4 ms·

Applying for a grant is normally difficult. In Germany, it's outright hellish. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.

franze 1y ago
the good thing now with AI you can write all those pages of bullshit nobody reads bit you will accountable to if things dont work out
fxtentacle 1y ago
It's boring but otherwise harmless. You skim through 20 pages of legalese and fill out the blanks. Your local goverment office has an advisor who will check the forms together with you before you submit them. (I applied for and received a De-Minimis grant.) Plus for the larger grant types, there are advisory companies that work on commission.
- timmg 1y ago
  Finally: a good use for LLMs ;)
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    Not if they ban, errr I mean regulate them ;)
jsemrau 1y ago
Applying for a grant in the European Commission is a labyrinth of different websites each with their own need to register. Grant Specs are largely in PDFs or Word Documents that are attached to the call. And it takes at least 6-9 months from open to decision. I have applied to about 20 grants throughout 2024 and haven't heard anything back from a single one yet.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  You should blog about your experience and submit to HN. I am sure you can get lots of good advice to improve your chances.
  - jsemrau 1y ago
    This has spawned almost an entire industry. Have a look at Zebra Embassy in Berlin as an example. I think it would be easier to "digitally transform" the process to be more efficient.
- jll29 1y ago
  EC scientific expert here (occasionally judging FP7/8/Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe grants in multiple areas including AI). I also authored some bigger proposals, one rejected (score: 13/15) and one funded. It is perhaps not a good idea to apply to that many in such a short time frame, unless you have nothing else to do: the individual efforts need to be really excellent to succeed, so focus should be on quality rather than quantity. Why? There is a funding threshold, and you can have 5 proposals that get 13/15 ("good enough to fund"), but you still don't get any of them funded because there enough competing grants with 15/15 score, and after they receive their funding, the pot of money is already empty (the funding is in order of merit). In my experience, most applications that fail to get the perfect score required are incomplete: To get excellent scores it is vital to FULLY address ANYTHING mentioned in the call. And to squeeze all that into 40 pages is an art. (There are folks that provide consulting support, which I have not used yet, or you could collaborate with someone who has worked on the other side to learn more about what is important.) While getting grant money remains hard, I was pleasantly suprised about the judging effort and the EC's personnel energy put into the evaluation process and in making it fair; for each call, their is a special rapporteur going around and documenting that everything that should be done gets done the way it should be, and the EC take great pains to find experts that are diverse across multiple dimensions (gender, country, industry/academia, seniority, field of expertise etc.). edit: typos
  - jsemrau 1y ago
    Thank you for your insightful reply. I am also registered as an Expert to the EC. I fully agree with you that completing all requirements in a 40-pager is hard. Which I think is exactly my point. It's competitive (that's good) and time-consuming. But I also believe grant applications are a muscle a startup should have when they want to do business with the government. In SpacecTech, Defense, and AI (my areas) this is largely unavoidable.
- notahacker 1y ago
  The websites certainly have their design quirks, as do the application forms (though you can avoid those traps by partnering with people who've done it before). But tbh a single document and 6 month turnaround for our Pathfinder bid was above average for grants we've won, and compares very favourably with our equity funding round.
_fizz_buzz_ 1y ago
I have applied for a few grants in Germany and also got them. It’s honestly not that difficult. If you have a large consortium with many partners it can become complicated but mostly because of the partners and not the government. My secret advice: when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address, if anything is unclear, you can call them and they have always been very helpful.
- hobofan 1y ago
  > when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address 100%. That can also sometime save you a ton of work of putting together information that they may not care about.
47282847 1y ago
I am based in Germany and have helped a couple of dozen individuals and small groups to successfully apply for grants and incorporate. It’s really not that difficult once you overcome the typical psychological barriers which if you look closely are a combination of prejudices and negative self talk. On all levels, once you really breathe that there is a human person you are directing your inquiry to, and that you can help them do their job, they will be happy to direct money towards you. That principle applies from local startup funds to federal grants to EU level project officers. The “bureaucracy“ can be annoying in the sense of feeling like a waste of time (which, since you should factor in the cost of application into your later grant, is simply not true. It is actually really well paid boring labor.), but it’s really not complex or hard. If you believe they are hard for you (“hell“), you are engaged in negative self talk. If you approach these things as highly annoying, and direct your annoying energy to the people who are handling your application, you will annoy them, which will make you feel like they are there to annoy you. The alternative is to approach them with the understanding that they’re not trying to make your life hard but are simply doing their job. They know much better than you that some things should be changed but it’s not up to them to change them, and they are not the right target to lobby for change.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Are you working as a consultant on these topics? I‘m looking for someone to get assistance with incorporating and grants this fall.
  - 47282847 1y ago
    I used to, but I changed field and I’m not available, sorry. Good luck!
jillesvangurp 1y ago
I'm CTO in a startup in Germany. We've applied for and gotten various grants. It's not a big deal. And there are agencies that can help with this. I know various people in different companies that benefit from this as well. There is money at the state level, at the federal level, and the European level that can be unlocked via grants. Germany has got a well deserved reputation for its bureaucracy and lack of flexibility. We were dealing with the tax office at the same time we were dealing with grants. One part of the government trying to give us money, another taking it away. We had our first deal with not enough revenue to even pay ourselves. That was calculated as "profit". As a bootstrapped company, we got very close to emptying our accounts a few times. And stuff like this isn't helpful. But we survived and we're still around. Partially thanks to these grants. I think this incoming government is saying the right things and looks like they are planning to do things that sound like they are good ideas. Making the process of founding a company easier, incentivizing R&D, etc. There's a lot of potential in this country in terms of companies that are very specialized and high tech, well educated people, etc. They are definitely over dependent on older companies that are a bit past their prime, e.g. in automotive. Germany mainly needs to deal with it's risk averse bureaucracy and culture. People that want to take risk here need to move more freely and faster. It shouldn't take months to found a company. Or thousands of euros to deal with all the bureaucracy (which it does if you add it all up). Germany tends to stifle innovation by bureaucracy, restrictive & complex rules, and a finance climate that actively discourages investment and taking risk. Especially foreign investment. If you look at a lot of big name scale ups in Germany, you'll find that they have headquarters in places like Dublin, London, or Amsterdam. There's a good reason for this: if you want foreign investors to invest, a Gmbh is simply a somewhat toxic legal construction. These companies are German in all but name. That's about more than just taxes. That needs to change. I think people are well aware. Merz certainly seems to be. But bureaucracies have a way of pushing back and this country is run by bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, notaries, etc. that all benefit financially from the system being the way it is. They actively resist change and insist how crucial they are to the whole thing. Everything they touch tends to get more complex and convoluted. My worry is that they'll just end up adding to the problem instead of solving it.

