EU grants like the EIC Accelerator offer deep tech startups millions in non-dilutive funding. Securing funds requires more than a great technology. In this webinar,  serial entrepreneur Ola Wassvik sits down with Alice Mussard from Evolution Europe to unpack what separates successful applications from the rest. From understanding your technology readiness level to building an IP strategy that satisfies evaluators, they cover the essential groundwork every founder needs before applying. The takeaway? Start early, think strategically, and never rely on public funding alone.

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Below follows a transcribed version of the webinar.

Ola Wassvik: Hello and welcome to this webinar on EU funding. I can tell you that this has clearly been something that a lot of people are very interested in. I don't think we've ever had these many people sign up for a webinar. So clearly people want to know more about EU funding and how to work with it.

And I'm happy to have with me today Alice Mussard from Evolution Europe. She's a true European citizen, so she speaks four languages, French, German, Spanish, and English of course, which we'll be speaking today here. She's worked at the French embassies in both Spain and Germany. So she knows the European system from the inside. And the latest couple of years she's been working with EU funding and helping companies get EU funding. And Evolution has gotten more than 200 million euros for their clients. So you're talking to an expert here.

And we'll start out Alice, by talking a little bit about... Because if there's one thing that everyone that I speak to about EU funding says that they think it's complex and time consuming. So can you talk a little bit about your experience on Evolution that kind of separate successful EU funding projects versus the not so successful ones.

Alice Mussard: Hi Ola. And hi everyone. Thank you for this warm welcome and also for the introduction. Yes, I'm working already at Evolution Europe for two years and as you mentioned I have quite experience on European grants. And as you mentioned that's a complicated landscape where everyone navigates at the end of the day.

So what I will recommend is to focus on the strategy. Actually a company really need to strategize the funding on the side that will be on the non dilutive funding such as European grants. But also we should never forget to attract private funding.

Nowadays we have a lot of different schemes from Horizon Europe. And it will be the same program until 2027. As you may all know, the rules will be changes after this year. But yeah, for now we have just received the new program of the EIC. I advise you to have a check to their website that is well organized and where you have all the requirements. But yeah, the first advice that I will give to a startup is to strategize the funding.

Ola Wassvik: So can you go into a little bit what you mean with strategizing? Do they have to have a plan, how long in advance should they be looking at things? How long in advance do these things get published by the EU?

Alice Mussard: Well first of all you have to be aware of the deadlines. You have a lot of deadlines each year for different schemes. For example, for the EIC accelerator that is one of the most famous grants program of the European Union, we had in the past year around two deadlines a year. And the process application, the writing application is really long. So I will say that you have to plan it around six months before, from six months to three months maximum. But you really have to work on your application, how you're going to write your application, but also, how you're going to fit your technology, your business strategy, business model, into the writing application.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, because that's one thing that. So I've been applying for EU grants a couple of times and one of the things that I found was that if the technology that you were developing didn't align with the EU goals, it was a little bit of a waste of time. You really had to fit some, have some, something that really fits with what they're looking for right now. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alice Mussard: Yes, of course. Well, actually, through different schemes you have a lot of different possibilities. And when you're working at Deep Tech, you're following the scale of TRL technology readiness. Sorry, technology readiness levels that correspond to the maturity of your technology. So when you are to early TRL, you have a scheme that is organized for example by the EIC, that is named EIC Pathfinder. And then for each stage of development you will have a different grant available. But the first thing to do is also to look at your TRL. What is the exact maturity of your technology?

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, and if you don't know what the TRL is, then the first thing you should do is probably figure it out. There's a lot of tools that can help you kind of measure your TRL. I found it useful just to point people to the AI systems that are available. You can get a pretty good assessment of roughly where you are by asking an AI which technology readiness level you are at.

So another thing that usually like that I found when applying for EU grants was that they're focusing a lot on the business readiness as well. But maybe that is more for the later TRLs. Can you talk a little bit about how does the kind of business readiness fit in if you want to apply for EU grants?

Alice Mussard: Yeah, yes, yes, of course. Well, as you may know, so the aim of those public grants is to invest in risky technologies. It's complicated most of the time for VC, venture capital, business angels, to invest in a technology that may go on the market 10 years after the first experiences. So the EU is here for investing in your technology at an early stage. But of course even if it's just the start of your work on your project, you need to think about the business model. How are you going to finance your company, how you're going to finance the different stage of the developments, the clinical studies that you need to finance.

