HQQA031 Do you have any government grants?

What they mean

Government grants are free money given to startups for some reason, typically to promote job creation and the like. I apply this question to basically anything free you get from the gov where you are incorporated.

This is a pretty bland question. In the UK, perhaps it could allude to the use of EIS, in Australia, it is about developer grants, and in Singapore, there are all sorts of benefits (Watch out if you did an NRF deal etc!). There is not that much that can go wrong unless there are obvious benefits in your country and you are too stupid to use them.

One edge case is that your grant is dependent on you operating in that country. Theoretically, you could lose those grants if you are raising in America and they want you to flip to a Delaware C-corp. You could have raised money from an investment department of a country (e.g. Singapore) and things could get tricky after you have taken money. EDB will subsidise hiring if you have certain types of technical people, it’s dependant on you being HQ there.

What you need to say

“Yes, the Singapore government is very supportive. EDB see the potential in everything that we do and have granted us a fifty per cent benefit on salary on the hiring of up to twelve developers; that is a value of $500,000 over two years.”