Startup Funding Platform — Every Route You Qualify For

What you walk away with

A decision you can act on Monday morning.

Not a research report nobody reads. Four things you can put in front of your co-founder and start moving on the same day.

A ranked board, not a list

Every route sorted into four lanes so the order of attention is obvious before you read a single line of detail.

A kill list with reasons

The applications you are not eligible for, and the ones where the cost exceeds the award — each with the sentence that ends the debate.

A calendar of windows

Cut-offs, rolling deadlines and the date preparation has to start — so a route never closes while you were busy shipping.

Next steps with owners

One concrete action per live route and the person on your team who carries it. Nothing on the board is a task without a name.

The real cost

The wrong application doesn't cost money. It costs the quarter.

Founders don't lose on funding because the programs are hidden. They lose because nobody checked eligibility before the team started writing.

Every founder ends up with the same twenty browser tabs. A grant someone mentioned on a call. An accelerator a friend got into. Cloud credits the CTO half-remembers. Nothing tells you which of them you qualify for today, which needs three months of groundwork first, and which will quietly eat a quarter.

Reading the program and scoping the fit1–2 weeks

Assembling evidence, budget and letters3–6 weeks

Writing and internal review2–4 weeks

Waiting for a decision2–6 months

Discovering the disqualifier was on page onethe whole thing

You don't need another list. You need to know what to do on Monday.

How it works

Three steps, and the third one never really ends.

Your map is a living board. Programs open and close, your company changes, and the map moves with it.

STEP 01

Describe the company once

Stage, jurisdiction, founder residency, product, revenue, R&D, IP, what you've already tried. Fifteen minutes — and it's the part that makes eligibility real instead of approximate.

STEP 02

Get your map

Every route comes back with a verdict, an amount you can plan around, the reason behind it, and a link to the official source. Four lanes, no scoring theatre.

STEP 03

Apply from the board

Open a route, see its requirements and deadline, start the application without leaving CloTho. Track what's submitted, what's waiting, and what just opened.

What the intake actually asks

Fifteen minutes, no documents to upload. These are the fields eligibility turns on — and the reason a generic tool gets your case wrong.

Stage & entity typeCountry of incorporationFounder residency & nationality Cap table shapeProduct & technology readinessRevenue & runway R&D spendIP statusCloud & compute spendWhat you've already applied to

Anatomy of a map

Four verdicts. No maybes.

A scored list of twenty opportunities looks impressive and helps nobody. Every route lands in exactly one of these.

Do now

You qualify today. The first action is named, and so is the evidence you already have to support it.

Prepare first

Real potential, one thing missing — a partner, a filing, a document, an entity. We name what's missing and how long it takes to get.

12-month horizon

Not now, but on the calendar. The map names the exact signal that brings it back into play.

Not a fit

Closed to you, or not worth what it costs to chase. Stated plainly, with the reason, so nobody reopens the debate in six weeks.

Realistic amount

What a company at your stage actually receives — not the ceiling in the press release.

Eligibility check

Every criterion matched line by line against your profile. Pass, fail, or unresolved.

Next step & owner

One concrete action and the person on your team who should carry it.

Cost of a wrong start

Weeks of founder time, fees, and the reputational cost of a failed application.

Deadline & window

Cut-offs, rolling windows, and how far ahead preparation has to start.

Source

A link to the official program page, dated. Nothing on the map is unsourced.

A living board

Routes move. You get told which ones.

A map built once is out of date in a month. Programs change their terms, windows open, and your own company crosses the signals you set. When a route moves lane, it comes to you.

12 March

Azure Founders Hub raised its tier. You now qualify for $25k instead of $5k. Same application, larger award — resubmit before the current one is approved.

28 March

Eurostars moved its cut-off forward three weeks. Your consortium gap now has five weeks to close, not eight. Moved to the top of “Prepare first”.

04 April

You logged pilot #3. That was the signal on your seed round. It moved from “12-month horizon” to “Prepare first”, with the three documents that go before a first investor call.

19 April

The regional SME subsidy changed its ownership rule. The clause that excluded you was removed. It left “Not a fit” for the first time in a year.

What gets checked

Six kinds of funding, on one board.

Most tools cover one. A grant database will never tell you that $150k of cloud credits is faster, larger, and closes this month.

Money

Grants & subsidies

National, regional and EU programs. Eligibility, deadlines, co-financing rules and the evidence each one expects before you write a word.

Tax

R&D incentives

Credits and reliefs, patent box, payroll offsets. Which of your spend qualifies, and what has to be documented to survive review.

Programs

Accelerators

Equity terms, stage fit, geography, cohort dates — including which ones are worth applying to and which are a three-month distraction.

Infrastructure

Cloud & AI credits

AWS, Azure, Google, OpenAI, NVIDIA and the rest. Often larger and far faster than a grant, and almost nobody treats them as funding.

Network

Communities & hubs

Founder networks, university partnerships, technology transfer offices and clusters — with the actual route in, not a promise of an intro.

Equity

Investors

Angels, funds and venture debt matched to your stage and sector, plus a straight answer on whether raising now is your strongest move.

The honest comparison

Why not just ask an AI, or search a database?

Both give you names. Neither can tell you whether your company clears the rules — which is the only part that decides anything.

