I was sitting at the office of the Embassy in Madrid, 8th floor with a gorgeous view over the city skyline. My colleagues were discussing Spain's new plan: the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, involving a staggering 163 billion euro, financed by the EU. Even for us the sheer size of the plan was mind boggling.
Spain had been hit severely by the crisis, or actually crises, the most recent ones being the Covid-19 crisis and the hike of energy prices related to the Ukraine war which soared unemployment rates to unprecedented heights. The huge influx of money was aimed to both fix this and make the country more independent from fossil fuels in general, and Russia in particular.
It came with huge opportunities, we all agreed. Both for Spanish companies, obviously, as for Dutch companies who could help transform the Spanish economy towards a more resilient economy. But, we also agreed, Dutch companies had no idea how to access the funds or benefit from them.
The story had been told before, over and over. Subsidies were scattered over numerous institutions and their eligibility criteria were non-transparent at best. Even in The Netherlands, a country which is generally viewed as business-friendly, multiple reports were written on how difficult it was for some businesses to find the right subsidy.
A week later I was on my daily commute to work when I received an email about a vacancy for a subsidy advisor at a large firm. Reading the job description it dawned me: this was something that needed absolute fixing. Not only because subsidies are difficult to navigate, but especially because subsidies were way too important. It is the fuel for innovation, for culture, for nature and for education.
If we could just scrape the internet for all available subsidies, from local authorities to the EU, put it in a huge database and analyze it using large language models, we could help organizations in just a few intuitive questions. How hard could it be?
Searching for a cofounder
Hard. Nearly impossible. Or maybe just outright impossible. I quite quickly realized why a database with all subsidies didn't exist yet. And I knew for certain I wouldn't be able to fix it myself. I needed some serious help, and a very technical co-founder.
So I went to YC's Cofounder Matching. I'd used the platform before to find a potential co-founder and was really impressed with the skills and enthusiasm of everybody I met there. First one to pop up was a guy called Pyry. A technical guy focusing on AI. Plenty of relevant experience. My dream guy, professionally speaking.
I wrote him a message. I explained what I think was wrong, and why this was an issue which we should care about. I explained my previous experience, why I wanted to work with him and checked the short message twice before sending. And within the hour, I had a message back.
"Hi! Sounds interesting. I've been involved in quite a few grants myself which has always been difficult. How about an intro chat?"
And so our story started. We had no idea what would come next, I still don't know. But I was convinced that we should be able to fix this. So let's go.
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