Equity-free money first: why the subsidy stack comes before the round

Most founders arriving in Europe do the obvious thing. They land, they build a deck, and they start looking for investors. It is the wrong order, and the cost of getting it wrong is paid in ownership.

Europe hands out a large amount of money that does not cost you any of your company. Tax credits on research payroll. Rulings that change what you pay before you are profitable. Regional funds writing tickets from EUR 150K to 5M. Programmes at national and European level, each with its own window, its own paperwork and its own idea of what counts as innovation. This money is unglamorous, slow to apply for, and it never appears in a founder story. It is also the cheapest capital you will ever raise.

Two things follow from taking it first.

The first is arithmetic. Every euro of equity-free money is a euro of runway you did not sell shares to buy. Raise later, on a longer runway, and you raise at a better price with more evidence behind you. Raise earlier, on a shorter one, and you are negotiating from the weaker side of the table.

The second is less obvious and better evidenced. An early-stage grant roughly doubles the odds of follow-on venture funding. The mechanism is worth stating correctly, because it is usually quoted wrong: the award is not a stamp of approval that investors trust. The money builds the prototype, and the prototype removes the technical risk an investor would otherwise have to price into the round. That research measured a US programme, so read it as how early grants work, not as a promise about any Dutch scheme.

The context makes the argument sharper. The median gap from seed to Series A is now 2.1 years, and 40% of seed deals in 2024 contained a bridge round, which is the market saying out loud that companies are running out of road before the next priced round. A grant stack does not remove that pressure, but it is the only source of capital that relieves it without changing your cap table.

And yet the money goes unclaimed. Roughly a third of Dutch R&D-performing companies (36% in the 2025 evaluation) do not use the flagship R&D subsidy. These are domestic companies with local accountants. A foreign founder in month three, still waiting on a bank account, is not going to find it unaided.

So the sequence we run is deliberate. Establish the entity, because most of this money requires one. Claim what the company already qualifies for. Apply for what it can win in the next window. Then open the round, with a longer runway, an independent yes on the record, and a smaller ask.

The round is the last step. It goes better when it is not the first one.

Should a startup raise grants or investment first in Europe?

Grants and tax credits first, then the round. Equity-free money buys runway without touching your cap table, so the round you open afterwards is smaller, later and better evidenced. Most European schemes also require a local entity, which is another reason the order matters.

What counts as equity-free funding in Europe?

Four kinds. Tax credits on research payroll. Tax rulings that lower what you pay before you are profitable. Regional funds that invest without asking for a large stake. And national or European programmes, each with its own window and its own paperwork. None of it costs you shares.