The hidden cost of a grant: co-funding
Of 1,684 startup funding programmes we hold, 287 (17%) require the company to put in money of its own, and the median requirement is 50%. That is the number missing from every "€3M available!" headline.
The arithmetic people get wrong
A grant of up to €2,000,000 at 60% funding intensity does not mean €2,000,000 arrives and you spend it. It means the project must be at least €3,333,000, you must fund €1,333,000 of it yourself, and the grant is reimbursed against costs you have already incurred. For a pre-seed company, that headline is not an opportunity — it is a description of a project it cannot run.
Why rankings by headline amount are worse than useless
They put the largest, least attainable programme at the top of the list for the company least able to take it, and they do it with total confidence. A founder working down that list spends their first two weeks on the one bid they were never going to be able to accept.
Ranking on amount × published award rate × whether a company that size could actually deliver the project produces an almost completely different order — and it is the order that reflects what the company can realistically win.
Reimbursement is a second cash-flow problem
Most grants pay in arrears against audited costs. So beyond finding your share, you need the working capital to spend the grant's share first and wait — often two to six months, sometimes longer. A company that can technically afford the co-funding can still be unable to afford the timing, and that distinction is invisible in every grant database we have looked at.
The questions to ask before you start writing
- What is the funding intensity, and what is the minimum project size it implies?
- Is our share cash, or does in-kind staff time count? (It often does, and that changes everything.)
- Is it paid in arrears, and if so what is the claim cycle?
- Is there an advance payment, and what does it cost — a guarantee, a bank instrument?
- Does this award count against our de minimis ceiling?
Five questions, ten minutes, before the six weeks.
Every number above is computed, not typed. They come from the 2,216 records behind this site at the moment the page was built, so the post cannot drift away from the data. Where a programme publishes no figure we count it as zero rather than estimate — which makes the totals here understatements, and deliberately so.