{"id":7861,"date":"2023-12-06T07:45:09","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T07:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/campusfounders.eu\/?post_type=news&p=7861"},"modified":"2026-04-10T07:58:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T07:58:06","slug":"opengrant-ai-founders-chat","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/campusfounders.eu\/de\/news\/opengrant-ai-founders-chat\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenGrant \u2013 AI Founders Chat"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a transformative journey, OpenGrant relocated from Poland to Germany to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in the AI \u200b\u200bFounders program at Campus Founders. The team is developing an AI-powered solution for writing and managing proposals, helping NGOs, SMEs, and startups obtain and manage funding 10 times faster and 5 times more cost-effectively. Now they’re sharing their experiences with our community, imparting valuable knowledge to fellow founders, and explaining their reasons for choosing to be part of AI Founders.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

OpenGrant is an excellent example of how startups can leverage their unique resources and skills to make a positive impact on their community. Tell us your story.<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

OpenGrant was born out of a solution to a critical challenge we experienced firsthand: the complex and time-consuming process of securing grant funding. Five years ago, I founded a startup incubator in Central and Eastern Europe in collaboration with Google for Startups, Microsoft Poland, and four software companies to help our fellows build their prototypes as quickly as possible and validate needs with their ICP (Initial Concept Platform). The first three years were essentially bootstrapped (if you can call it that for NGOs) \u2013 meaning no grant funding and hardly any sponsorship money \u2013 with a team of ten working part-time on a voluntary basis under my supervision. Two years ago, Jan (my co-founder at OpenGrant) joined the incubator as our finance manager, bringing his prior experience in the field (over six years at that point) to help with grant acquisition. He quickly became an integral part of the organization, saving it from many accounting and GDPR pitfalls. By 2022, we had secured \u20ac50,000 in grant funding, which enabled us to professionalize the incubator and had more funds in the pipeline. This allowed us to bring our best performers on board as paid staff, increasing our talent pool for the program tenfold. But grant funding is a painful, chaotic business, and Jan and I spent dozens of nights applying for, managing, and reporting on various grant programs\u2014entirely manually and under immense pressure, as we were legally liable for any compliance\/accounting issues, while the alternative was to ignore grant funding and allow the now-thriving incubator to grind to a halt due to a lack of relevant funding alternatives. But this difficult decision wasn’t just ours. Every year, 5 million EU SMEs spend thousands of euros trying to secure grant funding through this suboptimal process. Because there’s no standardized pipeline for finding grant funding, grant writers waste hours Googling and then another 2-6 weeks actually writing the application. Writing requires them to read, understand, and comply with over 100 pages of grant jargon, all while spending thousands of euros on salaries, consultants, or outsourcing for each grant request. That’s why OpenGrant uses AI and automation to help NGOs, SMEs, and startups obtain and manage grant funding 10 times faster and 5 times less expensive. Think of OpenGrant as the Stripe Atlas for grants, making the application and compliance process as smooth as setting up a C Corp. OpenGrant automates the relevant grant search, decodes over 100 pages of grant guidelines into actionable steps, and generates fully compliant,High-quality proposals in minutes, not days (status quo). By December 2023, we will have added grant management and reporting, consolidating the entire grant cycle for our users (no competing software offers this).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How have your personal backgrounds and experiences shaped your vision for this product and its mission?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

My co-founder Jan and I brought a wealth of experience that significantly shaped OpenGrant. Our backgrounds in grant management, combined with my leadership in a startup incubator and Jan’s extensive experience in finance and grant operations, directly influenced our vision for OpenGrant. We understood the pain points precisely and were determined to create a solution that directly addresses these challenges and makes securing grants more accessible and less daunting for SMEs and NGOs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Have any key lessons or insights from your life experiences been incorporated into the product design, functionality, or user experience?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The key lessons from our experience\u2014the need for efficiency, clarity, and accessibility in grant processes (or, essentially, in any lengthy, complex process that can generate economic value through ease of use and efficiency)\u2014were central to the design of OpenGrant. We wanted to eliminate the complexities and ambiguities we had encountered and used AI to automate and streamline the process. Virtually all the barriers that typically prevent organizations from applying for grants\u2014expertise, time, manpower, and money\u2014were removed. This approach not only saved time but also opened doors for many who previously found the grant application process too daunting or resource-intensive.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

How did customers and the public react to your product, and what impact did this have on the growth and success of your startup?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The response to OpenGrant has been overwhelmingly positive. Our users particularly appreciate how OpenGrant enables them to apply for grants they wouldn’t have attempted on their own due to a lack of expertise or personnel resources. The real winner here is our approach of not charging an upfront retainer fee, but only a success fee if we are awarded the grant. This success fee model has been well-received in the market, allowing us to rapidly expand our user base and improve our platform. This aligns perfectly with our mission to lead innovation in the industry.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From Poland to Germany: Why did you decide to participate in the AI \u200b\u200bFounders program, and what are your expectations?<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Campus Founders has 20-30 pre-founding companies and 110-120 post-founding companies. The business advisors see us as an added value to their portfolio and are pushing us to become the primary funding provider for startups here, which is obviously extremely valuable for us in terms of sales and workflow feedback. We are currently conducting a pilot phase for EXIST, and initial results are promising (it was easy to adapt the NGO workflow to the EXIST process, as it is relatively similar, with straightforward documentation). However, this is only a proof of concept for research and development projects for startups, as there are too few EXIST winners each year to make this a viable business model for us (too low EXIST TAM). The community aspect of living locally with the remaining startup teams is also extremely valuable to us, as we view Germany as Europe’s leading innovation hub, with both talent and supporters (accelerators\/investors\/government funding\/high-profile customers), whereas in Poland, talent, particularly in technology, is present, but the supporters are less visible.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7862,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news_categories":[119,37,114],"class_list":["post-7861","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news_categories-insights","news_categories-news","news_categories-startup-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOpenGrant \u2013 AI Founders Chat - campusfounder<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/campusfounders.eu\/news\/opengrant-ai-founders-chat\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"OpenGrant \u2013 AI Founders Chat - campusfounder\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On a transformative journey, OpenGrant relocated from Poland to Germany to take advantage of the opportunity to participate in the AI \u200b\u200bFounders program at Campus Founders. 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