| HN Mirror

First you submit a 5 page concept paper, and if that's acceptable you write a 20 page full proposal (answering the Heielmeier Catechism in detail[0]). If you're selected (around 1-5% acceptance rates) you go through a contracting process--overall it takes about 1 year from initial concept paper to final contract.

Once everything's signed you're executing on a 2-3 year and $1-5 million project where you have to hit technical milestones each quarter. And if you're in the top 10% of projects that were funded by the agency that year you can except follow-on funding at about the same level.

[0] https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism

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app4soft 1844 days ago

Crazy ideas has more chances to be selcted by DARPA rather than YC.

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tooltalk 1844 days ago

Why is this "amazing"? My understanding is that DARPA is just one of many investors and customers who approached Moderna to develope medicine for different uses. The company had raised $2B by the time they went IPO in 2018. It doesn't seem like DARPA funding had much to do with their COVID development, in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development. In Pfizer's case, they refused any gov't funding, but only agreed to the gov't's guaranteed sales if their vaccined got approved.

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subsubzero 1844 days ago

I have to totally disagree with this statement:

> in the same way that Trump's Warp Speed didn't necessarily play a groundbreaking role in the vaccine development

Operation warp speed, despite its Trump affiliation was extremely successful, If it hadn't been in place the US would have been similar to Canada or Europe in terms of Vaccine rollout. Here's an article about OWS: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-operation-warp-speed-worked...

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tooltalk 1844 days ago

I can't read the full article (paywall), but my understanding is that COVID vaccine developements were well underway by the time it was announced and the OWS had mostly to do with speeding up approval process, production, distribution and guaranting sales. Not saying it's not important, but I think DARPA's Moderna funding in 2012 is overplayed here.

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dkjaudyeqooe 1844 days ago

This is entirely untrue. Europe funded vaccine development and made pre-purchases in a similar way to the Trump program with similar results. The reason for the EU's lag in rollout had to do with bureaucratic and political factors unrelated to vaccine development.

For instance: the US banned all vaccine exports, while the EU exported tens of millions of doses.

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bryanlarsen 1844 days ago

Pfizer was the first vaccine approved and wasn't part of Warp Speed.

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refurb 1844 days ago

” Company representatives said in November that "the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine,"[60] and that "Pfizer is proud to be one of various vaccine manufacturers participating in Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine."”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

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bryanlarsen 1843 days ago

Pfizer sold vaccines to the US government. That money came from Warp Speed. That's basically the full extent of Pfizer's involvement in Warp Speed. I choose to call that non-participation, but it's a subtle argument.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/nov/19/pfizer-modern...

The U.S. government did not fund the companies’ research and development.

Pfizer chose to risk its own money on vaccine research and not take federal funding in order to avoid bureaucracy and politics, Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla said. He said its investment so far was at least $1.5 billion.

"I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy," Bourla told CBS in September. "When you get money from someone that always comes with strings. They want to see how you are going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn't want to have any of that.

"Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else," he said. "And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way."

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refurb 1843 days ago

But Warp Speed was more than just R&D dollars. In fact, the R&D dollars were the minor part.

A big part was the coordination between multiple government agencies, negotiation with suppliers for guaranteed volumes, throwing money at the problem when needed.

Pfizer doesn’t need money. It makes billions in profit each year. But it does need the FDA, DOD, CDC, etc all aligned and a clearly laid out path from development, to approval, to distribution and eventually administration.

The R&D is just a small part of it.

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