But it should be the onus of the startup to talk to as much of the market as possible to "validate" their ideas before they build it. For example, if you talk to 10 of your potential clients and 7 tell you that they're not ready to switch to a more innovative solution, it's a red flag. In that case, if you're still persistent on that idea, you should spend more time with each client and figure out why and what would make them switch until you get to a sweet spot. Then you can tweak your solution to bridge that gap. Does that make sense?

Do you know who tracks what happens after a company gets the grant? Do we have visibility into the % who get follow-on funding or how much? How do we define successes? 

Can you give more specifics? Do you mean a payment gateway to receive money from foreign customers? Does ipay88 or MOL offer any solutions? 

Oh wow, this is a terribly long process and I agree the company would've been dead by the time they get through the approval process! May we ask which are the so-called "bad" programs vs "good" programs? Feel free to be anonymous! This is all great feedback to us. 

Interesting. So is the perception that it's super easy to get government grants, or the other way around? I'm getting some mixed reviews actually.