Couragion Wins Another NSF Award!

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The first time we ever heard of America's Seed Fund was in the summer of 2015 a few months after we founded Couragion and 10 days before the grant due date. Our team had never written a grant before - and we beat the odds and won the honor and support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) with an SBIR Phase I grant. It’s four years later and we're still celebrating. We were just awarded a Phase II-B supplement which provides R&D funds to further accelerate Couragion’s commercialization and brings our total Phase II funding to $1.16M.

This award is a testament to the intellectual merit of our R&D and the broader impacts we are having in boosting both the number and diversity of individuals who are more confident to pursue STEM-related careers. We're incredibly proud and want to thank our program directors Rajesh and Glenn, our advisors JB and John, and all of our advocates, partners, educators, and students who have made this possible! Special thanks to Kellie and the entire team at mindSpark Learning, Lauren and Nick at Denver Public Schools, Marty and Liz at Adams 12 Five Star, and Amanda and Kelsey at St. Vrain Valley Schools — we’re so grateful for all that you do!

Being a part of the Phase II community of awardees since 2017 has been incredible and I am humbled to regularly collaborate with and support Linds at Killer Snails, Sheela at CueThink, Jacob at Edify, Ben at PlayPosit, Julia at Alchemie Solutions, Shannon at Codecraft Works, and Ramji at Pragya Systems. Thanks to each of you as we take this journey together!

I am proud to be an active grantee and ambassador for America's Seed Fund. By the numbers, there are 355 companies with active awards for NSF Phase II seed funding with 39 of them being in 'Educational Technologies and Applications' portfolio. The average amount of funding awarded each grantee company is $936,909. 41% of company's who received a Phase I award were awarded follow-on Phase II funding between 2011 and 2016.  Are you interested in learning more about the current Phase II awardees?

Melissa Risteff