[kerkeslager]

A professional grantwriter can do this for a miniscule fraction of what you're likely to receive in grants. If they're decent, they'll do some analysis beforehand on whether writing the grant is wort your money.

It's not like Germany is unique in this respect: grants in the US are the same way. And venture capital--the "market efficient" solution--is far more onerous to obtain.

[dannyobrien]

All of this is true, but as a grant-giver (and historically a recipient) in this space, we really could streamline this part of the process. Getting funds through grant-applications is a solution to a whole set of problems (including corruption, lack of transparency, donor research etc), which we may be able to solve in different ways in an open source space.

[doctorpangloss]

Really the misconception is about VC fundraising. It is much more onerous than grant writing, when looking at people who actually raise lots of money!