The Digital Project Manager

How to Fund Your Innovation Projects Without Venture Capital

• Galen Low

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Navigating government grants and funding opportunities can feel like deciphering ancient runes, but for project leaders working in innovation and R&D, cracking that code could be a game-changer. In this episode, Galen chats with Rachel Huang, founder of ClaimKit, about how public and private funding mechanisms can be more accessible—and faster—for startups and innovation projects. Drawing on her background as a chemical engineer, tech commercialization expert, and former professional tennis player, Rachel shares how she's helping companies secure capital through automated, human-assisted grant applications.

They explore the often-underutilized world of R&D tax credits, debunk the myth that only big corporations benefit, and spotlight why smaller, scrappier teams might be better positioned to innovate quickly—if they can unlock funding. From navigating complex eligibility rules to reframing grant-writing as a strategic lever rather than an afterthought, this episode is a practical look at how to fund innovation in a fast-moving, competitive world.

Resources from this episode:

Galen Low:

Our government's doing a good enough job of delivering on their promises to fund innovation, and if not, what are the biggest barriers?

Rachel Huang:

It is just very slow. That process could take anywhere from a couple months to even years. It's also very complicated. People don't know how to write one, but in terms of the application rate and I guess utilization, sometimes it's not always there. Just purely because it's complicated.

Galen Low:

Do you see the world of like tech innovation and tech commercialization changing in the near future? And in any case, like will the little scrappy firms actually even have a place in that future?

Rachel Huang:

Whether it's going to change, I am not entirely positive. But I think when it comes to big tech companies through with small scrappy startups, the biggest theme is.

Galen Low:

Welcome to The Digital Project Manager Podcast — the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Okay, today we are talking about grants and other funding for innovation projects, where to find them, how they can help get R&D projects green lit, and how to take the pain out of the process of applying for them. With me today is Rachel Huang, founder of ClaimKit. Rachel is a former professional tennis player and chemical engineer who left her life in Australia and moved to San Francisco to become a serial startup founder. Her latest project leverages her background in technology commercialization, helping teams discover and benefit from various public and private fundings by fully automating the documentation and application process. Rachel, thanks for being with me here today.

Rachel Huang:

Hello, lovely to be here.

Galen Low:

I was so excited when we landed on this topic together. I've loved all our conversations to date. You have such an interesting background. We're gonna get into it, but it's something we don't really talk about a lot, especially on this podcast. Some of the funding, you know, project Manager, bane of our existence, right? Budget. Getting funded, using and mobilizing financial resources effectively, and sometimes even having projects canceled because, you know, funding was too limited or too constrained. But we've never somehow managed to like land on R&D funding, you know, funding for innovation and other sources. I know from talking with you over the past few weeks that you move fast and honestly, we can go wherever the wind takes us, but just in case, to start us off a big hairy question. So I'm just gonna come right out and ask. Our government's doing a good enough job of delivering on their promises to fund innovation, and if not, what are the biggest barriers you see connecting government grants and other R&D fundings with the scrappy startups and medium-sized businesses that are like actually pushing the envelope of innovation?

Rachel Huang:

To start off, I would say could always be better, but you know, it could always be worse. I do acknowledge that there are different jurisdictions and every government is doing sort of different stuff. But just overall, the trend that I'm seeing working with all sorts of startups, our clients, is that it is just very slow. Whichever government you're applying to, that process could take anywhere from a couple months to even years. It's also very complicated. People don't know how to write one, and there are just a lot of confusing questions that you never think about on the day to day operating a business, but. This grant is asking for eligibility reasons or just trying to make it fit their criteria as much as possible. So they are doing a lot, as in, there's a lot of budget. You see budgets announced every now and then, and there's a lot of money. But in terms of the application rate and I guess utilization, sometimes it's not always there, just purely because it's complicated. The people who do take the time to apply for it end up winning. Maybe winning after a while, not when they need it. We can get into that later. So I think my overall opinion is that they're doing stuff and it's definitely good, is how to capitalize on that more for the businesses that really need them.

