Innovators Find Alternative To Venture Capital When Paul Brewer, co-founder of high-tech security company ObjectVideo, gave speeches to business school students about how to find funding, he used to focus about 80 percent of his talk on the art of landing venture capital. Now he spends most of his time on how to attract federal government funding, especially through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The managers of the program are more daring than venture capitalists, said Brewer, because they are more likely to fund an idea at its inception, before it has proved anything.