Asking a chatbot

Doesn't know your cap table, residency or entity — the exact fields eligibility turns on
Confidently states terms and deadlines that changed last year
Can't tell you whether the window is open right now
Never tells you to skip something

A grant database

Returns everything matching a keyword, weighted equally
Covers grants only — no credits, incentives, accelerators or communities
Leaves you to judge fit, cost and order yourself
Charges by the month for a search box

CloTho

Checks every criterion against your actual company profile
Six funding types on one board, sourced and dated
One verdict per route, and the next step with an owner
Paid by you, not by the programs — so it can say no

The lane nobody else builds

A negative answer saves more than a positive one.

We take no percentage of what you raise and we don't write your applications. That's why the board can tell you to walk away — and why “not a fit” is usually its most valuable lane.

Hidden disqualifiers. Programs whose rules quietly exclude your cap table, your residency, or your entity type.
Expensive equity. Accelerators that want a share you shouldn't give at this stage.
Negative-return grants. Applications that cost more in founder time than the realistic award.
Premature rounds. Raises that would price the company before the result that justifies the price.
Out of scope. Anything needing a legal, tax or sanctions opinion — flagged as exactly that, never guessed at.

Fit

Worth your time, or not.

We'd rather you self-select out now than discover it after the intake.

✓ Built for you if

You have a product, a pilot, revenue or real R&D — something checkable
You're pre-seed through Series A and deciding what to raise, and whether to raise at all
You're spending real money on cloud, compute or engineering
Your eligibility is complicated — foreign founders, multiple entities, cross-border operations
You want the shortlist and the kill list in the same view

× Not for you if

You have an idea and want somebody to brainstorm with
You're looking for free money with no application work on your side
You want a guarantee of funding, a buyer, or an intro
You want someone to write the applications for you — we deliberately don't
You need a legal, tax or immigration opinion

Who makes the call

I spent fifteen years deciding where money goes. Now that judgment is in the product.

I ran budgets up to €7.2 billion. I bought technologies and companies, applied for grants, negotiated with governments, and built the partnerships that changed what a business could reach.

In that work, finding a program was never the hard part. The hard part was knowing whether the company in front of me actually cleared the rules, what evidence it was still missing, and — most often — when a route was worth stopping. Nobody is paid to tell a founder that.

CloTho is those checks, run on your company, without needing my calendar. Built by a founder, for founders who'd rather know on Monday than find out in June.

Svetlana StepanenkoFounder, CloTho · CIMA LinkedIn

15+: years in finance and capital allocation
€7.2bn: scale of budgets managed
CIMA: chartered management accountant

How we know

A verdict is only as good as the source under it.

Every route on your board carries the page it came from and the date it was last checked. If we can't source it, it doesn't go on the board.

Official sources only

Program pages, agency portals, statutes and published guidance. Not blog roundups, not aggregator listings, not last year's PDF someone reposted.

Every route is dated

You see when each one was verified. A rule checked in January and a rule checked last week are not the same fact, and the board doesn't pretend otherwise.

Re-checked on a schedule

Terms, ceilings, eligibility clauses and cut-offs are monitored. When one changes, the affected routes move and you're told which.

Where we stop

Tax positions, legal structuring, sanctions and immigration are flagged as requiring an opinion we're not qualified to give. The board names the blocker; it never guesses past it.

Coverage in the beta

United StatesFederal programs including SBIR and STTR, state and regional tech grants, R&D and payroll credits, cloud and AI credit programs, accelerators.

United KingdomInnovate UK and national competitions, R&D relief schemes, patent box, IP audit funding, regional growth and matched funding, accelerators.

EU & EEAHorizon Europe, EIC, Eurostars, national and regional agency programs, member-state R&D incentives, university and cluster partnerships.

EverywhereCloud and compute credits, model provider programs, founder communities and global accelerators — these don't stop at a border.

Cross-borderThe rules that turn on founder residency, nationality, entity type and shareholding — the ones that quietly disqualify companies after twelve weeks of work.

How we make money

Nobody on the board is paying us to be there.

The business model is the product guarantee. It's the reason a route can be marked “don't” without anyone losing revenue over it.

No success fee

We take no percentage of any grant, credit or round you close. What you raise is yours.

No commission

No program, fund, cloud provider or accelerator pays for placement. Nothing is on your board because it pays to be.

No application services

We don't write your applications, so we never benefit from you filing more of them.

Questions

Before you ask.

How fast do I get my map?

The intake takes about fifteen minutes and the first board comes back the same day. After that it's live: when a window opens, a rule changes, or your company crosses a signal you set, the affected routes update and you're told which ones moved.

What if there's nothing for my company?

Then the board says so, and that's a real answer worth having early. Some companies are too young, too small, or in a jurisdiction with thin programs. We'd rather show you an honest four-route board than pad it out to twenty.

Is this just a grant database?

No. A database returns everything matching a keyword. CloTho returns a decision: which routes you qualify for today, which need work first, which to watch, and which to drop — checked against your company, not against a search term. It also covers R&D incentives, cloud credits, accelerators, communities and investors, which grant databases don't.

Do you write applications or make introductions?

No, and that's deliberate. The moment we're paid on outcomes, we lose the ability to tell you to skip something. The board takes you to the door with the requirements, the deadline and the evidence list. Walking through it is yours.

Do you guarantee funding?

No. Nobody honestly can. We guarantee the delivery — a complete, sourced, dated map of the routes open to your company — never the decision of a program, fund or agency on it.

Which countries does it cover?

The beta covers the US, UK, EU and EEA, including the programs that turn on founder residency and entity structure — the part that trips up every matching tool. Tell us where you're incorporated when you request access and we'll prioritise accordingly.

What happens to my company data?

It builds your map and nothing else. It isn't sold, isn't shared with programs or investors, and isn't used to train anything. Delete it and your account at any time.