Galen Low:

It's funny 'cause it's one of those things that me personally I just accept, especially here in Canada, we're like, okay, everything's gonna be a slow bureaucratic government process. That's just the way it is. It's complicated. You need a guide for the guide to actually figure out how to apply for a thing. But everything's moving really fast right now. There's urgency behind it. I did a lot of work in like public sector, so I like I get the whole being kind to taxpayer dollars. You know, there needs to be some rigor involved, but yeah, if I'm picking up what you're putting down could be a little faster to make the innovation actually happen. Yes, there's gonna be bad actors and people trying to grab up the money even if they aren't eligible. So some rigor is needed. I think it's a really good point that like could be a little faster.

Rachel Huang:

And could be a little more clear what they're actually looking for, how to get it.

Galen Low:

Right? It's okay the evaluation process, but shouldn't need a decoder ring to actually get through the application. All right. Let's zoom out a bit because I mentioned earlier you have a very interesting background. I think it's very interesting. Your background is actually in tech commercialization and your story beyond that and before that is also very interesting. Can you tell us how you went from pro tennis player to tech startup founder, and also like what your role and your experience has been in like tech commercialization?

Rachel Huang:

Thank you for finding my experience interesting. I was six years old when I first held a tennis racket and decided to go pro because that's what you do. At 10 years old, I moved all the way to Australia and started training every single day and playing tournaments on the weekend. I got to top 102, I think. I don't remember my exact ranking in Australia women's tennis when I was 15 and started playing global tournaments, but I got injured like a lot of players do, and I pivoted into studying chemical engineering and biomedical science. While in engineering school, undergrad, I fell into entrepreneurship through an engineering competition. We designed a wind turbine. And people loved it. And we got funded into an accelerator program when I was 18, and that was how I found my passion, which is to solve problems and solve it fast, and solve meaningful problems for people. Since then, I've been in and outta startups, did consulting, doing co-founder as a service for a handful of startups until I landed onto my most recent research commercialization project. That was in wastewater. So it was a university research using my chemical engineering abilities. I was helping commercialize that wastewater technology through the process. I didn't expect it to be that slow and you needed to get a lot of people on board and you needed to say the right thing to different stakeholders. So that was kind of, you know, like first taste into being a project manager. That was really challenging, but also great experience to have. I decided to infiltrate the tech transfer office because that was one of the stakeholders I had to convince. I ended up landing a job there and worked there for a year, and at the end of the day it was just not for me. It was a mix of rate quit and calculated withdrawal, I would say, because like rate quit is, you know, you hit a wall and you just decide. Okay. After all these years, it's not worth it and just say, okay, it's time to go. But it was also a calculated withdrawal because after so many years, if it was going to move anywhere, it would've already, it just didn't fit with my speed.

Galen Low:

I could see that being the theme. I was like, expecting you to say, rage quit because everything moves so slow or consciously decoupling from that role because it was just an infiltration mission anyways, for your other project. I love that transition from being a professional athlete, which I agree, like not from experience, but from the other professional athletes who are in it, not me, who I know does require that grind, that sort of perseverance, I guess I should say as well, right? What I love about this theme is like wanting to move fast, right? Where speed is valuable and in some ways being crushed by the like, complexity, the weight, the slowness of how long it takes to get stuff done. In general, right? And then stack that on top of governments not known for being very nimble. Very expedient. Is that even a word? Anyways, quick. It's not quick. Right. And I can see that now in sort of your current mission and why it's important to you to like simplify and accelerate towards funding that is meaningful. I think that's pretty great through this process. You know, the wastewater project and others. Were you applying for a lot of grants? Did you go through this process and did you secure funding through some of the available grants during those projects?

