We've been funded by various research grants from EU as well asEU VC money. Grants are bureaucracy, sure, but if you understand how you navigate it - and every

We've been funded by various research grants from EU as well asEU VC money. Grants are bureaucracy, sure, but if you understand how you navigate it - and every entrepreneurial person shoud - then it's really free money with a bit of strings attached. But it's primarily used for seed purposes (vs. series A, B...) in new companies or as a suplement in existing companies. EU also does investment matching (one of our VCs had half of his fund matched by the EU). Based on my experience, this is an even better model, since it derisks investmens for local VCs - the biggest problem in investing here is not the lack of funds, but insane risk aversion. It really feels like everybody is looking for stable and good performing businesses and not for investment opportunities that would be moon shots.