Grants for startups are forms of support aimed at early-stage and fast-growing companies with an innovative solution. The biggest obstacle tends to be eligibility itself: many schemes require a certain length of time in business, a history of financial statements, or proof of financial capacity, which a young company cannot meet. More realistic, therefore, are instruments tailored to the early stage – vouchers for expert services and testing, acceleration and incubation programmes, support for participation in trade fairs, national schemes for innovative enterprises, and European instruments for small companies with high growth potential. Also consider that a grant is not always the best choice: it ties up capacity in administration and a timetable that is hard to reconcile with pivoting the product. For rapid growth, a combination with repayable financing tends to be more suitable.
See also: Innovation voucher, Financial instruments, Grants for Research and Development.
