One Word That Quietly Torpedoes Funding Applications

Every founder chasing R&D funding eventually writes some variation of the sentence: “we have built a working prototype.” It reads as a statement of fact and it’s always something to be proud of.

But, in practice, it’s a claim, and the funder reading it gets to decide what that claim actually means. If your definition doesn't match theirs, the application doesn't just read poorly. It was aimed at the wrong scheme in the first place.

It sounds like I’m doing some vague philosophising, but this is far from a minor semantic quibble.

To one assessor, a prototype is a rough model tested under simulated lab conditions. To another, even one at the very same funding body, that sounds and smells like a proof of concept, which is very different. To a third, prototype status is conferred only once you have a fully integrated system operating in the field it's built for. Anything up until that point is just the product of good thinking, spit and grit.

Now, both readings can be legitimate uses of the word prototype. Even technology readiness levels. That disparity in definition is informed by a whole constellation of factors, from the industry you’re in, to the region in which you work, to the funder’s history. (If you’re interested in a solid, if slightly stodgy tour of this, you could do worse than Jensen, Özkil, and Mortensen’s paper from the 2016 International Design Conference.)

But knowing the reasons for the variation doesn't help you if you've already committed weeks to writing for a scheme whose definition of "prototype" was never going to match yours. You may have a definition you’re willing to go to war to defend. That’s great, truly, but remember: the folks with the funding hold the power.

Discovery and Validation

The reason this catches capable teams out on a chronic scale is that “prototype” is not one stage of development. It is a blanket label applied pretty loosely across several distinct points on the (in)famous Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale; a nine-point framework originally built by NASA and now standard across UK, US, and EU funding, that measures how mature a technology actually is. Although, I should say that even TRLs aren’t as definitionally ironclad as we might hope – more on that in another post.

A prototype is not a fact about your technology. It is a claim made to a specific reader, and that reader has a specific definition in mind, whether the call text states it plainly or not.

So, if you write “prototype” without specifying which of those stages you mean, you’re handing the assessor an ambiguity as well as a mandate to resolve on your behalf. And assessors most often resolve ambiguity by marking it down.

That means "do we have a prototype?" is the wrong question to be asking before you apply. The right question is "which TRL am I honestly at, and which competitions are built to fund work at that stage?" Get that wrong, and no amount of careful drafting will save the application.

Say the scheme wanted TRL 6 and you're at TRL 4. The writing may be fine, great even, yet the room was the wrong one. This is where a meaningful share of fundable R&D quietly fails in translation, between what a team has actually built and what a given rubric expects to see described. The science itself is rarely the problem, and this is in large part a problem that is about discovering the right audience.

What this means in practice

So, what can you do? Well, cleaving to two reliable disciplines resolve most of this before it becomes a rejection letter.

First, pin your project to an honest TRL before you go anywhere near a competition list. Not an aspirational one, and not the one your investor deck implies. The one your actual technology sits at today.

Second, treat every competition's use of the word "prototype" as a sign to be decoded, not a label to be adopted. Read the call text carefully. Read past winners' write-ups too, while you’re at it. If the scheme was built for TRL 6 and you're at TRL 4, don't reframe. Don't stretch. Find a different competition. There is almost certainly one designed for your stage, and the folks with the funding hold the power. The power is in matching yourself to what they're actually looking to fund.

Speaking from painful experience, this is exactly the kind of ambiguity that is difficult to catch when you’re in the trenches and considerably easier to pick out with the right process and expertise behind you.

Because, in the end, the founders who win are seldom the ones with the most confident story. They are the ones whose story happens to be told in the language the reader was already expecting to hear. That’s the unfair advantage you need to get hold of.

Ailsa helps R&D-led businesses discover and win the non-dilutive funding they are more than just ‘eligible’ for. We find you a glass slipper that fits; we don’t cram your foot into one three sizes too small. Learn more over at ailsa.io.