#133 Building communities for startups

Welcome to The Grant, the EU funding podcast. My name is Nisthut Ola Winder and I'm the creator, editor and host of The Grant. The Grant is an independent podcast initiative with the ambition to dig into all corners of the EU R&D funding system on topics of interest for the full EU R&D funding community. Startups are the organizations that are the most in need of finance. They almost literally spend... all waking hours figuring out how to acquire the financial means to realize their wonderful ideas. However, the funding system as well as the venture capital area are both quite rough on them. Niloufar Garavi is a start-up herself, but she also had a good idea a couple of years ago. Why not try to establish an ecosystem where startups are in the same community as the organizations that they need to collaborate with to realize their ideas? Companies, research, governments and so on. She founded the Euronordic Funding Alliance, put her hand in fire and scraped together enough money to do a kickoff meeting last year in Vardeg exactly that. Startups, companies, venture capitalists and funding scheme administrators to build a project facilitating community. where the raising of capital is on the full solution or project and not just the individual startup, making everything stronger and making the startups less vulnerable. Naturally, I had to bring Niloufar into the virtual podcast studio to share how on earth she did this out of thin air and how it works in all practicality. This is great stuff. Please enjoy. Welcome to the Grand The EU Funding Podcast. In the flow of my work, with this podcast. As regulars know, I use LinkedIn as a source, not only for content, but also for guests and picking up what's going on out there in the community of EU R&D funding. And even though I've been working within this for 15, 16 years, things still pop up. New things, new initiatives, new stuff that I didn't know anything about. And today we will zoom in on such a thing. But first and foremost, welcome Nilfa. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you in. And I guess, you know what, it's very rarely I record weekends because my guests, they really don't want to get interrupted by me. in the downtown. But you seem to be working all the time, so it suited you perfectly and very well. I'm happy about it. Miloufar, shortly, can you introduce yourself? Yes, absolutely. So my name is Miloufar Faraby. Everyone calls me Milou. I'm originally from Iran, but now I'm sitting in Norway and having a conversation with you in Oslo. And yeah, I mean, my profession, I'm a systemic designer. I have done multiple types of design from architecture to product, but systemic design is really what I am, what I work with a lot. And yeah, I come from a super entrepreneurial family, like five generations. So we have been building companies and startups all our lives. That, of course, influences the journey so much. And that's what I do now as well. Yeah. Got it through the mother milk, as we say in Danish. Yeah, right. Now, normally, I guess they also present the organization in the beginning, but you're not going to because this is what we're going to talk about in the full episode about the initiative that you have built up. So I think let's just move into the actual topic and what we're going to talk about today. Startups and funding. and your initiative and your effort to make life easier or facilitate access to finance for startups or put them into a larger world of the communities that would help them realize and grow. So the organization you build up is called Euronordic Funding Alliance. That sounds... we have a lot of flowers here right a lot of trumpets can you share a little bit with us uh so what happened you know we will in a short second we're going to to have a talk about the background or something but just just shortly so what what is it in in a nutshell the initiative that you've built up Yeah, the initiative really comes from my background as well, that we could touch upon later as someone that has built the startups and multiple projects. And basically, Euronardic Funding Alliance is a not-for-profit member association headquartered in Norway. I am the founder and secretary general, and we launched the organization approximately June last year with a very large event in Norway and also. And now as of then, we are in 10 countries already across Europe, Nordic and also in Kenya and expanding. But what is it? Basically, on a top level, we are an alliance partnership like the name stands for. We are an alliance partnership of member associations like for example Obelia which is the largest SME network in Norway under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They are close good friends. We at the same time have alliance partners as accelerators incubators because they have access to startups and multiple deal flow when it comes to innovation. We have chambers, municipalities, multiple of them, as well as universities and research institutions as our alliance partners. With this alliance partnership, we are able to give a combination of multiple services and supports to our members. Members are startups, SMEs, again, sometimes municipalities, universities, depending. on the level, but mostly SMEs and startups, I would say. And in a nutshell, companies and founders with very impact-driven projects, they're really after and they require, you know, a lot of resources, international partnership, as well as funding. Yeah, and so that's really the setup. It's a very, very light setup. That's why, and it's... so much partnership based that's why we have been able to expand very fast in multiple countries because people have seen the need of such a kind of service to be facilitated and accessed accessible to multiple stakeholders um so that's uh that's the nature of the organization and i can of course elaborate on what we do how we do different things i'm gonna dig in we're gonna dig in So there's lots of opportunity to share how you did this. And it's quite interesting because going to your website, it looks impressive. Now, looks can sometimes be deceiving, as everybody knows, but I think it looks like you did something, you're building something solid up here. Thanks. Now, next block, understanding Euro-Norduk funding alliance. Now, let's look into, I would like to dig a little bit into background and motivation for starting this. So where did this start? So, you know, ref background, I briefly mentioned coming from, you know, generations of entrepreneurs and having started my first startup or business when I was 16. I have been doing this for a very long time. And, you know, When I immigrated from Iran to Norway, I became suddenly an immigrant from Iran, which was a completely different identity than I would anticipate it before coming in. So my life went under a lot of constraints, such as visa and multiple different international factors. When was that again? 2015. Okay. i came i came to study like super light it was a wonderful life wonderful expansion i wanted to expand my world view but then there were a lot of constraints with it so i couldn't i couldn't own companies i couldn't do startups i couldn't build projects it was like a lot of different things so i took my time um and kind of I put myself in a position of trust within the communities I was working in and within the Nordics, also around Europe. I lived in multiple different places, not just Norway. And long story short, throughout fundraising for some of my projects that later I started when I was a bit more established, I realized that the venture capital, especially before COVID, just a bit before COVID and during COVID, when getting investments into our projects and startups were quite difficult. And that is when I started looking into public grants. I got introduced by some parties in Norway that... that was one of their sources of income. And yeah, and I at the time I had a project which was about supporting asylum seekers and people in transit to become entrepreneurs. So I wanted to develop that further and funded. We tried one time with a large partnership like six countries on Erasmus Plus program. We failed and then on a second try we got the project. And through this, I started traveling around and get to know the EU Commission community, all the expert organizations that have a very interesting business model, actually. They are like a venture studio that we do in the startup ecosystem. But their income model, instead of, you know, going to venture capital companies or raise a license fund or from LPs, is basically getting money from building projects and getting money from EU Commission, which is very interesting. It was to me. So, and I saw multiple different gaps in this and opportunities. The gap was that a lot, especially a lot of Nordic companies were missing out on the opportunities that EU offers. And at the same time, a lot of EU based companies were not aware of the opportunities that the Nordic funds. were kind of capable of and they were encouraging a lot of other international partnerships to to get established at the same time i realized that the the quality of the applications that the eu expert companies are offering could be increased and they were like missing that top-notch startup innovation and that that we do so there were like multiple things so um i wasn't sure if this is something that other people gonna like So I did a large event, which was June last year, 2023, and brought the key stakeholders in Norway, at least, that worked with innovation. As I mentioned, accelerators, municipalities, blah, blah, blah. And also a lot of those EU experts organizations from across EU. And suddenly at the event, we had the ambassador of Colombia sitting for two full days. Suddenly it was like some stakeholders from Africa joining in. And everyone kind of confirmed the need of this streamlining. So that's really where it started. Yeah, it's just you. No. It started just you. Yeah, at the beginning. I invited some people that were experts in EU to join me. It didn't work out at the beginning. Then some other partners joined me. They were like advisors to grow this. And now they are more involved as well. But it took some time. The first thing that comes to mind, and also my dear listeners, is that how does she live? So this means that how did you finance the startup of it? Oh, it was... Whatever you can release. At the beginning, no. I mean, at the beginning, it's