Rachel Huang:

Yeah I forgot to mention, actually, I was working at KPMG doing grants and R&D tax incentives as well in the midst of things. I didn't plan to have corporate as a big part of my career, but it actually taught me a lot. So in that process, I helped. Various multinational to startups apply for hundreds, millions of dollars in grants and R&D tax credits or returns, and that was how I learned how to write according to criteria. So in KPMG, they would have the actual questions, but also like a translation of the questions while writing, you're not actually answering what is visible from the website, you are actually answering to the underlying questions. That has taught me to never just read it at surface level. You have to get deeper and understand why are they asking it? What do they wanna see to approve it? So that was super helpful. So once I got into research commercialization, I applied that same thinking framework to start off by asking, what is this question actually trying to find out because it's not that simple anymore. So, yeah, I applied for a bunch and a bunch of grants while I was commercializing this technology. Anything from federal grants to even little organizations sometimes have private opportunities or funding applied to a bunch of them, and it was one of those processes that take up to eight months to get an answer from. I applied for one at the very start of my research commercialization process, and I failed twice because I guess the criteria weren't very clear. I couldn't accurately assess whether we did fit into eligibility criteria or not, and after two times applying for it, the third time, I was actually successful After I've already quit for my job. I quit in January and in March or something they emailed me. And said, oh, congratulations, you got your grant. And I was like, wow. I don't know. Congratulations to the rest of the group, I guess?

Galen Low:

Yeah, that part continued on, right? It wasn't like, I don't need it anymore. Sorry.

Rachel Huang:

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the rest of the group is capitalizing on that grant, so we did an exchange of ownership and that created a lot of stress for the rest of the group because I was the applicant and I was the lead investigator. The rest of them were kind of support. So we had to navigate just by how scared people were about that process. Shows kind of image that government has. It's like, oh, your lead is gone. Like, I don't know if you're still gonna get this grant or not. Right. Even the same exact project. So I did apply for a lot of grants and since then I've been just talking to founders since I quit. I was jumping back into startup land and I was doing a lot of market research to what I can help people with. It started off being in project management because. Everyone complains about project management. Everyone has something to say about it, and it's one of those really easy hole to just like fall into and go, I can optimize project management. I can do so much to make engineers life better, make project manager's life better. But it's just so big. You gotta start somewhere. You're not gonna go replace Jira straight away. You're not replacing Confluence. Asana straight away. So one of the thing that really stuck out at me during one of my early conversations was that the CTO of a multimillion dollar startup, I think there are a series a OB, they just said, I am spending a lot of time collecting documentation for R&D. If you are doing project management and you are organizing data to make it more accessible. Can you just do that for me? Can we apply it to R&D? And I said, hell yeah. We can not only, we can apply it to R&D. I can write the whole thing for you. I can make a system that writes the whole application for you and what that's gonna save you tens of thousands of dollars because at the moment you're employing a big four and they're charging you a lot of money because they can, when you are doing most of the work, you are doing all the documentation and you are writing all the applications. So I pitched that to a couple startups and everyone is like, hell yeah, I'll try it. There's no risk. You know, if you're not successful, like if we don't like what you're doing, I will give them a refund because I'm still testing. And if they're not successful, I'm happy to give them a refund and they can go back to whichever consultant they were previously using and just do it for the exact same price. And I turned it around so fast that there's no time loss. It takes as long as it takes for someone to respond to their email. So it was just. One of those things that I fell into that just completely makes sense straight away, and that's why I decided to start ClaimKit.

Galen Low:

I really love that because especially in the startup world, and I'm thinking specifically like SaaS startup, but actually any startup really, it's like you think of that the funding rounds, right? And you're thinking of like how you are building that capital at any stage of your business. A lot of the time, you know, we're talking about seed capital, angel investment, the series that you have to kind of go through and yeah, that's the game. It's the primary funding, but R&D funding is also money. It's also capital. It's oxygen in the tank that you can use to like move a little bit further faster. And I think the proofs in the pudding that, like earlier I'm like, oh, you were the decoder ring. Not only that, but KPMG has a division that is like a team of decoder rings who are looking at that application and not thinking about the questions literally, but unpacking what you're up against in terms of why are they asking that it's competitive, really, right? It's like how are we gonna have the better answer so that we can secure this funding for our clients? Obviously, very valuable if that was like the team's purpose. And what I like about this is that, you know, I think you're right. I think like. Hey, access to money. That's I don't know. I don't know if you'd say it's like gravy, like I don't know that any of your clients are necessarily like banking on sitting around for 10 months and then getting that funding and that's the core funding that's gonna make this project go. It seems like more supplemental, but I do like that idea.

