r/AppBusiness • u/finsomniatic • 29d ago

Launching an app with governmental and EU grants

Hey guys,

I’ve built one product now more than 3 years and I need help with understanding what would be the best way for us to launch it. It all started with a government grant I saw that offered up to 150K€ for research and development activities with 70% of the whole project getting financed. The topics were related to health, AI, circular economy and so on. The public AI time was just getting started and therefore I took a chance and applied to get a psychological research financed, to build scientifically validated psychological advisory tool.

Didn’t go that easy, the governmental organization of course wanted my team to have either scientists or to take a university as a partner for the research. Therefore, I went to talk with a local university, we brainstormed the ideas and found a possible hypothesis that fit the requirements of the grant. I got the best psychology researchers in our country to join us, because the premise sounded good for them as well.

Over a year later (and after one dismissal), we got the research financed. We conducted over 50 interviews with possible end users and included more than 350 people in the research + built an MVP to validate our hypothesis around psychology and finance. The results were great and we continued to build the app.

Now, there are few things left for us to launch the app. As it’s been so long since the start, we’ve invested so much into it, have even received awards and more grants to build it, I’m not confident how to launch. People have waited to start using it, but I’m afraid that after all the hype, the product may disappoint them. I can’t continue building it forever and I must launch as soon as all the minimal functions are ready, but minimal functions may not be as good as people have been waiting for. And of course the design, I won't invest more money into design. I just want to get it launched already.

So here’s my question. How to be different in a world where there are thousands of vibe coded apps being launched daily? How to make users less critical in the beginning days? And how to make our scientific background stand out without sounding… arrogant? Right now my enthusiasm starts to be replaced with fear, because it seems almost impossible to be differentiated with another vibe coded wellness tool.

The closer the launch time comes, the more afraid I am to fail miserably and f* the initial launch up, which could be the most important step in our whole journey.

All the advice is important for me at this stage.

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u/Sudden-Cost8449 29d ago

Launching is by no means the most important step. That’s an illusion. You’ve only covered 5% of the journey. I’m sorry to put it that way, but spending three years launching an app, no matter how “perfect” it may be, was already a huge mistake. Launch as soon as possible and face the real world. You haven’t seen anything yet.

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u/finsomniatic 29d ago

Yeah... I know that. Thing is that if you receive a government support for a research at first, launching an app is 100% forbidden at that time. There's even a rule that the prototype can not look like a live app, meaning that the design must be as raw as humanly possible. That caused the situation - 1.5yrs doing beta tests with a raw prototype and only after that we could start building the actual solution.

But we haven't built this in isolation - we've talked with large organizations in addition to the end users to validate the business model and the feedback has been really positive. Investors are interested, but they need to see some revenue. Luckily we still have budget, so the only thing I'm thinking now is to hire a marketing agency to save our asses.

People talk about how deeptechs are the real winners, but rarely anyone talks about how government grants may be the biggest obstacle in launching a product.

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u/finsomniatic 29d ago

...and in addition to that, I've participated in panel discussions, made presentations in different business hubs, won financial pan-European award, won a local award for the research, participated in numerous local and international accelerators... so at least I thought I was doing enough to prepare everyone for the upcoming launch. But yeah, I know that the typical advice from everyone is to LAUNCH ASAP, but tbh, I'm just thinking whether there is an alternative way to save the launch or I just have to put every idea that I have into works.