all pocket money. It was completely bootstrapping from my side. The costs of the event. So I even had some loss on the event that we did financially on it. But it's just for long-term development. Now we are a bit at a different stage, of course. Yeah. So my best guess is that that event created some noise. you through that would be able to engage members paying members yes it brought it took some time to actually engage engaged members because i realized that the understanding of the need was a lot kind of resonated through the eyes of professional stakeholders, like the ones who have created accelerators, incubators or research institutions, because they know this environment very well. But when it comes to startups and SMEs who are actually going to be our paying members, and it's a very little yearly fee, they were quite skeptic. about this whole public funding thing for the right reasons actually because it's very bureaucratic it takes a lot of time sometimes it risks startups having spent a lot of time on this and then not getting results so and also it's quite complicated they don't know how rich brands go what yeah so i had to i had to kind of do a lot of different give a lot of different talks, be interviewed multiple times, be on multiple conferences and stages to continuously talk about this and also re-hold various events ourselves. So now in a way it's slowly rigging up. Yeah. All right. So if you look a little bit about how did you structure it? So what's the... One thing is having the idea and one thing is the mission. How did you do that? You offer some service and do you have board? I'm a systemic designer. I love putting pieces over. jam on the organizational structure that's in a way that's in a way my design we need another working group here that's in a way uh in a way really uh the work of design uh so what is what was the structure um it was um it was really the alliance partnership at the beginning i had to sell the vision, I mean not commercially, but you know, really convince professional stakeholders that this is important. And also it is a sense of community. So when I was able to bring all those top-notch people on the one roof and give them the stage to really talk about the dilemmas and the problems, you know, last year it was funny, we had a morning. The first morning session was quite incredible because we started by some of the donor organizations, representatives coming and introducing their grants. So from NURAD that does a lot of health and development countries, we had NORIC, NORFund, InnovationNOR, they're all donor organizations, so they talked about it. And then there was a panel between them, and the funny thing was that they were not aware of each other. So even it was interesting for themselves to hear each other's out. And then after that, there was another panel with investment arms, like a very famous investor in Norway. And it was accelerators, incubators, some of the largest innovation players in Norway and also to some level Nordic. And they were all talking about that you know it's difficult it's about the risks of all these grants and kind of they were showing sharp elbows back to the grants and donor organizations and then what was really cool and i i did plan it but i didn't plan it as so well as it turned out to become I brought the donor organizations representatives back on the stage and suddenly there was this 15, almost 20 people on the stage having proper conversation on both sides. And I think that brought a very, very, very much credibility and a sense of community, sense of urgency to the whole. It was like movement. So after that. So after that, you, so now systemic designer, a lot of positive developments in this first event. So how did you calibrate that into shaping the initiative afterwards? Yeah, so it was after. this event that i actually registered the organization in my race you didn't have a vat number or anything uh no no at the beginning we were kind of running it on uh because we because i really wanted to see if this works yeah it was a big initiative and when i got all those positive inputs i was i got the confidence to really establish it So we established a not-for-profit association in Norway and by we I mean me and my current chairman because it needs to be two people and at the same time even throughout the event I had incredible advisors and also close colleagues. They were the ones that we have been doing projects, cross-border EU commission projects together already. So we knew each other very well and they supported this initiative with heart for real. So after we put it into an organization, they joined in as a global board of directors. and started committing to kind of run the national office of ENFA in the countries they were from. So the starting point was from Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and Spain, also somewhat Germany, but that one was not as strong as the rest. And that was really the starting point. And the setup was very simple. we made a good deal together. I said that, okay, this is a brand that cannot grow without involvement of the partners and their engagement. And these are the, and this is a brand that the more we make it strong, the more values it brings to all of us. And then we kind of made a structure. I made a structure. of national offices. So there's agreements between us, national offices. They are established companies locally that signed the agreement with us and with the agreement, they commit to some things, for example, resource, network expansion. uh travel cost like multiple things that is required for the for the expanding and as as i mentioned it's a very light model so everyone is committed to make this profitable on multiple levels um still so far um structure demands me as the founder to cover most of the costs and that is okay but we are slowly moving especially after the summit we're slowly moving when we see this traction coming in and new members coming in where we're kind of moving towards to really expand the cost structure across the different partners as well and of course when we bring in large associations like Abelia or like, I don't know, multiple Confimi in Italy that is equivalent to Abelia in Italy. And all those, it brings us credibility. For example, we just launched a partnership together with Ukrainian Startup Fund. And we have been in dialogue with Nourad for some time. And this already kind of gives us a... hopefully a very good position to support Ukrainian founders and consortiums of European and Nordic companies to work together with Ukrainian companies and founders to grow together and access those funds as well. So that's really a setup. It's all partnerships. All of it is just smart partnerships. Yeah, and I think the listeners would need to understand. So these offices, these local country offices, they do this. It's not like they are being paid by yourself. They do this parallel to that. So they work in their own organization, so to say. They have a daytime job, and then they are representing, so to say, on the side. But their daytime job is relevant. yeah yeah i understand for example so for example our our um partner our partner company uh our kind of national office uh leaders in austria we have two very very good colleagues of mine um they are um very expert incredibly expert in erasmus plus especially in erasmus plus and also to some extent horizon and all those and um regardless of whether ENFA has new members or not, they are continuously building projects towards submitting grant applications to EU Commission. So when we immediately bring a new member into our ecosystem, it kind of brings an opportunity to them as well, because it's a new partner that they could bring into it. So it's just a lot of, as I mentioned, it's a good deal. for everyone that has really created the backbone of this organization. Of course, we're working on calibrating as we go. It's a lot of, you know, as a designer, I'm a big fan of learning by doing. So, for example, by the number of new national offices that come in from different structures, different mindset, there are new questions that really kind of strengthens the structure and calibrates it. Do you have any employees that have you lifted the organization to that level where you have employees that you pay a salary? So the structure is that all the national offices, they have employees that work with the NFL brand as consultants. It's something like that. So in Norway, we are like three. 2 plus with some volunteers that work with us as well. And in other countries, we are... So the composition is like the board of directors and the national office leaders, they are very experts. They are the ones who have created those companies and they have staff, like incredible project managers under EU grants or whatever. and so those leaders they for example designate one to two of their staff members part-time to join us on this mission but moving forward we have some different income models that we are activating have activated and are activating and we're hoping that we would be able to hire more full-time resources in multiple hubs of us this is incredibly clever way of building an organization where the engaged partners, they see an added value enough to say, look, this is synergizing with what we do. So we are actually prepared to have people designated. in the daytime work in our organization because this is what we do anyways and this gives us extra capacity it gives us extra critical mass it gives us extra input of possibilities um it's very clever congratulations thank you of course um can i i mean there are two components to this to actually work one is that i think throughout time i have been able to gain their trust That's very important. And at the same time, I am always open to their questions, their advices, their contributions. And at the same time, it's a very, very high pressure thing on me as well. Because as much as they are incredibly kind and positive, and it's a good deal for everyone. you know just uh just having their commitments to making this mission work and the trust that they put in me you know you said that it's very rare to to do your podcast over the weekend now you see me when we when we went on the call right now i said that i have been uh on call with my tech team since in the morning and this is saturday because we are launching a product an ai solution um to to our um to our members uh that is yeah uh it gives a lot of