” says co-founder and UW alumnae Valerie Spanos. “We were a couple of stay-at-home-moms. Our community is full of sheep ranchers. They couldn’t get very good prices for their wool, and we were thinking that surely someone could do something to market the fiber from Wyoming, which we felt was superior.”
Their company aims to solve that problem by working directly with the suppliers and using a new wool-processing system that is water and energy efficient and addresses the end use of all waste created.
“It would have been totally different without WSSI’s help,” co-founder Karen Hostetler says. “We probably never would have gone beyond cottage industry.”
While not under UW’s purview, the Wyoming Women’s Business Center is also part of the Business Assistance Network and works to promote prosperity for Wyoming women through successful entrepreneurship.
Jensen says, “This network is continually growing and expanding, and the businesses
that take advantage of it will typically enter into the system and will take advantage
of one thing, and then there’s a whole world of opportunities that opens up to them.”
For more information on the network, visit wyomingbusiness.org/resources