So you really need to think on a long term perspective and in this regards, you need to stay close from the investors and even if it's few talks, at events, on webinars, also on daily meeting, you could have spontaneously you should stay close to this environment because you will need them on a later stage and the EU will give you kind of stamp if you're granted. That will be a really good sign for an investor.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, we'll talk about this a little bit later. But the combination of grant money and VC money is something that you typically don't get just one or the other, you get both. But let's dig into that a little bit later.

One of the other things they're of course looking for is that no one else should be doing the same. So can you talk a little bit about how they look at that? There is no other comparable technology on the market.

Alice Mussard: Yeah. So one of the first requirements of those grants is the disruptiveness of your technology. Your technology should be unique on the European markets but also has a strong impact on the European society. The European Union is financing projects that they will have an impact on the European citizens.

So it's really important that first of all your work on this impact and regarding the disruptiveness. It means that your technology is made through an important breakthrough. A discovery that is completely new on the European markets. Of course you could have competitors on the US market for example, or the Asian markets. But the disruptiveness of your technology should be focused on the European Union. Because at the end of the day, the aim of those grants is to invest in European technologies.

Ola Wassvik: eah, yeah, exactly. And that actually brings us to our next big questions which is how to actually use patents as a strategic advantage for EU funding. Because you just talked about that you need to be kind of alone on the EU market. So tell me a little bit about how do the examiners of these applications view patents. How important are they and does it differ between the different types of grants you can look for?

IP is key from the first moment you start to think about your technology.

Alice Mussard: So I think for all of you, IP is key from the first moment you start to think about your technology. I mean it's key in the sense that it protects you from the competitors and also to protect what we mentioned before about the disruptiveness and the breakthrough of your technology to protect you from the potential competitors. And your IP strategy has to be really close to the other strategies you will develop in your company such as a business model.

And also it's important to keep in mind that for some later stage grants such as EIC accelerator, when you are at a TRL6 you need to show that you have an IP because you need to show that you have a secure prototype already, it's working in a proven environment. So at this stage you already need to have an IP that is protected.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah and this kind of aligns already what we've already discussed with venture capital investment, IP and patents is kind of if you don't have it then it's a big red flag and you typically won't move on. And the further along up in the funding the more important IP and patent becomes and kind of the size of your portfolio as well.

So for example EIC accelerator is one of the most popular ones. Everyone wants to get it. So can you talk a little bit, how do you, when you're like doing applications for your clients, how do you kind of present patents and IP if you're specifically targeting the later larger grants like the EIC accelerator.

Alice Mussard: So what we are doing at Evolution Europe, what we do is a company even before having them as a client, we are doing an assessment with the clients where we talk about the technology, the project itself. When I mean project is how is the team, is the team focused, only on tech, only on business. You need a strong team to go through this challenging process I will say because as you mentioned, the EIC accelerator is a really challenging grant. It's very competitive but it's worth at the end of the day because they are financing your pre commercial activities.

And it's one of the best stamps you could receive from the European Union when you will start to reach the commercial stage. So what we do is we have a look to all of the company documents. As you mentioned, how is the IP, what is the business model of the company. Do you have already pre commercial traction? And of course how is the competitive landscape? It's one of the most important requirements.

And finally, as we mentioned VC already, the EIC accelerator is the co finance grant. It means that you need to prove that you received your, you have raised already private funds. It's also a good sign if you have raised public funds from your country. For example Neotech in Spain, you have Exist in Germany and you have a lot of different national grants. But it's also a good sign for the jury of the EIC.

So we are doing a deep assessment before starting an EIC application and if you want to go through the EIC process to give you a little feedback. So you have three different stages that you need to pass to go to the other. The first one is a short application, the next one is a full application and the last one, in the interview stage in Brussels with the jury. Each stage is quite complicated to pass, to be quite transparent with the audience. But the key as we mentioned on the first minute of the webinar is that you're prepared, you're prepared to face the EIC process. It's long. We need a lot of information about your company. We need to understand the application of your technology and how it will be in the future on the European market.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah. And of course why people even bother with this is that it's a lot of money in the end that you can talk about. For example, we had a Swedish company just a couple of weeks ago who raised five and a half million euros from the EIC accelerator. I know that is the type of size you can look at, it's quite often more than 2-3 million euros for those later stages.