uh drive we're mirrors mirrors of each other new new it's like you know doing something like that it feels like you're like i don't earn anything whatsoever uh on the podcast yet i do need to go into monetization so i am started looking into that but you know it's a lot of footwork behind that I understand that. All right. You know what? I put here that we should talk about key actions and stuff like that. But you know, let's just move it because what we need to talk about, this whole thing is about funding and the next blocks they are about how you work with the funding, how you do this holistic approach with funding and venture capital connections and so on and so forth. Let's just go into the next block on how you're working with the funding because that was the motivation in the first place. yeah exactly yeah that's the whole that's the basis of the whole organization so how do you help and how is your support structure yeah so um i um it is a very very time-consuming risky and difficult job to do grant applications oh it is that's the baseline for people listening to my stuff yeah it's my business model um so what we do um is okay so let me give you the customer journey the members uh like the designers say the service designers so um when a startup becomes our member they pay to become a kind of yearly members like a yearly membership fee depending on whether they are SME or startup or NGO and which location they are the fee differs there is a structure now as soon as they become our member they get a designated part-time relationship manager and this relationship manager is expert in grants applications, tenders. Some of them, they are also experts in investments, attracting investments and all that, because our mission started by, you know, really focusing on grants. But I more and more saw the need of blended financing approach, which really combines grants, tenders with venture capital investments, philanthropy funds, you know. It's like a question. Go ahead. Is that arbitrary or do you match the... Do you somehow map the company's needs or the members needs and then from that you see, okay, this mentor fits with this? So that is really part of the job of the relationship manager to get to know the company very well. The beauty of it is that through that getting to know each other phase, the companies learn a lot from that person. The simplest version of it is that they get a completely handheld approach to go and register themselves on the EU Commission portal and get their PIC number. that's the simplest which they have never done before never knew such a such a portal exists never knew all the what the programs are yeah so it is capacity building just through that hand-held as well now what another thing that this person is aware of which we are building more and more is the pipeline of the applications that our partners are going for regardless of whether this new member is on board or not Because that is the business model of the companies that are our partners. They create incredibly smart projects and that really responds to the call for proposals. For example, one of the programs that the EU has put out, they built the partnerships, the consortiums, the proposal, the concept note, everything. And they submit the applications depending on. when the deadline is and what the program is. Now, we are building more and more a list of that, like a deal flow structure ourselves. And just by knowing that and knowing the member very well, this relationship manager of ours would be able to match them within one of those consortium and of course comes with the startup saying that what they need the the other consortium building party saying that okay what they need what they're looking for what is the topic of the project what is the industry of the project so all of that kind of matchmaking happens through that um and um yeah so as soon as they get matchmake uh that which is the best thing that could happen to start up Because going into when you have never done this before as a startup and you really don't have the resources to put so much time on this, the best thing that could happen to you is not to sit and write a full application on your own or even with a support or even hire somebody else to write it for you, because that's also costly, but just being able. to have access to this deal flow of applications and being match made in them is a big opportunity. So some of our members, for example, by the deadline we had last Monday, which got extended to this weekend for Erasmus+, some of them, they got into two applications at the same time. And this was a kind of, this is like the smallest key action program. the smallest budget, the smallest, yeah, consortium building act. So just go to the next ones, larger ones, bigger deadlines, all of that. How broad do you go funding scheme? How far do you map? You understand? So now we're talking Erasmus here, but I do Horizon Europe. So we have chosen some of the programs. that we have started to work with. Erasmus Plus is one of them, Horizon. We're looking into Interreg as part of the summit, for example, we have in a week. We're looking into also there are incredible opportunities under EIT, EIC Accelerator. So like maybe approximately 10 because we also... have been welcoming the donor organizations from across the Nordics, for example, Nordic Council of Ministers. Their headquarters is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, but they have offices across the Nordics, for example, in Narey. Nordic innovation in Sweden, they are like Norden. So we have been, we are in the process of building, strengthening our position and access to the Nordic funds as well to add that to the programs we support. Now, just for the listeners, because my listeners, they are cross-European and they, we are Nordics. You and I, we are Nordic. We are now, we are now, yeah, yeah, Nordic Council. Now, make sure everybody understands what that is. So for you listeners, I'm going to make it short, but historically there's been a close connection between the Nordic countries, also on the ministerial level. Actually, all the way back to after the Second World War, when you had the international organizations forming, the European community, NATO and so on. Back then, there was a certain move towards if the Nordic countries were supposed to be having a defense alliance or should having an economic community. community, what is now equal to what is now the EU. Anyways, it didn't come to that. But what did come out of it was that they made a collaboration, so inter-country collaboration. It's a national cooperation organization called the Nordic Council. And of course, you have Scandinavia, but you also have Iceland, Finland. Actually, I think the Baltic states are in there now. Some of them, yeah. Yeah, and the Council is very much a soft collaboration, but it's on ministerial level. The Nordic Council of Ministers, so it's a little bit like the EU, so the ministers are there, they are collaborating. And then you have the arms that has been decided, just like the EU have a funding body. So you have energy. part and you have the funding, the Nordic innovation, where you fund different activities. So it's not naturally not as big as the idea. But you have some cigar boxes there, so to say. You have some boxes there that are supporting collaboration in the Nordic countries that you can access. Yeah, so I just needed to say that, Niu. Yeah, and each of these programs, they sometimes have the priority to only support Nordic countries to collaborate and build consortiums between one another. Some of them, they have a broader approach as well to engage more European. But the reason that we are called Euro-Nordic... funding alliance, it's also because of that. Because there are a lot of European companies that they would like to connect more with the Nordics. And at the same time, one of the biggest burdens of innovation across the Nordics is lack of scalability and market. Yes. So basically, because there has been a lot of good R&D budgets and research and innovation, Nordic countries have very, very good level of technologies that are either prototype or kind of some level of scaled up. production, but they really don't have the market capacity and the scalability kind of resources to mass produce and build. So that's why it is also incredibly important for the Nordic countries to connect, Nordic companies to connect with the rest of the companies around the world. So we started by building the stretch of Euro Nordic and then now incredible companies from across Africa, they're joining us on this mission as well, because there are good funds for them as well to connect with more European companies or Nordic companies. And we're hoping to see what is there for Latin America, you know, really grow, grow the network. Yeah, and this is, of course, interesting because the Eurocentric point of view that you often have when you work with EU R&D funding, it is you have organizations like yours. It's not that long ago. I had a Swedish-American founder couple in the studio called Scientify Research. And they're focusing on the research organization side, but it's basically an organization that also facilitates funding. not just EFON but across the group. So looking at it globally, 360 degrees and trying to give access to researchers sitting in research, even universities, a broader perspective. And this is a little bit the same you have here, that you try to give a little bit broader perspective for startups. You give them, you facilitate these companies to give them a, you give them a helping hand in, take the hand. and then you walk them through how you can access how you find collaboration possibilities for them and then you know you support them and how this is done the pic yeah a very tangible example if i want to put our mission in a very con in very concrete terms i would say that we entirely have two missions one is to um to give everyone like startups, SME, research institutions a kind of a systemic value chain driven approach to their innovation which means that a startup needs to collaborate with a more scale up or a factory and a municipality is going to support to implement each of them they are a piece of a puzzle that we call them the consortium and the project. So it's incredibly important because, I mean, even if the startup gets, for example, a million dollars or two million dollars and grow into a scale up, you know, go through