$A100K Equity-Free Startup Grant from Queensland Government | Hacker News Reader

$A100K Equity-Free Startup Grant from Queensland Government

hotdesq.com.au

47 pointsmariusursache31 comments

Queensland-based startup here in the fintech space. Having been through the wringer several times applying for Qld and Federal government grants, I’d be very cautious before getting too enthusiastic about this offer. Here are my experiences:

Applied and was offered a $75k COMET (Commercialisation of Emerging Technologies) grant a few years back. Before accepting, I had a chat with another recipient, who warned me off. The grant wasn’t a grant at all; you had to take a government appointed ‘advisor’, and when you raised your first round they were entitled to take a percentage of the funds (which could have been a multiple of the original $75k), even if their contribution had been zero. I declined the funding.

Applied twice for Commercialisation Australia (2010, $200k) and Early Stage Commercialisation (2014, 100k) grants. Both were grants without taking equity. Spent several thousand dollars and many weeks crafting the strongest possible application. Both times we were told we had extremely strong applications (great market fit, previous entrepreneurial experience, strong interest from overseas) and were highly likely to get the grant. Both times there was a change of government two weeks before the final signoff date, and both times the funding programs were closed down without warning, to be replaced by something very similar a year later. To cap it off they didn’t even bother sending out a formal letter to applicants – I got a phone call in the first instance and a brush-off email in the second.

I’m not saying don’t apply, but personally the time spent in applying for these grants would have been far better spent working on our product.

Can you tell us about your startup or put some info in your profile?

Company writes risk analytics software for fund managers. Development team in Queensland, marketing in the UK. Clients in London, Zurich, Canada, expecting 100% growth in revenue by end of this year. Almost entirely self-funded (I've had investors before, life is easier without). I travel 4-6 times a year to the UK from Brisbane - fortunately have learned the tricks to sleeping in an economy seat.

Interested in hearing other Australian experiences. For instance, Westpac Reinventure were started to invest in Australian fintech, but when I contacted them they said they wanted companies with a focus on the Australian market - which is crazy, in our field we have to go world-wide right from the start.

CA grant is such a weird premise as you essentially need to be in a position where you've done the R&D (i.e. spent all the cash) but don't have enough sales yet.

Having applied for $150k for another STEM related grant in NSW with a very strong application in hindsight I would rather have spent the time and effort focusing on the core business.

If you consider grants and applications as an expected value calculation (grant size * % chance of award * implications of being awarded) a business is often doing themselves a disservice by applying.

I completely agree. About the only grant program that sounds worthwhile is the EMDG (Export Market Development Grant) which reimburses some of your sales-related travel costs - up to 50% from a minimum spend of $15k. Apparently this isn't too hard to get, but you have to have spent the cash first.

A similar thing for NSW: $25k without revenue or up to $100k with revenue.

https://www.jobsfornsw.com.au/how-we-help/start-ups

I haven't looked at other states, but the Australian states are competitive enough that what one does the others often follow.

Edit: Victoria: https://launchvic.org/funding-guidelines

wow, having recently moved to nsw that is very interesting.

This seems to be from SA: http://www.innovyz.com/ according to https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/business-and-trade/running-a-bu...

Launchvic are funding the ecosystem rather than startups directly. Grants for hubs, bootcamps, co-working spaces, communities of interest, education/mentoring programmes &c. Even grants for existing VC-backed accelerators to bring them to Melbourne. However, no grants directly to startups, seems to be outside their scope of interest.

Launch VIC precludes funding anybody that could be funded by a commercial entity. My experience is LaunchVic is a system to fund NGOs and Universities that demonstrate minimal risk of making a profit.

All the Australian funding programs are designed to support the community of leeches that have grown to live off them like incubators and advisors.

Real support would be cash for salaries and then leave the developers alone to get stuff built from the living room.

I'm the CEO of a startup based outside Qld. Area of development is bespoke AI and its application in Health, Social Services, Education, Employment and Training.

We were looking at moving to California to secure funding but if it's $100K cold hard cash with no strings we could be persuaded to move to the Sunshine Coast. Good weather, good surfs. Like California only different. Email me - david@bdihealth.com

As someone who lives in Qld, our Gov't only provides funding to those who are the most connected and don't need the funding. As per the FAQ's section saying they will give the money not to those who it would benefit most, but those who are most connected and have the most experience and successful startups.

That seems like a smart strategy. People who are connected are likely to succeed at higher rate.

Wasting taxpayer money on funding startups (which fail 99% of times) seems like a bad idea. Not to mention startup investing is more like a specialized area, more specialized that investing in stock markets of hedge funds.

"Any entrepreneur currently based outside of Queensland with an existing startup or entrepreneurial experience can apply. "

Note, you have to currently be outside of qld to apply.

From someone who's already in the program: https://medium.com/@hollyc/whats-hot-desq-really-like-faqs-f...

This is more meant to be an incentive for people to bring (back) an already successful venture to QLD, not a way to get seed money.

It's specifically for founders with existing startups, outside of Queensland, in case others missed that on first glance.

The gamification-sounding element of accumulating "Network Points" is pretty entertaining. Aside from that, providing $AUD100K without taking equity is nice - as long as the process of farming the government isn't so complex that your startup lives to regret it...

Well doing work for Queensland Health (front-end websites and apps for marketing purposes, not client data or anything) was an exercise in absolute frustration. But hey, I'll give our gvt the benefit of the doubt for now; we have to move to a tech economy or we will fail the moment we run out of resources to pull out of the ground.

Interestingly, a small data centre is being built pretty close to me in Fortitude Valley, so there is some investment going on. The Advance Queensland Innovation Summit I attended talked the big talk, let's see how well they've learned how to walk I guess!

Mining is actually not the predominant part of the national income - something like 8% of GDP. We're not as dependent on it as people think. Might be different for the state of QLD though.

Another way to look at it - mining has been deflating for the past few years as demand has dried up a bit, but the nation still hasn't had a recession (two quarters of negative growth).

Yeah sorry I should've been clear, I'm talking specifically about Queensland (and WA is another state that's at risk, and are were in a recession as of the beginning of this year, from what I can see).

This doc is a couple years out of date, but worth looking at: https://www.treasury.qld.gov.au/economy/the-queensland-econo...

While in raw numbers it might not seem grim, the effects from what I've seen can be rather outsized; more to the point, a lot of communities in Queensland are reliant on mining to exist at all and are struggling with the current downturn in mining investment and work (though, local effects don't generalise well, of course).

The current effects are having an impact on Brisbane's GDP:

"Significant drags on the Brisbane economy included Professional Services (-0.3 percentage points) and Mining (-0.3 percentage points)."

https://www.sgsep.com.au/publications/brisbane-gdp-2015-2016

Anyway, thanks for sending me on a neat research journey :)

Did you build the Streamline website? I was impressed by that one.

Wish Canada did something like startup chile .. I'd move and do a startup in a heartbeat.

what ? If you don't live in Canada why would you want to the grant to be there ?

Sounds like they're buying the time of an already successful startup in the hopes that their hard work will "rub off" on the rest of the community.

You posted this too late:

> Hot DesQ applications will be accepted from 31 March 2017 until midday (AEST), 3 May 2017

Until may 3rd?

I assume that he posted it late enough so that there won't be any extra competition from HN, and yet early enough so that it's still relevant and thus will yield sufficient internet points.

Dammit - I'm already in Queensland, but I do have a startup! Haha!

If anyone's thinking about coming, pls post about your startup.

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