# What funders can do to help academic founders The core values of every grant are excellent on paper but in practice, there are the following issues, which funders should do, fix, or not request in their applications. - Do: - If your mantra is “people, not projects” then selection criteria should be: [[14c How to identify risk-averse researchers||“high risk high reward researchers, not high risk high reward research projects”.]] - Fix: - Academics are made to teach by universities while holding 100% teaching-relief funding. Follow up with the academic to see if this is happening to them! - Help academics work with their TTOs; losing 10% equity to the university for no tangible support and 20-30% for £50k cash support are unreasonable trade-off. £50k plus a year's to flesh out research IP-side could be a game changer for 10% and feel equivalent to accelerator support? - Don't request: - Please stop asking for industry support letters from academics/founders- these are inconsequential. Classic example are EPSRC grants and RAEng grants. - InnovateUK grants require external match-funding for **early-stage companies**; this must stop. The people who want to start things are spending more time in unfruitful meetings and less time on building things, which is what the early stage is about. This also doesn't seem to consider that founders in academia are working 100% at their university alongside 75%-100% on their startup. #riskywork