their pre-seed, seed and series A, series B and all of those stages and grow their valuation, still, still, they are dependent on building international partnerships, access to different markets and and and. grow their production, find implementation, all of that. So instead of putting the money in one company at the beginning and fueling them up to go and find and build partnerships, we built the partnerships and put the money in the partnership. Yeah. That's really it. But then the money can't be just grants or just venture capital investment anymore. On a second purpose we have, as I mentioned, there are two. We need to support these consortiums with blended financing approach as well. Also, the financing part needs to come together. And that actually, this idea of the blended financing, it came to me from listening. I was invited to speak at the Iceland Innovation Week. Incredible, incredible people. I really recommend it. there were venture capital company wonderful woman from from denmark actually um very very very large venture capital company they actually stated the problem they said that okay we have put a very good amount of money in our startups they have become scale-ups now but they reach a valley of death again especially companies that work with value chains such as food health agriculture that are quite ocean you know that are quite infrastructural it's not enough they they finish the money and before finishing it they start going to larger lps and larger funds and try to fundraise again but that again is not enough um so that's they actually emphasize the importance of engaging or encouraging their their portfolio companies to go and look into public grants and tenders Yeah. And there we go to the square root added value of doing publicly funded projects where you need to be in a consortium because the tangible motivation for most when they think of this is, I need funding, I need money. yeah i need the resources to to to be able i need to cut the the risk a little bit uh with this investment but that's not that's not the real added value in the end and this is what you're doing in reality because your thought which is very clever is that when you when you work together on something let's you you facilitate that they come into a consortium partnership whatever apply for funding um they work together on this so it gives uh it's balancing out the risk it's not themselves anymore they're in a larger place with a lot the partner value chain and there's even funding for it now what happens here when they work together in that consortium is that they will also start to collaborate bilaterally so it's not it's not just about so you have of course the the tangible you have work work packages you need to for you have deliverables you have a project that the has to be delivered over two three four years fine but the collaboration there will will synergize into many more things but but what happens is that they have it with a funded security while they're doing this yeah yeah i mean i i often tell especially to like startups that are new to this I say that they asked me what is the it was very interesting we had last week it was the Oslo Innovation Week and we had two events one of them is because we're hosting the brand of Founders Live in Oslo and their lead in Norway and that brings a lot of deep flow of incredible startups to us that we can engage them with such activities but at the same time we had a designated NFA Summit because we're doing this, you know, NFA Roadshow. We want to do series of events to create more awareness now. And at the summit, we had startups, like, I think there were like 70 founders. They asked them to raise their hands and all of that from the crowds. Your audience could find the photos of it and all of our activities on our LinkedIn. That's our kind of primarily communication tool. So one company they asked me what is the success rate of the applications that you guys support with. And I mean that's a fair question. But then one of our colleagues or you know also friends in the audience which I didn't know if they are going to join but it was from it was basically some of our friends from the donor organizations like grants donor organizations they were in the room as well. I was very happy to see them. I answered the question from the logic we have and I can answer here as well. But he took the one of them, one of the representatives, he took the microphone and said, okay, I come from the other side of the spectrum. And asking what is his success rate of applications is just like... saying okay magnus carlson the the most famous like chess player globally and also he's norwegian what is the success rate of of him in the series of competitions that he that he joins in it is a competition that you guys are coming in but what could increase the success they are tactics they are knowledge they are There are factors with quality factors, also some elements of lobby sometimes with some of the projects. I'm quite open about it. There are quite many lobbies sometimes. Of course, not corruption, but some level of deal-making in the structures. Influation or advocacy. Yeah, advocacy. Corruption. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that was his answer. But we do have at ENFA, with our structure, we do have mechanisms that really reduces the risk. A, increase the amount of applications that you get partnered in. So it's not just one application that you have to spend months and a lot of resources. And then when it doesn't come through, you have lost a lot of time and resources and everything and lost your hope with it. So you get engaged in a lot of different partnerships and opportunities at the same time, per call. And you get support for writing the applications, for being partners. So most of the time, the applications you get partnered in are with the least possible effort. from your site. Startups also need to see the effort that they put in compared to the opportunities that they could untangle. And another thing is that regardless of whether that consortium and that project is going to get the funding or not, they're going to get international partnership. Those partners on the ground, they can represent the startup into the underground. For example, if you If part of your consortium, there is a municipality somewhere that was their role to expand your product and you don't get funding, still you have the relation with the municipality to find another way to fund the implementation. So we shouldn't underestimate the values of this, except the money. No. The thing is, I've been doing this a lot on behalf of... also starters but but you know municipalities so stakeholders SME stakeholders that wouldn't normally approach by themselves funding of moving towards the EU funding side right now when you do this intelligence is an extremely important part of the the ability and capacity to be able to identify the most likely consortia to receive funding. To short, because waste time is not the right word. But there is, of course, if you have a call where you have 10 consortia that are writing proposals, you want to make sure you come in top two if you have two proposals. So you need to understand how to identify the most likely consortia to receive funding. Now, is that... When you guide in that phase, does your partners, do they maneuver in that ocean there to find the right fish? I mean, so we do the first step is really the matchmaking, right? First, the right call with the first, with the right program and deadline. second with the right call under the program and third with the right partners internationally so and that is why our nature is a network so sometimes we're expanding the network so so far our network members are ready to collaborate and build a lot of different partnerships together but we're also expanding and so the deal flow is really increasing so what what our partners do they really and because they have been doing as you say for such a long time they know the mechanisms they know the the calls they would really be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together in the right way um but what what i haven't spoken about yet is that um we out of my own kind of excitement uh and making things easier for myself we have also developed an ai tool oh my god very well yes and that is of course you have to have to you have yeah exactly exactly so so to increase the intelligence that you just talked about to have to also we facilitate them to do we also need something to facilitate us to facilitate them so that is um that is also what that's why i said i was i was awake from six in the morning with my tech team have you developed that yourself Yes, with my birthday. So there's an invitation for another podcast episode. I have an AI series that I'm doing together with two wonderful people that have been having guests on my show for several times. And we're doing it, sort of doing it with them as hope. guest and host so to say at the same time yeah right uh and we so we'll get back to that so yeah absolutely absolutely no so what are you so what is the tool doing um well let us let us can you share that there uh yeah yeah because this is going to come out quite soon so if you want it so if you want to see it i perfectly understand Don't worry. I would talk more about it when all the features that we have developed are launched. Got it. You have a standing invitation. Then, you know, then, yeah, then I'm going to talk to the media about it because it's going to be, it's honestly, it's revolutionary. Yeah, yeah. Remember to mention to the media that you heard it first in the grant. Absolutely, absolutely. We support each other. We support each other. No, no, no. I'm throwing a glance at the rundown here to make sure that I sort of... Because I made two blocks. I made the founding VC connection, but it's sort of blurring together. I kind of knew that. I looked at it again this morning. Anyways, so you... How much does... So let's throw this body. yeah this mentor is that you have there that you how much do they fall so now let's just say let's just make a scenario that person takes them in and you successfully facilitate or to come to come through a consortium funding do they continue following them you understand like us you mean yeah yeah do they keep it sort of it's sort of a yeah a string connected between the startup and the facilitator uh or do they leave them and say now now you can fly yeah how