While grant process in EU isn't fun, I think Levels has bit of an ego issues. He mentioned that if he had issues like that on eg X, he would see Elon himself in the replies.
While he is great at converting his influencer status to income in his micro-SaaS projects, I don't think running ad-fueled browser games on state-sponsored super computer should be really aim of these grant programs.
Problem with these grant proposal things is that it favors established businesses over small founders. Establishes businesses have much more resources to go through all the legal / red tape issues.
I’ve seen this in practice with innovation subsidies: small startup has to spend a lot of time to go though all the hoops, taking up significant resources, to get modest compensation for actual innovative work. Larger business hires an external agency to do everything for them, to make silly proposals “convert website from jquery to react” as innovation, and gets thousands upon thousands of FTE-hours in subsidy compensation hours for it.
this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections.
The EU is also great at creating a heavy regulatory environment. Which entrenches existing incumbents. So the EU creates barriers that favor big companies, then tries to fix it with grants that... also favor big companies.
And then everyone's surprised that there's no innovation in Europe.
From all the world's companies worth over 100B$ there's only one European company - SAP, founded 50 years ago. [1]
>this! it favors established business with legal teams and (maybe more importantly) with connections.
This x2. A close friend of mine works at a major EU HW tech company and his job is wearing a suit, going to dinner parties and rubbing shoulders with high level local and national bureaucrats to convince them to fund X, Y, Z projects, none of which result in any major commercial success or ROI for the governments because the money they get is not enough to make new successful products, but hey, he's loving his job which gives him amazing job security against the waves of layoffs the company went through due to falling of sales, plus the networking he gets out of that is invaluable.
So at least some people are enjoying the gravy train while it lasts. But that's why a lot of EU tech companies immediately go to the US first before opening up to the EU market. US VSs are more generous with their cheque books than EU governments and investors, plus the 300 million people single consumer market speaking English as the common language and all that.
I left a research org because it was basically a professional gatherer and spender of grants. People would make some proposal with a consortium, spend the money, write a paper or two, visit a conference in eg Japan to present it, rinse and repeat. Hated that. Nothing to do with real innovation.
He is 100% right on this one. From personal experience trying to figure out EU. Lawyer bureaucrats manage funds behind red tape clearly meant to be for their pals.
All these while the EU is running out of funds and in a process of de-industrialization. There should be an independent corruption investigation on Brussels.
I took part in application for EU grants a few times and our company group did it many times over the years.
It's bureaucracy, often bordering with stupidity. You may need advisors to navigate all their forms & processes. But it certainly isn't "pals-only" type of deal.
On the other hand - is it harder than getting VC funding? For seasoned founder with reputation - probably. For fresh startup - probably not.
Reviewer (Scientific Expert) for the EU (since 2009) here.
The probability of getting a Horizon Europe grant allegedly (not official stats) is about 8.5% according to some friends, which may seem low. You need to write 70 pages following a Word template and the key goal is to cover answers to a large number of questions. Each proposal gets various grades across a range of dimensions, which get added up and if you obtain at least 13 out of a possible 15 points, you are eligible to get funded, read: "You will get funded if there is enough money." Often, there are several proposals that justly achieve 15/15, and because of that, many prosals that have 14 points and all proposals that have less may not get funded, simply because there just is not enough total funding available to fund all the technically eligible proposals. Having judged many proposals in AI / ML / search / "big data" / language technology etc. I recommend optimizing recall, i.e. aspiring completeness.
The application process is not easy, but you can get help: there are support agency in each member country, free online Webinars to help, hotline help desks as well as an ecosystem of paid consultants that typically charge about 3k€ to vet a proposal for you if you need that kind of service (I never used it).
The process is neutral and conducted professionally and with external oversight (consultants are hired as "rapporteurs" that report on process/procedural integrity in additional to the actual reviewers). I value the research officers of the EC as people of high competency, integrity and motivation (research money is tax payers money so it should be spent carefully).
In comparison, VC (and even more so business angel) funding is achievable with much less formal apparatus, often a short business plan and a convincing slide deck and demo can get people to a partner meeting if the time is right. But the criteria and process are much different, and ideas ready for public research grants are typically too early for VCs (but the EC wants to foster the creation VC-funded startups resulting from the disseminated research).
> The EIC welcomes applications from innovators in all EU Member States and countries associated to the Horizon Europe programme. It particularly welcomes applications from startups and SMEs with female CEOs.
So that's one that strongly pushes that angle. But the one I saw I clearly remember saying "female co-founder", not CEO.
Right but if we do this with public funds then the narrative shifts to "OMG the EU is so corrupt and stupid, looking they're pouring taxpayer dollars into unproven stuff! They're deindustrializing!!"
The point being that, as soon as public dollars are on the table, people expect perfection. Anything less is waste, fraud, and abuse.
There's literally no winning. Want to make sure the money is allocated right? Bureaucracy. Want to not do that? Waste, fraud, and abuse.
Except that Apple, Intel, Tesla, etc have all received US government investment [1]. TSMC is a product of the Taiwanese state! Government investment can be done well, and seeds excellent companies.
Denmark has a large hearing aids industry due to lots of government funding for hearing aids, and a large wind turbine industry due to funding for wind farms. So stimulating demand can work to build or strengthen an industry, but what Denmark and EU are doing with GPUs is stimulating supply in Europe and demand in the US. I would be surprised if that does not end up strengthening US and not EU industry.
I wouldn't count the wind turbine industry in the same category as startups, energy production and infrastructure are classical government investment schemes.
It doesn't matter if government funded startups have been successful. It's not the government's job to provide capital to high risk ventures. They should provide public services for the people and regulate the private sector according to the interest of the people.
Well, depends on your definition of high risk.
Basic research is definitely high risk, in that return for investment may happen generations from now if ever. I'd argue that funding of basic research through universities etc. is part of government's job.
And funding for basic research should be made so that the results belong to the public, for example through universities as you mentioned. Not through private startups.
The comment you're replying to is tainted with the survivorship bias. We see successful companies that got government funding, but not the opposite. Maybe we'd have more innovation and competition without government picking these specific winners.
Ironically, one of the companies you mentioned (Apple) now operates in an environment with very little competition and regularly faces antitrust claims.
Government picking winners may actually reduce competition in the long run.
The key difference: when private money picks wrong, it's their loss. When government picks wrong, it's taxpayer money.
Of course there is red tape. EU funding comes from taxpayer money and we want it to be spent wisely. The red tape is precisely to prevent it from being funneled to pals. EU has funded quite a few free software projects so it's not like the red tape is an insurmountable burden: https://www.ri.se/en/news/blog/europes-digital-future-spells...
I'd also say that their grants aren't unusually burdensome and grantmaking is arms length compared with a lot of other bodies.
Yes, some of the questions are weird, but I'd really rather write a bit confirming that the AI system being developed isn't going to be racist or Skynet than jump through some other hoops that exist (and that absolutely includes VC due diligence). The actual biggest issue with European funds is they get way more competent applications than they can fund anyway.
I'm actually no fan of his, so that's fine. That said, I went to the actual website he was talking about (I'm also an EU citizen) and in this case it is exactly as described and bordering comical.
While he is great at converting his influencer status to income in his micro-SaaS projects, I don't think running ad-fueled browser games on state-sponsored super computer should be really aim of these grant programs.