The calls for proposals: opportunities and risks
A call for bids requires some ability to foresee the future, and this is a really difficult exercise for those who are starting out.
The calls are an extraordinary opportunity,
at Apical Passport we seek them out and select them to help companies finance their own growth, and then we step in as providers of technology, training, and support to ensure that everything works well.
“Mature” companies with a clear idea of their path usually have little trouble figuring out how to spend and what direction to go (not true, so many waste a lot of money but whatever 😉 ).
For projects in the launch phase, this changes.
By definition, a tender requires some ability to predict the future, and this is a really difficult exercise for those who are starting out and still have endless question marks squared in front of them.
The risk is to simplify things, to think that the notice money will be able to solve all our problems.
Then you end up planning impossible things, maybe just wrong, and then you find yourself having to correct the way along the way.
Most of the time we waste all or part of the money received and spent on funding things that we don’t actually need, that we won’t use.
See that it really is:
1) Companies win bids
2) They think they will solve everything with funds.
3) They make bad decisions
4) They waste money and time
5) They start over
6) They find that they could do everything without that money.
The message is: watch out!
The calls give money that make startups think they are companies and turn beautiful projects into rigid equations forced to make the only decisions that confirm the things written in the call itself.
Better to do the startup stage first and then become companies in the future.
Repeat with me: money can’t blow the validation phase, money can’t blow the validation phase…
It is not always so clearly, indeed I know enlightened people who have been able to write the notices well and make the most out of them.
But if I have to give general advice a little bit to all*.
Do the Pilot first, then participate in the calls for proposals
Don’t do the opposite!!!
Don’t do it 🙂
Really!
N
Happines is a movement