Rachel Huang:

I will add to that actually. So some companies do end up getting into financial problems. Some startups I've worked with call me and say, when can we get this lodged? This is talking R&D tax, which is quite guaranteed if you are doing eligible activities. It's almost like a guarantee of funding and you get the money back during tax return. Some of them say, when are we gonna get this done? And I say, well, I can do it like in, in a couple days or like today. I can give you a. They go, oh my God, that would be really helpful. We have two months of runway. We need the money to hit the bank in two months. And I go, okay. Holy crap. Let me just expedit the expedite.

Galen Low:

Like it is the, in case of emergency break glass, like pull a trigger on some of these credits, some of the funding. I wonder if you could actually, without, I'm not gonna ask for a masterclass, but could you like, give us a bit of a lay of the land different governments have different. Credits or grants available. Processes are different. Timelines are different. Maybe actually, can we walk through it from the context of ClaimKit and what it does, how it's pulling documents together and sort of how it's like playing into the funding strategy of a business that's trying to keep going with their innovation?

Rachel Huang:

Okay, so there's like all sorts of grants. There's many different grants, and different countries have different strategies. I'll just start with R&D tax. Specifically because a lot of countries have it, and it varies between place to place. So I'll start off with the us. It's a tax credit, which means if you're profitable and if you're paying tax, you can get a deduction on the tax itself. It's not cash back in your bank, but it's still very useful because it's free money. If you are paying tax, you don't wanna pay that much tax. It's very worthwhile. Otherwise it could be if you're not profitable, it could, you could claim on payroll tax. So if you're paying employees, you can pay less on that. Alternatively, which I like a lot is the Australian incentive, which is cash back if you're under $20 million in revenue. So what that does is if you're doing eligible activities and you have the documentation to prove it, you write up this massive application form, which. If you're doing it yourself, oh, good luck. You probably need a long time to do that. But usually consultants take a few weeks to month, depending on how much documentation you have to kind of put into the application. They'll write it up for you. They'll charge, you know, maybe a percentage, five to 20%, which is like really high, and that takes sometimes up to two months or even longer, as I said. What ClaimKit does is it interprets both the legislation itself. It interprets the guideline of what is eligible, what is not, what gets funded, what doesn't, and it also has the entire questionnaire list, which is in a website. It's called the OZ Industry Portal. It will basically have all of these contexts so it knows as much as a consultant does and frames all the answers in those lenses. So what is even better is startups or companies that want to claim R&D tax don't need to do most of the documentation themselves. So they can literally go out and just exist in their day to day, have tickets in Jira, have commits in GitHub, and we connect to those sources to bring a timeline of ongoing progress on a project. So we could generate a report on a monthly basis to say, yes, this company is doing continuous R&D and this is what they have to show for each week or each month. So all of that makes the process incredibly easy for the company itself. So our clients say we're really happy to work with raw data and so this particular client has three companies. As one of them. They have a contract with a big four for three years. And one of the company is fresh, so they didn't have a locked in contract, so he wanted to try, so he gave me two of the companies and left the other company to go with a big four. As usual, we took much shorter. We were happy to work with raw data. We didn't waste time from the company itself. So the PM is actually the one that finds all the documentation, does interviews with the engineers to, you know, find, what have you been working on? How many percent of time have you been spending. Whereas we just get all of that from, you know, the source itself. So yeah, it saves a lot of time. It's cheaper and it's always there, and you can go back and check. And if you're taking a loan on that, which is another source of funding, it's R&D tax loans, you could track that and you could use that projection as a leverage to apply for more loan in the same financial year and up your spending and then get more claim back. So you're actually kind of making a profit loans.