how does this how do you work with that or maybe you can't even tell me because you just started here yeah i mean we have had some successful cases already even in a short time now uh but of course throughout times we would be able to you know when the when the when the results of these new applications come out, then we really have something solid to show. But I would say that we would rather not to be operationally involved because that is not our mandate. Yeah. So we kind of let them own the project, grow the project and be partners in it. But also our joy, really. is to put the projects together. Because I wouldn't say that we just do matchmaking. That's not what we do. We support them. Again, Ref being a systemic designer, we create projects. Let me give you a very concrete example. We do an annual summit. after last year's launch. So now we're doing it in Stockholm. So we're having a Nordic mandate. Next year, like in Copenhagen, with local partners such as Tech BBQ, we're still discussing about it. But they're coming to our summit. The Tech BBQ? The Tech BBQ, yeah. They're coming to our summit and they're going to be speaking at our summit as well. But we haven't really closed down any partnership yet, but we started discussing. And at the summit, for example, which is like, it's not just a structure where there are speakers on the stage and everybody else sits and listens and then maybe they do some networking. It's a proper workshop. There's two days of sprint for project building and blended financing structures to come in. Now, for example, and, you know, my team and I, we have access to all the lists. of the companies that are coming so we could already see their synergies without even having having had them in the room or having met a lot of them so for example there's this um startup from Norway coming they have a kind of i mean they are rather a kind of a seed startup towards the scale up because they have a proof of the concept and kind of a project that works a product that works um so it is for for clean water solutions basically. Dubai is for clean water, clean tap water, and that is portable, that is accessible, that is affordable, multiple different values. Now, we are encouraging, there was a company that approached me from Dubai, and they have a very, very interesting water distribution solution that is made for parts of the world that is struggling with droughts or, you know, basically very, very hot climates like Dubai itself. We are not sure yet if they are coming, but let's say they come. Because of time, there is also a very big convention happening in Dubai at the same time. But let's say they come. And then we have the municipality, like some of the African municipalities. We have like ambassadors and all of those coming and some participants from Africa, but also municipality coming. For example, let's take it Kizumo, like around Lake Victoria. and Africa is going into droughts and a problem. So just by having those three players, putting them together, you already have a very well-functioning project. Well, of course, there are multiple different elements, other elements that need to come at hand. For example, the prototype needs to scale, meaning that there is a production factory needs to come in to support them. But that is what we do. We are the creator of projects. And now we need to zoom a little bit out. Now we talked a little bit about the funding possibilities in the EU and the grants possibilities, Erasmus, Horizon, whatever, EIC and so on. That's because you made a nice bridge here, talking about something where we're actually more in the venture capital or, you know, making... This might be difficult to find funding EU. in the eu for what you just scoped but there will definitely be somewhere to the where you can access financing for something like this both with venture cap private capital and so on with um how share a little bit with the listeners and me the how you how you because it blended funding now you started out saying it in the early of this episode share a little bit with us how you how you work with this so i mean i would say that still there are possibilities under grants that um that we could go to for example i mean um one of the one of the very forward-leaning donor organization from norway is called no funds they are the norwegian development fund and that's actually their mandate to to develop projects in contexts like Africa, Latin America, India, and they actually go into very infrastructural projects like this. They have invested a lot in renewable energy, impact-driven investments. And there is another, NURAD is donor organizations that give the money without having any equity or stake in them. So they kind of complement each other, very, very smart setup. So I wouldn't say that the public funding wouldn't be able to support something like this. So they are both under EU and under Nordics. There are opportunities for that. And we're hoping to engage the US into this equation as well as we have more proven projects. But okay, blended financing. Now, even when you, in some of the fundings, like public funding, they partly fund your project. So you give a budget and they say we cover 60% or 50%. The rest of it, you need to raise yourself. And that, of course, comes from foundations and philanthropy funds and venture capital investments. So a lot of people ask me, okay, where the money goes? Because when it's a consortium, how do you do that? We basically built a similar structure that we're testing. We're still kind of doing a few to really test it. but we have created a similar structure that the EU Commission has when they finance the consortium. There is a coordinator, there is a kind of reliable coordinator in the application. Who is the leader representative. For example, in the Nura case, there needs to be a local based a large very very resourceful organization then there needs to be a Norwegian arm to it so they kind of worked with this composition of parties and put their criteria on it different calls they have done so we would be able to kind of fund the consortiums from the venture capital side or from the philanthropy funds through that as well and especially we go for impact investments because they are more flexible and they can take a bit higher risk because they know that infrastructure projects is risky. There are market risks, environmental risks in all the investments. But because they see that the project is also backed by EU or NURAD and it's also backed by... you know another party then they seek trust in one another that's um so it's not just one venture capital company putting all their money into one company yeah and that so the so facilitating access you're like reaching out or you're flagging the need for capital that's something that you do through the communities that you yeah yeah yeah info is basically a community brand business um and Yeah, and we are kind of in the middle of that, trying to see the bigger picture all the time and put them together. Yeah. The European Commission is also quite, as the years have passed, they've also quite focused on blended financing here and there. So you do have, and you probably know much better than me in detail about it, but I do remember having seen alternative... ways of how the structure would be for strategic calls to approach. So here in this call, there would need to be venture capital amounting to X, Y, Z amount of percentage of the financing and so on. Trying to engaging with the venture capital community, getting it attached to the EU funding to sort of exactly what you're doing here to lift each other up. take the financial need, risk putting the hand into the fire together, so to say, and finding, you know, like to lifting initiatives up. Yeah. I mean, these type of initiatives, honestly, in a way, I'm really not doing anything new. My innovation is to put the right pieces of things that have been going on. a very long time from different airspace, different angles, different groups of industry communities. I'm just putting them together. Nilo, you're putting people together. I'm putting people together. No, no, no. And that's, you know, you create a path. You create a... It's out there. It's out there. It's a maze and it's a jungle. You are structuring information. Yeah. You are structuring information and you are facilitating organizations into what they can so much individually, but you're putting them together to find a way through. They all have challenges about next venture capital sources. They have their challenges finding the right way to investing their money, you know, like finding new interesting. opportunities where there's a potential. And the startups, they are so dearly looking for funding to fund their ideas. And they don't care if it's private capital or public capital, whatever. They just want to grow this idea that they have. Yeah, I mean, a set of founders, they spend most of their time on raising capital. And that's horrific. I mean, I've been through multiple startups where we have really went through too much of constraints just because the raising capital was difficult. So, I mean, just having, like, for example, with the events we had last week as part of also Innovation Week, I was quite surprised because I... The topic was on top potential of grants for startups. And of course, also Innovation Week's website is a very good marketing tool itself. That's their mandate. But kind of two days before the event, it's maybe bad to say, but I was so busy with our summit in Stockholm that I really didn't do commercial or marketing efforts for. for this pre-summit we had in Oslo. So I opened the Eventbrite, looking at the registration, expecting that we probably have like 10, 20 people. And I was still fine because I knew that it's good to have intimate conversations always. We do sessions like that. But it was, but we were fully booked. We were sold out. There were like 150 registrations. And that was a very, very big kind of green light to the mandates. that we have and the efforts that we are making and simply because startups are just we are introducing another alternative financing to them as simple as that we're saying let us open the opportunity to you for grants or more you know so It was interesting, very interesting and incredible conversations with the crowd at the events. And I'm really looking forward to the one that we have now in Stockholm. Of course, I feel a lot under the pressure to make it