Photo: free stock photography (Unsplash licence) — see imprint
Funding follows a plan, not an idea
Programmes want a defined scope, a timeline and a measurable outcome. If you cannot write that down, you are not ready for funding — you are ready for a discovery phase. That is not a failure; it is the correct order.
Apply before you start, always
Most programmes will not fund work that has already begun. Signing the development contract before the application is the single most common way companies disqualify themselves from money they would have received.
Count the true cost of applying
Applications, documentation and reporting cost internal hours. For a small project, that overhead can exceed the grant. Do the arithmetic honestly before you spend a month on paperwork for a subsidy you barely need.
Do not let the programme design the project
The worst outcome is a company building an AI feature it does not need because AI was fundable. Build what the business needs, then check whether it happens to qualify — never the other way round.
- Apply before signing anything.
- Paperwork can cost more than a small grant.
- Never let funding rules design your product.
Frequently asked questions
We deliberately will not name programmes here. Funding for digital projects exists at European, federal and regional level, but individual programmes open, close, run out of budget and change their conditions constantly — a list written today misleads a reader next quarter. Check the official funding databases for what is live now, and let a Fördermittelberater or your Steuerberater confirm what your company qualifies for. That decision is theirs, not ours.
Often not, and that is the answer nobody sells you. The application, the documentation and the reporting afterwards all cost internal hours from people who have other jobs. On a small project that overhead can exceed the grant itself. Do the arithmetic honestly before you spend a month on paperwork for a subsidy you barely need — sometimes the fastest route to a working system is simply paying for it.
As a rule, most programmes will not fund work that has already begun — signing the development contract before the application is the single most common way companies disqualify themselves from money they would have got. But the exact definition of 'start' varies by programme and is binding only in that programme's own conditions. Read them, or have an adviser read them, before anyone signs anything.
No. The worst outcome we see is a company building an AI feature it does not need because AI happened to be fundable, then maintaining it for years. Build what the business needs, then check whether it happens to qualify — never the other way round. A grant that pays for a third of the wrong system is not a saving; it is a discount on a mistake.
We do this for a living — Shopware, Node.js, React, ERP integration and automation for B2B.
Talk to an engineer