Galen Low:

What I love about it is, you know, we started the conversation and we know that a lot of these government grants and fundings that are available are slow. The decision, the evaluation process, the review is slow. Sometimes you find out that you got it a little bit too late. What I like about the ClaimKit solution is that it shortens the other thing that you do control, which is that. It would normally take several weeks, maybe even several months, to even gather all the data and start filling out the application or build a process for continuous reporting. And to your point, there's consultants that do this because it's so arduous. And yeah, I like that it kind of shortens it from that side. Even personally for me, I remember, gosh, my son was young, I think he was like one and a half, and I spent all Christmas break filling out a shred grant. And so like when you're. Saying all these things. I'm like, that was me. You know? I was asking people questions, putting together information, writing it in a way that I thought was compelling.'cause it didn't come out that way. It was like raw data. It just said time. And like the tasks were like, did some code, you know, like it was like not tagged. It didn't have the taxonomy of like, oh, is this R&D? Are we doing something that's innovative that will benefit our country and our economy? And I spent all this time that I, I said never again, because I was like. Forget about it. I just like wasted basically my son's first Christmas wealth. He could walk upstairs in the attic filling out this, you know, shred grant. So like there's definitely pain there. I sort of wish that I had a sort of clean kit style solution. I mean, we don't have to get too technical into it, but like, this is like AI interpreting. You've got like your rule set, it's configured not to just interpret questions literally and find answers to them. It's like. If you are decoder ring, it has your decoder ring sensibility inbuilt, but fundamentally, it's just going into the systems and then generating the submission based on the raw data.

Rachel Huang:

It's taking what a consultant would do, which is, okay, here's the questions and here's all the legislation or the guideline that comes with it. Basically saying, oh, when it's asking about where are you based or how many employees you have or how many employees you will have is actually asking how much would it boost the local economy? The bigger the number, the better, like it is kind of things like that, that are very subtle. That's in the guidelines somewhere that says, okay, the grant is aimed to boost the local economy and then you often miss things like that or even, what are you doing exactly in an R&D context? Like what is your hypothesis? Then that's your hint to say you need to say it in a scientific way. You need to say, this is my hypothesis, this is the methodology I took, and you need to write it like a grade 12 science report. So there are little things like that, that we basically interpret it and say, in a ideal case, this is the structure you would take. And then we fill it in with information that's in the raw data. And we have a human in the loop. So sometimes it's me, sometimes it's another tax agent, sometimes another consultant. To review that before it goes out for submission, because we always have a human in the loop to make sure that we have confidence in what we're delivering. Maybe AI gets really good in the future. Maybe it could be that AI agent that reviews everything, but for the time being, we're definitely sticking to a human in the loop.

Galen Low:

Even though writing it like a grade 12 science experiment paper like that is exactly where I was. My role was like a bit of business development, a bit of innovation, and a bit of project management. I know that not every project manager is listening to this going, I totally fill out grant applications, but for the folks who do, yeah, that is a lot of pain saved. I wonder if we could like back it into other benefits for project leaders or I guess projects in general and just to give that some context, like I came into this conversation knowing that in my organization and many others that I talked to, there are those projects that are on deck. Waiting for funding or that are stalled because they ran outta money or it was deprioritized because we had to reallocate budget for something that was a higher priority or just too small of a budget for the thing that we're trying to get done. Even beyond time saved for project managers who would normally be tasked with gathering this information and writing their hypothesis. Yeah. What are some other ways that sort of projects benefit, even just from R&D funding? Not even just ClaimKit.

Rachel Huang:

So I think there's various stages of a grant. First is like discovering that you're eligible, so a lot of projects that are currently sleeping in the organization could be eligible for funding. The first is finding out that there is a grant available for it, which is actually a very big hurdle. Governments or private companies don't advertise it, so everybody knows. It's giving out money, so they kind of assume if you want money, you look for it. But if you're a project manager that's really doing work on the day-to-day and you have other things to manage, you are not looking out for funding. So that's the first discovery stage. What we try to do is have a good grasp over all the available opportunities and match it to our clients. Basically say, Hey, I see you're in this area. This thing came up. I don't know if it's off interest, but if it is, have a go at it. We can help you write that. So that's first stage is discovering. Second stage is deciding if you're eligible or not, and that's interpreting the guideline and going, okay, am I the right incorporation type? Am I in the right revenue range? All of that stuff, which could be really hard because the way government things are written is not always. Deliberate. We help determine eligibility of course, as well. So beyond that is deciding, yes, I wanna put my time to write this. And that's usually like where people get stuck, even if they're eligible, they're like, I am so full on, I'm working 90 hours a week, I don't have time to write another application. So we automate that as much as possible and we might ask a few questions to clarify, or we wanna get your input straight off the bat so we shape it towards the right direction. We basically cut all the writing and all the second doubt. Oh, is this eligible? Am I like framing it in the right way? Sometimes you get imposter syndrome halfway in the grand. You're like, this doesn't sound good. I don't think this is what, so we take all of that pain away and basically have a PDF for you that you can just download and go, okay. A lot of our clients go, I didn't know we could write it in that way. Okay. It looks really legit now. And the last stage is submission, which is like if you have all the answers you can submit, whether it's the form or whether it's through report. That's not the hard part. If you already have all the answers and then you wait, but all of that process it, you know, like grants are open for sometimes only two months, but getting letters of intent or like writing out all the forms or doing the budget takes literally that long, especially if you have a full-time job, you know, during the day.

Galen Low:

Yeah. It's easy to miss the window.

Rachel Huang:

Yeah. It's so easy to miss the window and the people that do put it in, even if it's less good than what you have, they get funded because they took the shot.

Galen Low:

That's really interesting. I love the call out on discovery and yeah, that is something that resonates with me. It's not easy to know about these things, just like a lot of quote unquote free money stuff. It's like, it's not flying behind a plane on a banner, you know, everywhere. You kinda have to dig for it. But I'm thinking of that scenario. I'm like, just recently had a conversation with Steven Devoe on the podcast talking about running projects, like their investments and you know, one of the things he said, he was like, if you understand the business mechanics around your project well enough, you might be able to go in and say, Hey listen, like if we can increase the budget by this much. I can increase the expected or potential value of this project by this much. And you know, I know a lot of people will be like, yeah, okay, sure. Ask your sponsor for money. Like, that's old news. But I like the angle of like, if we apply for this grant and we get it we're eligible. There is this grant. Our opportunity is now here is a, and we don't talk about positive risk a lot, but here's a positive risk. This is something that can go really well for us. If we take advantage of this right now and here's how it's gonna work, and instead of being like, I drop everything and I start filling out a form and basically file my taxes for, you know, two months and then maybe we get it. I like this like idea that's like, we have all of the raw material for this. We need some support to pull it all together. There are solutions for this. And then, yeah, we can't shorten the review process, but we can at least make sure that we shot a shot. If we do get it, that could change entirely what we're able to do to drive the outcome of the project. A lot of the time, us project managers we're like, use that extra budget to like, not have everything be insanely crazy on the project team or fill gaps or, you know, cover overages. Even just taking that amount and being like, and then we can do that requirement that we had dropped because it was just too much. It was too expensive. We can do that now and if we do that now and we're first to market with it. Then we're gonna make a lot more money. And coming back to the idea of like, yeah, this is, it's possible to make more money from this free money, but also that's the point. That's why it's there. It's because you're delivering, you're using that money to deliver an outcome that is beneficial for the folks, for the governments or for the private organizations that are offering this.

Rachel Huang:

Yeah.

Galen Low:

I think that's just like, it's such a cool. Otherwise prohibitive thing, like I would never go to any sponsor and be like, cool, I'm just gonna stop working for a couple months and we're gonna pull this off. But in this context, I'm like, yeah, that's a great use. It's a great use of AI integrated systems and just the know-how of like how the system works. Because that's the one that I think usually gets us. We're like, it's intimidating to your point, we get like imposter syndrome along the way or like, is this just fluff? Is this just BS that I'm writing to like try and get a penny? Is this like ethical for me? But I find it really interesting. The other interesting thing was around the sort of eligibility, and I think that's an important point you made, that like some of these government grants are meant to boost local economy. It's like not just for fun. It's not just to get a medal for being generous in those situations. Where we were eligible, except we don't have people on the ground there, like our team's not there. How can that affect, I'm gonna say project, but honestly any business like trying to grow? Are we talking about shifting teams to these geographies or other sort of other workarounds?