work, but let it be learning by doing. I will talk a little bit. I'll make sure that you get a chance to talk about this exclusively in the end of this conversation. But I wanted to, there's something I need to ask you. Do you make... a strategy for the stars do you make a funding planner do you do you do that for them is that part of the work you do to make them to do give them sort of guide you know put down a plan for them uh not just for for the first facilitation but in general how they can approach this so is that part of yeah so uh we we do and we we want to do and we actually do but we want to do more of But the reality is that, for example, a Nordic startup for SME is a different price, but for Nordic startup, we just asked them 600 euros per year to become a member with us. It's literally nothing for the operational cost of all the efforts that we put for them. Now, and of course, the designated person that is going to spend a lot of time with them. We are looking for as soon as we are able to, but we can't really increase the price on that level either. It doesn't even make sense. Long term, I actually want to make the membership, especially for startups, free after we are fully kind of sustainable with our own financing and structure. But let's say as soon as I reach there, as soon as I feel that we are kind of more up and running with our own finances, let's say we even get a grant from the EU to do this job for them. I mean, I'm advertising. I'm bringing more quality to their applications. So let's say they found us to do this. Then, of course, that is the biggest joy. for me, especially. And I know for my partners to really sit down, develop their financial plan, develop their expansion plan and execute it, support them with execution accordingly. Like a venture studio style work, which is close to my heart. Yeah, I think I think I'm more or less covered what I have here when I look at it. And I think the listeners has got to. a good idea of it now what i want so if when i go to your site and i look through the services in a nutshell that that that's all nice uh what i uh what i as a former proposal preparer notices proposal development agency yeah we also support that yeah how because i've been a grant consultant myself that alone it's a very resource intensive job so how what does that what does that include just to balance people's startup if we have every startup listening here or facilitators what can they what can they expect in that part yeah so when i mentioned the the customer journey i mentioned the part that the designated relationship manager is going to match make them with ongoing application Another step of that is to actually support them with building projects based on their value proposition and write the application. And all of that happens with just that membership yearly fee. How? I know, I know. It's crazy. I know. But we are not a consulting company. That's never the deal. We are not competing with any other consultants that do application writing and they get cuts or they get or they get prepayments, most of them. Because that is not only one of the source of incomes for us, we have multiple other things that we're working on, then we would be able to kind of start by putting our own resources into writing the applications and then get a success fee afterwards or even partake in the project if we like it or... depending on that we're still of course working on fine-tuning all that structure because nfa is really uh it's really like new into this uh the way it is um but um but it has been of course uh a lot of woodstrapping from all of us especially me and you know i just want to say you know you you wouldn't have had to add that service Yeah, I didn't have to. Why? No, don't do that. When I saw that, Neil Bukri say, why do you put yourself under that kind of pressure? Because that expectation is that you write it for us. Yeah, but that's rough. But that's what people know. I mean, startups or companies or everyone, the only thing they know about grants, facilitation, is that somebody writes it for them. So if I would have taken that out, then I become an alien to them. That's why we encourage also for our own sake, we structure the matchmaking first. So they also with the least effort from their side, from our side, we bring some revenue to them or income to them and to us. And then we would be able to build on more applications. This is indeed the way to do this because then you support them with some input for work package description. There might be a little bit about the technology. They write about technology. You can sort of help with that text a little bit to strengthen it. And then they receive it for them, they fill it, and that's it. Yeah. So it's just very important out there if you have started listening to this. uh nilo and her partners they're not going to write your full application for horizon 20 proposal horizon european proposal that's not going to happen they will help you with input they help you we want to do that no i mean no no no we want to do that we want to do that and i think we will end up doing that but so i i there's a reason i'm putting it as part of that because we want to do that but um but we are definitely finding fine tuning the customer structure for that as we speak Yeah, because then it should be something where you involve yourself or partners are themselves involved. For example. Yeah. Yeah. At the same time, at the same time, it's very interesting because because Enfa is the facilitator, we also have to be a very neutral party to support our members and all of that. We shouldn't compete with them. But the reality is that. even if we get engaged in the applications like our partners around the professional partners it will actually only strengthen the partnership because they have a very wonderful track record of positive outcomes and they are known by the national agencies they are well trusted they have you know built a 20 years of track record on it so it's actually a positive thing but those are those are the mechanisms that i am very very very conscious conscious about yeah The bigger you grow, you also need to avoid conflict of interest. Exactly. When you have members being part of competing consortia, stuff like this. Yeah. I mean, the volume. But then we have the volume aspect in it as well. I like the competition aspect of this. I like it. Because it encourages everyone to grow better into their value propositions. and be more targeted. I really enjoy the questions, the type of questions that are mentioned in every single application under different programs. They really, really want you to be very solid. And that is something that really happens in the startup world. Everyone just makes a 10 page pitch deck. That's already a very long pitch deck, right? And they need to, I mean. I have been into startup ecosystem. It's a big show business as well. It's a big show. Let me be honest with you. Whereas with EU commissions and these type of grants, it's real, real business. You need to have built the detail, the structure of your activities, budgets, partnerships, all the details. And I admire that actually. Yeah. We have three small blocks left. I think we covered this very well. It's not the last time you're in here, so you'll have to talk more about this in my podcast. That's fine. That I can promise you. I think we're already good. Now, what I would like to put in practical examples, that's only if you have something that makes sense to share. You know, where you really lifted something up, a startup, where you get this. You mentioned a thought example. I mean, for example, we have a company, the founder, she came to one of our kind of capacity building workshops and they are in the fashion industry and shared clothing like rental market for clothing that works a lot with sustainability and all that aspects. um and uh she has a very interesting uh um kind of add-on to her business and that is community especially of women internationally uh the moment that she described her project like she just gave the first paragraph three four sentences i was like you're fantastic for an erasmus plus application She came to us two months ago, I think, or maybe no, a bit while back because we were just building the structure. And like now, a couple of days ago, she managed to submit an application for Erasmus, which was written based on her value propositions by our partners. And she's now the coordinator of the project. So the project is being submitted under the Norwegian National Agency. And I'll keep you posted about the results. Sure. And just to make everybody aware of this, regulars will know I do have an episode. So each episode has its own dedicated website. So I will put here the page, of course, a link to the organization. and I will put a link to your LinkedIn profile so anybody can connect with you. But if there is anything coming, I will update it if you get back to me with results like this, where there's something, a project page, something like this as a practical example. So I will update the website when that day comes so you can see what can practically in the reality come out of the initiative they're doing here. Yeah. Future. Yeah. Because sometimes I ask these questions for you, that engage yourself, you put your neck out there, right? You stick it out and you really, really try to build it. So where are you? So one of the things that we're going to do throughout the summit, which we did last year as well, we're recording. most of the conversations. Of course it's consensually, like everyone knows about it. And one of our jobs is to really build summaries, like very very specific insights and summaries about from the conversations because all of them are spread. So ENFA throughout this, you know, throughout time, which so far has been quite short but already big. so i wouldn't say it would be a long time maybe a couple of years ENFA would be the organization the resource for getting access streamlined access to blended financing and that's your ambition yes my ambition yeah yeah we want to be we want to be where the startups turn back to and say I have this incredible... Because you know what, there's a big gap as well right now, which is quite challenging. The investment appetite has changed. Even the very early stage pre-seed venture capital companies or even business angels, like private investors, they want a revenue from a pre-seed startup. They expect revenue. And I'm