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Dear lord, I'd love to know who this funder is.

• GFischer 15y ago
  In the case of my country's government (or Chile's), you can get a grant for your startup without having prior contact. However, in my country at least, I do know they give more weight to applications from people they know (I don't know how, the others might get processed later or whatever, or they skew in their favor). So, you might get funded without contacts, but it's less likely (I guess you have to be outstanding in some sense, either killer business plan or credentials).
• MehdiEG 15y ago
  The government most likely. There are several places in this world where startups, and businesses in general, almost drown in free money like this. The downside to this is that in order to get this free money, you first have to go through a senseless amount of paperwork, bureaucracy and bullshit. But, to be honest, it's a small price to pay for what you get. Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. InvestNI, the government body in charge of giving away free money, recently had to give back a whooping £39m (that's $62m!) because it couldn't find enough businesses to give the money to quickly enough. Sadly, many entrepreneurs in these places have never experienced what doing a startup in the "real-world" is like and they don't realise what an incredibly competitive advantage these grants give them. So instead of leveraging this opportunity, many spend most of their time whining and complaining about the paperwork and bureaucracy involved.
  • dkersten 15y ago
    Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. I can confirm this. One of the guys on my team has contacts in InvestNI and I'm told that they want and need to give money away or else they won't get as much for their budget next year, so its really easy to get free money off them.