You’ll like this: After months of applying to funds who say they support ‘Start Up’ or ‘Scale Up’ - I mean, I’ve now done 4 pilot versions which means I do have SOMETHING to show for my efforts and I really am somewhere beyond the ‘Ideas On A Page’ stage – and being knocked back because I’m told I don’t have anything meaningful to start or scale…(?!) I thought I’d go in the other direction: The Big Ideas funds (that support Starting or Scaling).
Obvious, right?
And just before Xmas the two latest came back – and you know what’s coming, right?
‘Sorry - your ideas are too well developed…’
??*!**%!!!!!!
All of which lead me to conclude the following:
Either my bid writing really is shit
Or my proposition really is genuinely ground-breaking and might as well have come from Mars - as clearly no one WITH MONEY TO SPEND has yet recognized it as a viable solution
Or I really will have to continue to do this thing on my own time and money until we are faced with re-mortgaging the house or I give up and decide to get a real job
However, given there is no real prospect of this last bit – after 18 years of working for myself I am probably unemployable by now – I’m faced with taking a hard look at the other bits.
Again (sigh).
Oh well: Remember the ‘two invitations’ goal from the MoJ Speed-Dating event in the previous blog? Well I got ‘em…