like... before it was like okay i'm a cool person you're a cool person you trust me you like me the team is good the idea is good okay just put a couple of hundred there okay now they need revenue they need customers they need partners that is a real challenge for our investment very big challenge with for early stage startups which would have might have incredible ideas or technologies. Now, this opens door to them. This opens door to really also accelerate the innovations that are higher risk and put them in motion, basically. Globally. Oh my gosh, I love projects in Africa. I would imagine this project where there are, you know, Nordic and European and African partners are collaborating. I mean, three days ago, it was the Norwegian African Business Association Summit here in Oslo. So there were like incredible, incredible parties from all over Africa here. And they like I went to the reception of the Ethiopian embassy and they were basically there to present that we are investable. Ethiopia is investable. Gambia is investable. Come, we have resources, we have young people, we have, you know, come and invest in us. But at the same time, it's a rough market. It's a very unclear market. There's a lot of political aspects to it, blah, blah, blah. But imagine that with this type of consortium mindset, we could reduce the risk. of both investments and funding for very concrete initiatives. So that's my dream really. Life projects around the world. Venture capital, you know, return on investment talk, they increasingly want to see money on the table. Now, of course, in markets where you have a level of corruption, that's high on Europe, where you have war, you mentioned that Ukraine, that's the actual threat that Ukraine will lose the war. over the next years we don't hope so but it might be bumped back to uh bump back to the ages of eternity everything they invested in you know from from russian shells and stuff like this is of course venture capitalists they don't like the risk so it's it's your task here when you go globally to sort of find your ways on where that can be done with this little risk possible yeah because there are many opportunities out there naturally yeah yeah it's a it's a little bit of a zero one either the market is completely safe to put our money in and it's and it has good prospects or it's going through conflict and we don't want to put money at all so i'm trying to see how we can fix the middle ground with this type of approach no uh almost done yeah of course it is i've done this a lot And I've had people I had started before. You let a bull and come. You let a bull. I don't know if you're connected with her, but she was in for talk about startups and funding. You might want to connect with her if you don't know yet. I always have the segment called the toughest challenge. All my episodes and for you, toughest challenge is building a facilitating network organization within the funding venture capital world. What is it? The roughest and the toughest part is in a way I need to convince everyone that this is the right way of doing things or not the right way of doing things but to bring their mindsets towards this. Now I have last year I've spent a lot of hours and time and commitment to to build that. trust and culture within the startup ecosystem and also of course venture capital and all and when we have lots of incredible speakers now to our summit from the leading organizations across the nordic and europe and africa coming it's a it's a complement to that it says a positive feedback to that vision but i think that fine-tuning the mechanisms of how this this will actually work per example is important which is one of our mission of of doing this in person sprints as well you know people are gonna at our summit they're gonna sit in round tables and and talk very concrete about okay what are we what are we offering what we can do and how are we gonna do them i promise thanks i promised you that you can flag what's going to happen next week That's when this episode is launched on the day of the event. So what's happening? At the event? I mean, so 14th of October, that's our first day, 8.30. We are based at Bärmsch, which is a wonderful, wonderful venue, historical building. It's very nice. I saw your video from the venue. Very nice. Yeah, it's a very welcoming place. I'm really happy that our participants are getting to be there. And so 8.30 Monday, we're welcoming our guests from, I think, almost 45 countries. Or maybe even, I don't know. I haven't counted yet. But from all across Europe, Ukraine, Nordic, Africa. uh india uh even you like uae middle east region and um um it's it's gonna be amazing just to have them all in one room and meet and greet and just chill together and then um there there will be um three very important panels um after after the welcome Welcome speech. The first panel is the Nordic innovation representation where we have tech barbecue stakeholders from like different stakeholders from the Nordic coming and really talking about how they drive innovation and all. And we would like to openly support them to talk about the challenges as well, the market scalability I mentioned. And then the follow-up panel will be with the donor organizations, such as Nordic Innovation, Nourad. We're still working on making sure that the representatives are there. They're very busy people. But they would be talking about their priorities and comparing nodes. So all these two panels would become insights. back to our participants and there wouldn't be just the participants will have a very good amount of time to have proper q a because it will be we want it to be a completely interactive session and then it will be followed up by a very concrete example of a success case because also sweden is going through a innovation reform some guidelines and regulations are changing so we have some people that are going to touch upon that. The case is in health tech so that gives a very concrete example of that collaboration to our audience as well and then we launch our AI tool actually at the summit they have they're already using it. and we will touch upon specifically ukraine as well and with ukrainian startup fund we will launch our collaboration to support more ukrainian founders in collaboration with europeans and nordics and more and the rest of the one and a half day is all workshops yeah three three workshops for building projects facilitated by us yeah yeah well done yeah thanks Thank you. We need to shut this episode down. I'm just going to land the plane before we say goodbye to dear listeners. So dear, dear listeners, thank you for listening to the end. I hope you found this very, very interesting. As interesting as I did. If you like this, go to my platform, thegrand.eu. There you'll find tons and tons and tons of episodes. Now I have more than 130 episodes and lots of content. Also, if you're interested in... funding for SMEs. I have a couple of episodes specifically on startups. So if it's startups that's your corner then you will find it. I will link to them in the episode notes here so you have direct access to the couple of episodes especially specifically on startups. And when you are there don't forget to subscribe to my email list. So this is if you have any sympathy with what I'm doing here. with this independent podcast. Do subscribe. This is helping any independent podcaster a lot. So please, by all means, and thanks in advance for that. And finally, don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn because that is where the fun happens. That is where the flow is. I also established a The Grand page so that you can run in and follow. That's also where I pick you up if you want to be a guest on the show. It's what happened here. Yes. Very nice. Yeah, yeah. So, Neera, thanks. Thank you so much. I wish you lots of success with your event, which is when you are listening to this on the same day and the day after. So, lots of success with that and lots of success at all with your initiative here. I have a lot of sympathy for that. Thank you so much. We hope for the best. Let's say goodbye to dear listeners. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Craft. All the Grand episodes have their own site on the Grand website. You will find the link in the episode notes where you listen to your podcast. On the site for this episode, you will find a link to Niloufar's personal LinkedIn site and a link to Euronording Funding Alliance for anybody interested in this. Further, I will add a couple of earlier the Grand episodes where I dig into the startup environment. Next week, I have a good old colleague from P&O on board. Elena Calzada-Rodan, innovation management expert in Smart Innovation Norway. She reached out and asked me if we could do an episode about the roughness of receiving the rejections for your little babies. The proposals, that is. And that is a very nice conversation you can indeed look forward to. Remember that the grant would really like to join some EU proposals as a partner or subcontractor. I am slowly getting interested feedback for having the grant included in proposals for 2025 calls. And why is that? That's because some proposal developers realize that adding sound to the proposal communication strategy can be a strong addition to connecting with the project stakeholders and the world beyond the realm of the project. For a relatively small part of the project budget, the grant steps into the communication and dissemination group and delivers a plug-and-play solution with strong podcasting expertise, 16 years of proposal and project experience, and a big follower base. reach out through LinkedIn or my website if interested. Finally, don't hesitate reaching out if you want your own podcast episodes flagging topics of importance for you specifically. Grants Consultancy Company Inspire Science have their own series with three episodes flagging their capacities within different areas of supporting research organizations towards EU funding. The possibilities are many. Flagging your capacities as a company, pushing a message towards the process ecosystem as research organization, promoting an important event, or boosting your communication strategy. The grant offers a plug-and-play solution with a podcast host with 16 years of experience within the EU R&D field, which secures the solidity of the content. I'm not a journalist. I'm a conversation partner that understands your perception. See you next week.

