We are a young team willing to launch a tech startup (we have the product ready), and we are looking for funding to develop it further. We are looking to take advantage of European Union non-reimbursable funds for tech startups. Does anyone know of such funds or succeeded to subscribe and receive this from CE, EU, etc.?
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It probably depends on your jurisdiction. Certainly here in the UK, you could start looking at Business Link and similar. Even Google can help. For more specific help, it might be worth mentioning which country and region you are in. |
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I don't believe EU has similar programms, but I believe specific countries do have some support for Startups (Supporting startups is a country-related policy for the moment and not yet EU policy I believe). It all depends from the country you are in. I know that Germany has some programme, Spain (check Barcelonanetactiva.com for example) has some similar programmes too. |
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If you are in the UK you might find this list of funders helpful ~ http://www.rivernorth.co.uk/fundlink.html |
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As far as I know, it's a pity but Europe doesn't exist on this point, there are here to tell they spend money but I don't think there are any organisation an entrepreneur can go and talk to. Make a local search at the national and regional level of your company. Try to get close to an incubator, if this is a decent one they should monitor a lot of possible help / fund you could try to get (from all geographic level). Beware of the motivation of the incubator, public structure tends to look only in the direction of who's feeding them and often miss essential points. Try also to meet people from your business and ask them, they could also save you a lot of time. |
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As far as I know, there is no direct EU top-level organism dealing with startup creation or funding. There are microfinancing programmes, eg. Progress Microfinancing, but they are loans and they're channeled through national organisations (also, I'm not sure whether tech startups fall within the range of organisations they tend to fund). Closest they get is Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), but this is some kind of 'support' network, they don't give out any funding. It's possible that your closest EEN information node knows about financing possibilities in your region, though. There's talk about microloans for startups within the next years, but we're talking about post-2013 here, and things in the EU are sloooow... so don't expect them to be in place for quite a few months, minimum. It's possible that some EU regional funding will end up in startup-support programmes in some countries and/or regions, but it's gonna be the national/regional government that'll allocate these funds as they see fit. Erm, in short... check your country's funding schemes. EU money is likely there, somewhere, but you can't ask them directly. Also, check if there are any big organisations with foundations wanting to spend money on entrepreneurship support programms (in Spain, for example, there are several; they might offer you free advice, a place where to develop your idea/project, and some even monetary rewards). |
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