the good thing now with AI you can write all those pages of bullshit nobody reads bit you will accountable to if things dont work out

fxtentacle 1y ago

It's boring but otherwise harmless. You skim through 20 pages of legalese and fill out the blanks. Your local goverment office has an advisor who will check the forms together with you before you submit them. (I applied for and received a De-Minimis grant.) Plus for the larger grant types, there are advisory companies that work on commission.

timmg 1y ago
Finally: a good use for LLMs ;)
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  Not if they ban, errr I mean regulate them ;)

jsemrau 1y ago

Applying for a grant in the European Commission is a labyrinth of different websites each with their own need to register. Grant Specs are largely in PDFs or Word Documents that are attached to the call. And it takes at least 6-9 months from open to decision. I have applied to about 20 grants throughout 2024 and haven't heard anything back from a single one yet.

throwaway2037 1y ago
You should blog about your experience and submit to HN. I am sure you can get lots of good advice to improve your chances.
- jsemrau 1y ago
  This has spawned almost an entire industry. Have a look at Zebra Embassy in Berlin as an example. I think it would be easier to "digitally transform" the process to be more efficient.
jll29 1y ago
EC scientific expert here (occasionally judging FP7/8/Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe grants in multiple areas including AI). I also authored some bigger proposals, one rejected (score: 13/15) and one funded. It is perhaps not a good idea to apply to that many in such a short time frame, unless you have nothing else to do: the individual efforts need to be really excellent to succeed, so focus should be on quality rather than quantity. Why? There is a funding threshold, and you can have 5 proposals that get 13/15 ("good enough to fund"), but you still don't get any of them funded because there enough competing grants with 15/15 score, and after they receive their funding, the pot of money is already empty (the funding is in order of merit). In my experience, most applications that fail to get the perfect score required are incomplete: To get excellent scores it is vital to FULLY address ANYTHING mentioned in the call. And to squeeze all that into 40 pages is an art. (There are folks that provide consulting support, which I have not used yet, or you could collaborate with someone who has worked on the other side to learn more about what is important.) While getting grant money remains hard, I was pleasantly suprised about the judging effort and the EC's personnel energy put into the evaluation process and in making it fair; for each call, their is a special rapporteur going around and documenting that everything that should be done gets done the way it should be, and the EC take great pains to find experts that are diverse across multiple dimensions (gender, country, industry/academia, seniority, field of expertise etc.). edit: typos
- jsemrau 1y ago
  Thank you for your insightful reply. I am also registered as an Expert to the EC. I fully agree with you that completing all requirements in a 40-pager is hard. Which I think is exactly my point. It's competitive (that's good) and time-consuming. But I also believe grant applications are a muscle a startup should have when they want to do business with the government. In SpacecTech, Defense, and AI (my areas) this is largely unavoidable.
notahacker 1y ago
The websites certainly have their design quirks, as do the application forms (though you can avoid those traps by partnering with people who've done it before). But tbh a single document and 6 month turnaround for our Pathfinder bid was above average for grants we've won, and compares very favourably with our equity funding round.

