Technology Transfer Valley of Death

Funding Controls

Government grant rate $120k/mo

VC entry TRL threshold TRL 6

VC funding rate $600k/mo

Cost escalation per TRL ×1.55

Live Readouts

Funded — climbing TRLs

Technology Readiness Level

1.0 / 9

Elapsed time

0.0 mo

Cash reserve

$0k

Net cash flow

$0k/mo

How it works

The "Valley of Death" is the well-documented funding gap in technology transfer: government grants comfortably cover early lab research (TRL 1-4), and once a technology is de-risked enough investors or corporate licensees step back in (TRL ≥ threshold) — but the mid-stage prototyping and pilot work in between is expensive and attracts almost no funding.

Each TRL step costs more to clear than the last, because prototypes get bigger and pilot runs need real equipment:

Burn(TRL)   = B0 · k^(TRL − 1)          k = cost-escalation slider
Funding(TRL)= Gov   if TRL ≤ 4
              VC    if TRL ≥ vcThreshold
              0     otherwise (the valley)
dReserve/dt = Funding(TRL) − Burn(TRL)
dTRL/dt     = rate0 · clamp(Funding / Burn, 0, 1)   only while Reserve ≥ 0

Government grant rate — non-dilutive funding available only up to TRL 4 (basic research through lab validation).
VC entry TRL threshold — the readiness level at which private capital or a corporate licensing deal starts flowing; raising it widens the valley.
VC funding rate — how much capital arrives once that threshold is crossed.
Cost escalation — how much more expensive each successive TRL step is than the last; steeper escalation makes the valley deadlier.

If the cash reserve goes negative while inside the valley, TRL progress halts and the technology is shown falling into the canyon — a stalled, unfunded invention, which is exactly what happens to most university IP that never reaches a licensing deal.

Government-funded zone Valley of Death VC / licensing zone

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