Rachel Huang:

Well, there's multiple ways you can go about it. So oftentimes grants allow partnerships. So the lead applicant needs to be eligible. So if you're looking at a grant in a specific country that you would really like to be a part of, you could look for a local partner that puts the application in, or if you are not the right type of entity, you look for an entity that is the right type, but you basically be a support in that. But you guys can talk about how much money you wanna split, what is the scope of the work each organization is doing, and that is. Oftentimes what people do to become eligible. In addition to that, there are countries with better incentives than others, and that's basically the government's strategy to attract more and more talents or the right type of organizations to be headquartered there or to have a arm there. So what I'm talking about is in Singapore and even South Korea, they have really great incentives and grants. In Germany, I know they have grants for young people to drop out of uni but not drop out, just have a pause for a year and be paid to start the startup. There are different countries where their strategy is to encourage people to do more and have more businesses because that's what the country really relies on for their GDP. Whereas Australia, we have RD tax incentive, which is really good. It's cash back if you are under $20 million. Oftentimes you can have a local Australian team that just works on R&D claims, R&D tax, so you are paying like a little over 50%. So if you're a US entity and you're hiring Offshores anyway, you could look at Australia and that's what a lot of multinationals do. If they're doing specific type of R&D, they will do it in their Australian arm because they know they get more bang for their buck. It's doable. You just have to be aware that these opportunities exist.

Galen Low:

My background's in film, not deeply in film, but you think about some of these tax credits and I think that's like a pretty safe analog where certain countries are gonna offer tax credits for large film productions to go and shoot there. I went to a university out in Western Canada where, yeah, that was a viable financial arm was like, there's always a TV show or a movie being filmed on campus. Because a Canada has, you know, tax credits available. We had skilled labor here because we've built up the failed industry around that. And it became this like viable funding source, you know, at the university level, you know, this sort of, I guess, commercialization of the grounds, right, of the property. But you can see how it is actually when you zoom out from it. A lot of folks think of it as like. Bureaucratic jump through hoops. No logic, nonsense. Very cryptic for no reason. Too capitalistic. Too icky. But I think you laid it out really well. It's like, yes, countries are dependent on their economies, right? Their GDP, they're trying to attract talent to boost economic wealth in areas where they can take advantage of that. Businesses are the same, you know, like it or not, we complain about our budgets, but. Money does sort of make the world go round, but also a project go or a startup grow, and this is all of mutual benefit. I wouldn't say maybe all sort of like even keel, but it's because it's this ecosystem of benefits. That's the game is like, it's not lying or being manipulative or you know, but the game is okay, I understand why this grant exists and I know how to position what we're doing in a way that makes sense from my stakeholders perspective. We've been talking about sort of explaining things the same thing in different ways to different stakeholders and like this is the ultimate one where it's like, okay, how can I see this through the eyes of the person who's reviewing it to approve this funding? I thought maybe we could round out. Thank you for that by the way, because I, again, it's not something we talk about a lot on the podcast, but I do think it's something that a lot of projects rely on or could benefit from. And I'm wondering if maybe to round out, I could just pick your brain about your vision for the future of innovation and also the way it gets funded, and just to kind of give that some context. What I've been seeing is like the cycle of investors using smaller startups as R&D, right? And then they gobble them up once they've proven product market fit. Or once they have viable technology, they bring them into this bigger machine. And meanwhile, it seems almost futile for smaller businesses to like go toe to toe with the tech giants, like I mentioned at the top, OpenAIs and the Googles and the Anthropics and the apples, like these mega enterprises that are innovating at scale with their own money. But like do you see the world of like tech innovation and tech commercialization changing in the near future? And in any case, like will the little scrappy firms actually even have a place in that future?

