I have the privilege of getting to meet a lot of very smart people in my job. One of those is Andrew Ferris of Small Town America and we had a brief conversation of the benefits and pitfalls of filling in forms for public funding.
His point of view:
Filling in forms is like every other activity for your business. If the time it takes is worth the money then you will do it.
Three years ago, there wasn’t much in the way of funding for technology startups. Now we have just started the second round of CIIF and the NISPO Fund is just entering its third year. We have new programmes starting, new funds everywhere.
And still people complain.
The issue has moved from “There is no funding” to “I’m much too clever to be filling in these forms“. And frankly, I have no time for that level of misplaced arrogance.