We thought this was pretty interesting. It turns out there are pretty significant and consistent differences between the sizes of the companies getting funded by different R&D teams. And here’s what we think is driving the differences:
The DOD, Dept of Energy, and NASA are interested in physical products that may require more capital equipment, and thus tend to go to bigger companies
The DOD and NASA need products that operate in specialized environments (underwater, space, etc) and small companies likely do not have the infrastructure to build solutions for such specialized environments
A lot of companies that pursue federal R&D funding start as services companies which tend to employ a lot of people, so in a 100 person company only 5 of them might be focussed on product development
That being said if you’re a small business I’d have a preference for R&D teams that tend to fund small businesses. They’ll understand your resources restrictions and economics a little more.