Comment on FR Doc # 2012-11586

Venture capital controlled small businesses should not be eligible for SBIR funds. Including these entities will immediately skew the allocation of resources both inside VC-owned firms, towards grant making (and away from the reasonably risk-reduced project/product/service the VC funder invested in originally), and outside as VC's, with professional grant writing staffs, take share of grants available to riskier and potentially more disruptive technologies/ or services. Make efforts to level the field between states that claim disproportionately high% of grants (MA, CA, NY, etc.) and smaller states. This should not be a set aside, but rather a consideration that will allow technology clusters to evolve widely rather than in dense urban areas (Boston, San Francisco, New York, etc.). Remove the administrative rejection of applications that exceed 150% of the annual budget guideline. Big ideas sometimes need bigger budgets and the agencies should have a mechanism to work with low scoring applications that require larger budgets.