Agentic UK small business grant identification, eligibility assessment, and application drafting service for SMEs (1–50 staff) seeking Innovate UK, local authority, and sector-specific grant funding. Replaces the grant consultant or innovation advisor who charges £500–£2,000 to identify relevant open schemes, assess eligibility, and draft the application narrative — a service most small businesses cannot afford but desperately need as grant programmes proliferate post-Autumn Budget 2024.
Why now
UK Autumn Budget 2024 and subsequent Spring Statement 2025 confirmed continued UKSPF, Innovate UK, and Made Smarter grant programmes with new application windows opening Q1–Q2 2025. Gov.uk funding finder and Innovate UK communications confirm multiple live schemes with SME eligibility. https://www.gov.uk/search/news-and-communications?keywords=innovate+UK+grant+funding+2025
Source signals
https://www.gov.uk/search/news-and-communications?keywords=innovate+UK+grant+funding+2025
Commercial value
Innovate UK alone distributes £900m+ annually; hundreds of additional local growth, UKSPF, and sector grants exist. Grant consultants charge 5–15% of award value or £500–£2,000 flat for application support. Target: 50,000+ UK SMEs actively seeking grant funding. ACV: £300–£600/yr subscription or £250 per application pack. Budget line is explicit — grant consultants are a standard cost for any SME pursuing public funding.
Go-to-market
Target r/Entrepreneur and r/smallbusiness UK threads where founders ask about grants. Build a free 'grant eligibility checker' as lead magnet — converts to paid application pack at £149. Partner with 2–3 local Growth Hubs (government-funded SME advisors) who refer businesses needing application support. First 10 customers via LinkedIn outreach to founders who have posted about funding challenges.
2-week MVP
Single feature: business intake form (sector, size, postcode, project type, R&D spend) → LLM cross-references a manually curated list of 20–30 currently open UK grant schemes → outputs a ranked eligibility report and a draft 500-word application narrative for the top match. Cut: no live database integration, no automated scheme monitoring, no submission. Manual step: founder maintains the grant scheme list weekly. Day-1 outcome: a small business owner pays £99 for a shortlist of grants they qualify for plus a draft narrative they can submit — saving 4–8 hours of research and a £500 consultant fee.
Agent score
0.58 — Commercial score reflects genuine willingness to pay (grant consultants are a real budget line) but ACV is modest per transaction and churn risk is high once a customer wins or abandons a grant cycle. Speed score is very high — the MVP requires only a curated spreadsheet of open grants, a form, and an LLM prompt, shippable in under a week with first customers reachable via Reddit/LinkedIn without paid ads. Defensibility is the weakest dimension: the grant database is public, and a well-funded competitor could replicate quickly; the moat only builds if proprietary success-rate data and scheme-specific templates accumulate.
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Solve Studio is an independent AI automation and product studio founded by James Pates, working out of Brighton and London with clients across the UK. Get in touch at james@solve-studio.co.