So if we talk a little bit about the timing and preparation. So this is going into to our next discussion topic here. You talked that you need to be prepared and I can tell you from experience this is typically not something that the company can do on their own because the EU does a lot of good things, but they do it in a very structured way and if you don't fit into the structure you will absolutely fail. And that's why for example companies like Evolution exist, because you guide people through this process. So when should a company contact you?

Alice Mussard: So I will remind the audience that of course we are working on the EIC accelerator, but we are also working on other Horizon Europe calls. So it will depend a bit on your, on the grant you will choose because of course if you are applying for collaborative projects where you need partners, I advise you to organize it as soon as possible, even if you don't have the final deadline because the most challenging part is to build the consortium, and to have complementing partners inside, because at the end of the day they are financing the complementarity of the entities, for such calls.

So I will say if you detect already a cluster of Horizon Europe that it might be interesting for you or you have already a topic published that could be important for you contact your partners soon to build this consortium.

And regarding single applicants, grants such as the EIC accelerator, I will say four months before the short, uploading the short application. Well, the important thing about the EIC accelerator is you can submit whenever you want a short application. So at the end of the day, you have time. But between submitting the short application and submitting the full application, you need an answer from the European Commission if you pass the stage.

So for this reason, I advise you if you want for example to work with consultancies, like us, to contact us at least three months before the submitting the short application.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, thank you. And we'll be sure to share some links etc. about how you can see where you can look for these grants after the webinar. So don't worry about that. It is complicated this thing.

So let's move on to the next question. Basically the most common pitfalls and kind of best practices. But if we start talking about the pitfalls, what do you see is the most common error that you see companies do when they try to look for EU funding?

Alice Mussard: So thank you for this question because I think it's one of the most important question of the webinar. As we mentioned already, I think strategy, having a timeline, having a roadmap is key because at the end, it's not only rising public funds. You need also to raise private funds. So you need to mix both in the funding strategy. You need to mix both.

So I strongly advise you to be surrounded by the interesting ecosystem. Correct ecosystem, and also contact your NCPs, your national contact points you have in your country. You may have specific conditions inside your country to apply for those grants.

Then the current pitfalls that we are watching sometimes is, we are having sometimes is a lack of private traction. So you don't have commercial traction. You don't really have a proof that once your product is done, your technology is done, that it will work in the markets, that you will get revenue and you can sell your technology. That's also really common.

And the last one that we also talked about, it is a team. You need someone of course in your team that is really, that has a lot of skills regarding the technology that is a CTO that knows the technology, the further developments you need to reach the markets, how you can differentiate yourself from others. But you need someone on business even if they don't have the full knowledge of the technology. You really need someone that is able to scale up to make your technology scalable, to have also an overview of how it's working, the European markets.

Also as you mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, my European experience shows me that it's not the same if you want to sell your product in Spain or in Germany or in France, so you have to be aware of the regulations, even if we have all European regulation, you have also specificities in each market, how you will go through the sales strategy. Are you using distributors, are you going directly prospecting your clients.

So it's really this team that will help you to build your strategy and make the technology scalable.

Ola Wassvik: I think it's very important if you talk about public traction, both from investors but also from the actual market, that actually someone is willing to pay money for what you have done is an extremely strong proof point that I think a lot of deep tech founders kind of forget. They think that they can do all the research and get their perfect product out and then the market will appear. And that is not all the case. You need to start selling early. And if you want to apply for these types of EU funds, you have to show that someone actually would want to buy your product.

So let's talk a little bit about this, because I know that a lot of people have heard about this interview that you have to do. So can you share a little bit? What is this interview? Do you have to go into the European Parliament and sit in front of 100 people? Or how does the interview actually work and who is it that goes and does the interview?

Alice Mussard: So regarding the interview, so during some years, of course, after the COVID episode it was online, but nowadays they came back to in person format, where you go in Brussels and you face the jury.

The jury is most of the time people that they have a technical background so they are really able to understand your technology. I'm mentioning that because you're not facing only a VC or VC that has no knowledge of your technology. Of course you have also venture capital that they have those specificities that they have both technical and financial backgrounds. But you really have to be prepared on the technical question but also on the business model. I will say that the interview will combine both, they will challenge you on the financial and on the technical sides.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, I think this is actually a very big difference because as someone who's been through a lot of VC interviews, as you say, it's quite seldom that they have good technical skill in the team, but they bring in some expert to do some due diligence. Here is kind of the opposite thing. You have EU appointed experts that will look at your technology. So it is going to be different.

So is it the CEO that goes into the and does the interview or who does that part?