_fizz_buzz_ 1y ago

I have applied for a few grants in Germany and also got them. It’s honestly not that difficult. If you have a large consortium with many partners it can become complicated but mostly because of the partners and not the government. My secret advice: when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address, if anything is unclear, you can call them and they have always been very helpful.

hobofan 1y ago
> when there is a grant there is also always a number you call or an email address 100%. That can also sometime save you a ton of work of putting together information that they may not care about.

47282847 1y ago

I am based in Germany and have helped a couple of dozen individuals and small groups to successfully apply for grants and incorporate. It’s really not that difficult once you overcome the typical psychological barriers which if you look closely are a combination of prejudices and negative self talk. On all levels, once you really breathe that there is a human person you are directing your inquiry to, and that you can help them do their job, they will be happy to direct money towards you. That principle applies from local startup funds to federal grants to EU level project officers. The “bureaucracy“ can be annoying in the sense of feeling like a waste of time (which, since you should factor in the cost of application into your later grant, is simply not true. It is actually really well paid boring labor.), but it’s really not complex or hard. If you believe they are hard for you (“hell“), you are engaged in negative self talk. If you approach these things as highly annoying, and direct your annoying energy to the people who are handling your application, you will annoy them, which will make you feel like they are there to annoy you. The alternative is to approach them with the understanding that they’re not trying to make your life hard but are simply doing their job. They know much better than you that some things should be changed but it’s not up to them to change them, and they are not the right target to lobby for change.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
Are you working as a consultant on these topics? I‘m looking for someone to get assistance with incorporating and grants this fall.
- 47282847 1y ago
  I used to, but I changed field and I’m not available, sorry. Good luck!

jillesvangurp 1y ago

I'm CTO in a startup in Germany. We've applied for and gotten various grants. It's not a big deal. And there are agencies that can help with this. I know various people in different companies that benefit from this as well. There is money at the state level, at the federal level, and the European level that can be unlocked via grants. Germany has got a well deserved reputation for its bureaucracy and lack of flexibility. We were dealing with the tax office at the same time we were dealing with grants. One part of the government trying to give us money, another taking it away. We had our first deal with not enough revenue to even pay ourselves. That was calculated as "profit". As a bootstrapped company, we got very close to emptying our accounts a few times. And stuff like this isn't helpful. But we survived and we're still around. Partially thanks to these grants. I think this incoming government is saying the right things and looks like they are planning to do things that sound like they are good ideas. Making the process of founding a company easier, incentivizing R&D, etc. There's a lot of potential in this country in terms of companies that are very specialized and high tech, well educated people, etc. They are definitely over dependent on older companies that are a bit past their prime, e.g. in automotive. Germany mainly needs to deal with it's risk averse bureaucracy and culture. People that want to take risk here need to move more freely and faster. It shouldn't take months to found a company. Or thousands of euros to deal with all the bureaucracy (which it does if you add it all up). Germany tends to stifle innovation by bureaucracy, restrictive & complex rules, and a finance climate that actively discourages investment and taking risk. Especially foreign investment. If you look at a lot of big name scale ups in Germany, you'll find that they have headquarters in places like Dublin, London, or Amsterdam. There's a good reason for this: if you want foreign investors to invest, a Gmbh is simply a somewhat toxic legal construction. These companies are German in all but name. That's about more than just taxes. That needs to change. I think people are well aware. Merz certainly seems to be. But bureaucracies have a way of pushing back and this country is run by bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, notaries, etc. that all benefit financially from the system being the way it is. They actively resist change and insist how crucial they are to the whole thing. Everything they touch tends to get more complex and convoluted. My worry is that they'll just end up adding to the problem instead of solving it.