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Receiving EU grants is not easy - and everything starts with a proposal to one of the many programmes. The challenge is to write a better proposal than most of the other companies within the member states of the EU. Funding quotes are low. Only 10 to 20 percent of all proposals are funded. And you only know it at the end - about 3 months after a nail-biting fight with the deadline and some missing information from one of your project partners somewhere in Europe. Is it really possible for an SME to start from the scratch and to receive funding with the first try? Is there enough help from national advisors? How small may an SME be to be still successful? Read the true story of a real proposal with all information including large parts of the proposal itself.

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Thomas M. Schmidler works in the information technology business since 1984. Starting with software development, he early changed to software project management and staff leadership. He works and lives in Graz, Austria.

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