Alice Mussard: Well, we strongly recommend that is the CEO because at the end of the day the CEO is the face of the company. So we strongly recommend that the CEO goes to the interview. Of course you can have another C level at the interview such as the CTO, but most of the time the CEO will combine the skills that we mentioned before.

Regarding the team, the CEO should have in mind what is the technology, he or she should have strongly knowledge of what is the technology, how it will work on the European markets, but also the business side, how we are going to scale the startup, and how we're going to get revenue, the venture capital, business angels or family offices you are in contact with, to reach the next step of your technology.

Ola Wassvik: Very interesting, thank you. So let's go into the final question and we've touched upon this a number of times, but this is the combination of public funding and private funding. Because I quite often talk to especially early stage founders that are slightly misaligned and think that they can live on only public funding and that they can live on grants and don't actually have to take in private funding until very late.

And they say that, well we can't really coexist both public funding and private funding. So can you tell a little bit about that. When you actually get this funding, how does it typically look? Do they immediately want the private funding to go in, or is that in the next stage? Or do you want the private funding to preferably come in first before you then get the public funding?

Alice Mussard: So, we have the chance to live in the European Union, with a wonderful ecosystem in different countries. Maybe your project come from a university or research center or you might be the CEO of the company that you integrate later. But I strongly advise to be close all to your university, the ecosystem you could have in your university, and incubators that you could have inside all the incubators you have in your country, or even incubators you have inside big corporates.

And so of course you will start with public funding if your technology come from a Ph.D. student, for example, a thesis that was written, that truly shown a breakthrough technology. So you will look for public funding first through your, for example your university or your research center.

But yeah, I suggest that at the same time you should be close to an incubator, for example, that is in relation with VCs, venture capitals, business angels, family offices, depending on the country where you're located. But most of the time those ecosystems are all connected. So you should take this advantage. And when you start to work on your technology, you should start from the first day.

Ola Wassvik: Yeah, I completely agree with this. And one of the things that I think that a lot of people who have startups who don't go into incubators, what they're missing is the networking opportunity. It's not all about getting a little bit of grant money or some business advisor, but they bring a massive network in. So if you're not part of an incubator right now and listening to this, make sure that you find the closest one that fits you and just try to apply for it.

And if I understand you correct, Alice, it's also the further you go along in the development and business process, the more important private funding becomes as kind of part of it. You won't get the final big grants from the EU if you haven't been able to raise some private funding. Is that the correct statement?

Alice Mussard: Well, at the end of the day, as we discussed, European, the European Union is investing because it's risky, because we, the private side is not 100% sure that your technology will go until the market goes through the markets. Because you could have some problem during the clinical trials. For example, if you have a medtech or other proofs that you need to go to the next stage of development.

So of course they are investing most of the time at the start, but they are also investing at a later stage if you're collaborating with other companies. For example you have the Eurostars, the Eureka projects, when you, if you are the TRL4, and they are financing collaboration between two SMEs based in the European Union, but also in South Korea and in UK and in Switzerland of course. So they are also investing at a later stage.

And then the final grant that could be interesting is the Innovation Fund. The Innovation Fund is for clean tech startup, when you build plants in the European Union. So it will depend on your sector.

But of course we have to keep in mind that more we are advanced more we need private fundings because we need more money, more developments. And yes, it's what I will say so you can stay on track with public funding. Also keep an eye on what you have in your country.

But yes, the European Union is following the scale of TRL, the technology readiness level. So have a look to your TRL and look what you have available for 2026 and you will find a way to go through this landscape of schemes.

Ola Wassvik: Thank you very much, Alice. We're reaching the end of time here and just to wrap up a little bit, so what we've heard here today is that you really need to be prepared, make sure that you do things in time and do all the right things. Don't just go for public funding. Make sure you combine public and private funding in a good way and you will have a much higher success. And then I can also tell you by listening to you, Alice, now it just confirms my view that this is very complicated.

And this is why I've in the past always used companies like Evolution. So if you are having more questions and you kind of got more questions during this webinar, feel free to reach out to Alice afterwards or to any other company that helps out with EU funding. It's very unlikely that you will actually make it on your own because there's quite a few hoops that you have to get through. But the price on the other end is very big. We're fortunate to have the EU funding opportunities available for countries from the EU. So make sure that you don't miss out on this. And thank you very much for today, Alice.

Alice Mussard: Thank you, Ola. And thank you all for being part of this webinar.