Why We're Building ZenGrants in Public

For decades, the UK grant funding market has operated behind closed doors, with consultancies routinely charging £3,000 to £15,000 upfront plus 10% to 20% in success fees. High upfront consultant retainers, hidden scoring criteria, and opaque application advice have left early-stage founders tackling complex public funding schemes in the dark. We're building ZenGrants in public to change that.

At ZenGrants, we believe technology should be built alongside the community it serves. By sharing our progress, design decisions, and engineering challenges openly, we aim to eliminate information asymmetry and restore trust to the R&D funding process.

Restoring Transparency to Grant Funding

Traditional grant writing consultancies often rely on information asymmetry to justify high fees. Startups are routinely asked to pay £3,000 to £15,000 upfront, plus 10% to 20% in success fees, with no guarantee of funding. This places all financial risk onto bootstrapped founders.

Developing our platform in public gives founders complete visibility into our roadmap, compliance logic, and feature updates. Instead of guessing how an algorithm checks your application, you can inspect our exact scoring parameters before committing your time.

Our Three Core Commitments

1. Zero-Data Training Guarantee

Your IP stays yours. Always. Unlike public AI tools that train on user prompts, ZenGrants uses enterprise APIs with no-training terms. Your project drafts, patent data, and financial forecasts are encrypted in transit and at rest in UK datacentres, and are never used for model training.

2. Competition-Specific Scaffolding

Built directly around assessor mark sheets. Generic AI fails at grant writing because it produces plausible-sounding fluff that misses the rubric. ZenGrants maps prompts directly to published UKRI and Innovate UK criteria, word limits, and scoring guidelines.

3. Runway Protection Pricing

Fair, fixed pricing with zero success fees. Early-stage startups shouldn't have to sacrifice pre-seed capital or surrender equity to apply for public grants. ZenGrants plans start from £55 per month, a fraction of a single consultant's retainer.

What We Share vs. What We Protect

We regularly publish updates on our product development, design choices, waitlist milestones, and funding trend analyses. However, user privacy is absolute: we will never share application drafts, startup metrics, or personal data.

By building in public, we are creating a resource where UK innovators can share what works, cut through complex funder rules, and secure the non-dilutive capital needed to bring breakthrough technologies to market.