Episode site (https://www.thegrant.eu/133) 








Startups are the organisations that are the most in need of finance. They almost literally spend all waking hours figuring out how to acquire the financial means to realize their wonderful ideas. However, the funding system as well as the venture capital area are both quite rough on them. 



Niloufar Gharavi is a startup’er herself. But she also had a good idea a couple of years ago: why not try to establish an ecosystem where startups are in the same community as the organisations that they need to collaborate with to realize their ideas – companies, research, governments and so on? 



She founded the Euro Nordic Funding Alliance, put her hand in fire and scrabbed together enough money to do a kick off meeting last year inviting exactly that – startups, companies, venture capitalist and funding scheme administrators – to build a project facilitating community where the raising of capital is on the full solution/project and not just the individual startup. Making everything stronger and making the startups less vulnerable. 



Naturally, I had to bring Niloufar into the virtual podcast studio to share how on earth she did this out of thin air and how it works in all practicality. This is great stuff!








Time codes: 



00:02:06 Introduction



00:04:08 Fly in on Euro Nordic Funding Alliance



00:08:23 Understanding Euro Nordic Funding Alliance



00:28:36 How ENFA works with funding



00:59:49 Venture capital and funding



01:17:51 Practical examples



01:20:44 Future perspectives



01:25:58 The toughest challenge