If you have ever searched for a subsidy to finance your innovative idea, research poject or awesome new startup adventure, you probably now: finding the right subsidy can be tough. Real tough. As in: I give up, never mind kinda tough. In this blog we highlight what makes it hard, and how we can fix it.
Reason 1: Subsidies are scattered
I think that for me personally, this was one of the most frustrating (and surprising!) parts of my search: the sheer amount of different organizations that provide subsidies. And thus the maze of possible locations to look for them. I had this constant FOMO that I'd always miss out on opportunities. And that was only for the Netherlands. Imagine if you'd try to find the best opportunity worldwide.
Reason 2: Subsidy requirements are hard
Then if you have been able to get out of this horrible maze, you'd stilll have to decypher the requirements of the subsidy to understand whether you are eligible at all. And that, my good friends, is maybe even more difficult. If possible. Especially European subsidies are equiped with a set of requirements that are, well, hard for us mere humans. That goes for the hard eligibility criteria, but even more so for the criteria that are essential to qualify. For example a "Gender Equality Plan or the ethics review procedure. " Such requirements, and the fear of missing such requirements, don't make it easier for smaller organizations without specialized knowledge to succesfully apply for European funding.
Reason 3: Information can be outdated
This may be one of the most frustrating elements. You finally found a subsidy that looks like an awesome match, only to find out the information was actually outdated. No subsidy for you. For example, these two screenshots from different websites below (the last one actually showed it was still open on the time of writing this article):
Reason 4: You subsidy advisor is a human
Sounds a bit lame, but it is actually important to keep in mind: your subsidy advisor is only human. So he would know a lot about a few subsidies, and a bit on a larger amount, but he won't be able to give detailed insights on all of them. With tens and tens of thousands of subsidies, that would just be impossible. So if he or she advises you, he will be implied to advise subsidies that he/she knows a bit about. And unfortunately for you that means you'll miss out on quite some other opportunities your advisor never even heard of.
Reason 5: most databases are hard to navigate
Fortunately, there are quite a lot of databases out there that include most or even all subsidies available. Unfortunately for us, these have their own issues. Most importantly: it is notoriously hard to navigate. You may be able to filter only results relevant for businesses, or innovative businesses, but that still leaves you with tens or hundreds of opportuntities. And with these hard to understand requirements, most of us would just, well, give up.
So far the bad news. The good news? We're working our asses of for a solution.
With Whatsub we have three main goals:
Make sure you don't miss out on opportunities.
Make it much easier for you to make informed decisions between subsdies
And make it much easier for you to succesfully apply for the subsidy
In our next blog post we're going to tell you about what we aim to do. And how we want to achieve that.