[hef19898]

Yeah, and than you have to pass a panel deciding whether your "idea" is innovative enough. It reminded me more of a game of buzzword bingo than a viable investment procedure. As your not allowed to incorporate before enter EXIST it is just a waste of time. Not to mention that it all depends on how well you are connected at your university, and if government funds are available.

[destartupop]

I'd say the chances of getting a grant are very good, back in the day the success rate was around 50 % and you could apply up to three times (to my knowledge), which made it highly likely that you'd get the money if you were persevering. It's true that you have to choose a good university as the quality of the provided coaching and mentorship varies wildly. I can recommend LMU & TU Munich as well as TU Berlin or one of the other well-known technical universities (e.g. RWTH Aachen), to my knowledge they have very good programs. You don't need connections at your university either, you just need to convince a professor to support your application, which they are often happy to do as it counts towards the amount of funding they raised, which is a relevant metric to them.

If you can get that money it's really an excellent opportunity and will help you to get further funding, as I said before I just find it sad that nothing comparable exists for experienced people from industry.

[hef19898]

I tried a while back. Not being at one of the universities you mentioned ,I would have been an extension from TU Munich. Funds where hard to come by at that time (right after the elections, so no governmant, no government budget, no EXIST funds). In the end, I talked to all relevant profs at my university, they talked to the giys at TUM, and the feed-back was "no need to tey, your idea is not innovative enough. Try a bank or bet your house."

Also the expected time line was around 6 months to get into the program, so for me it would have just been a colosal waste of time.

EDIT: While coaching is anive thing, it is access to follow-up funding that matters. At let's be honest in that regard YC is different league all together. And if you don't need funding beyond 100k you really could have used bank in the first place.

[Nimitz14]

Thank you for taking the time to write this out, this could really help me!