EIC Accelerator: how the person evaluating your dossier thinks

In grant funding, the difference between a “yes” and a flat “no” is not the idea: it is how you tell it to the decision-maker. Having sat on EIC and Innosuisse evaluation juries, we know what the person reading your dossier is looking for. Here are the essentials.

The evaluator has little time and many proposals

Whoever evaluates reads dozens of dossiers. In the first few minutes they form an impression along three axes: excellence, impact, implementation. If one of the three is not clear straight away, the rest is read with scepticism.

Excellence: what is genuinely new

“Innovative” is not enough. The evaluator looks for the technological delta relative to the state of the art and its defensibility (IP, know-how, data). Be specific: what do you do that others do not, and why is it hard to replicate.

Impact: the market and the why now

This is where many technically strong dossiers fall. You need credible numbers: market size built bottom-up (not “1% of a billion-dollar market”), a revenue model, scalability, and a concrete reason why now is the moment.

Implementation: the team and the risks

The evaluator wants to see a team that can execute and an awareness of the risks. A plan that denies risks is less credible than one that names and mitigates them. The consistency between ambition, milestones and budget is what sets a mature dossier apart.

The mistakes that get you rejected

• Vagueness: adjectives instead of evidence.
• Top-down market instead of bottom-up.
• Team without clear roles or without the skills the project requires.
• No risk management: it looks like naivety, not confidence.
• A pitch disconnected from the dossier: the evaluator notices the inconsistencies.

How we work

We start with a free grant readiness check: in a few exchanges we tell you whether and for which instruments (Innosuisse, EIC, other schemes) you are eligible. Then we build the dossier with the evaluator’s logic — impact, credibility, numbers — and prepare you for the pitch.

No one can guarantee the outcome: the jury decides that. But a dossier built by someone who has evaluated starts with a concrete advantage.

Want your readiness check? Request it here.