Rachel Huang:

That's a good question. Whether it's going to change, I am not entirely positive because things like that take a long time to change. It's unfair to get your hopes up too much. So I think the best way to think about it is how do you. Work with a system and the situation that you have at hand. I know that government budgets change. A lot of grants just fall for Cliff and they stop existing just outta nowhere. Maybe budget cuts may be a team has been, you know, allocated to do other things. But I think when it comes to big tech companies to, with small scrappy startups, like you say, the biggest theme is. To collaborate and make sure you're not competing on the wrong things. You need to be innovating and not touch the cake that belongs to the big giants. Otherwise, you are going to go outta business pretty fast unless there's a really strong mode that holds you super, super competitive and you think you can win. Unless you can convince everybody you're gonna win, it's hard to raise funding in a really highly competitive market. So there's a lot of grants that focused on collaboration between big companies and small upcoming startups. It's called, sometimes it's like industry collaboration. Sometimes it's like a collaborative project. It's very normal in Europe where that ecosystem is built like that. I won't comment on how fast or slow they are, but it is a focus. And I think it's just to really lean into identifying what a startup can do really well, which is like speed, which is testing things at a very low cost and focusing on one thing and doing that one thing really well. Whereas the tech giants, they have way more customers, way more features to ship, and like way more maintenance. There's more legacy codes or even this legacy work, not just software. They have to maintain and they have to have a very big team every time they do like a new project. It's gotta get signed off by all the different levels. It's gotta have all these stakeholders in it, whereas a startup, three founders, let's just go send it. That's kind of how startups should be because they find the niche that way and become valuable and collaborate with big companies, maybe have an exit.

Galen Low:

I really like that framing because I never would've attached the word collaboration to that, but it's true. And obviously some of the grants are even called that, but it's such an interesting way to look at it. At least for me, the scrappy is valuable. Like you can't be scrappy, so you're gonna collaborate with someone who can be to kind of iterate at something, but that something is a thin slice. And even just like you know, your business right now, honestly, it's one of those businesses where I'm like, Hey, I wouldn't have thought of that be, that's super niche. C is something that you can go deep and iterate fast on. If I was a larger organization, I'd be like, yeah, I don't have room for that. I don't have time for that. It could benefit me, but it's not a priority. So you're not going toe to toe with any giants, but there is absolutely a market for even your own exit eventually. If that's the plan to have it become part of that bigger system, even the big four might come knocking. Rachel, thanks so much for this. Just for fun, do you have a question that you wanna ask me?

Rachel Huang:

Yes. I wanted to ask you, you've been doing this podcast for a while now. What is the topic that you are most passionate about? What are you excited to talk about?

Galen Low:

This is my trick answer, so my trick answer is that I'm always excited about human-centered design in the digital space. That can be digital only. It can be experiential with the digital component. I am a huge fan of talking about how digital technology through projects, benefits humans to like have better lives to, you know, level the playing field to create new experiences. So that's the one that I always love getting into. And my secret trick answer is because I do the podcast, because I can weave that in. So I'm excited about every conversation because every conversation can go there. That's really what I like jamming about. Yes, technology's great. Yes, business is important, but fundamentally, all of those things it boils down to people and interactions and innovation that's going to benefit other humans. That's the big mission, not for me personally, but that's the way I see the mission of project-based work and collaboration. It fuels human progress and we can make our lives better, and I think that's so cool. That's my trick answer. I get to talk about it all the time. We talked about it today. You know, I really enjoy that.

Rachel Huang:

Yeah. You're just a broad, interested person. My trick answer to things is commercializing technology to make positive impact to people.

Galen Low:

Yeah. Well, because like, that's the thing, it's like, you know, it's the ick factor isn't there. It's not like you're not coming in and being like, you can 10 x your margin by taking advantage of this grant. You're like, how can we innovate more? Not get stuck in these timelines that are prohibitive in a world where AI and other emerging tech is forcing us to move fast. And here's this like funding source. It's like a well with a really slow winch, right? There's water here, it's gonna just take you a year to get to it. Meanwhile, everyone's out here and we all need water right away. I appreciate your angle and I appreciate you coming on the show. This has been lots of fun. We talked about a lot of stuff. For folks who wanna learn more about you and what you do and ClaimKit, where can they go?

Rachel Huang:

My LinkedIn, website, claimkit.co. That's where the product will be.

Galen Low:

There you go. I will also include those links in the show notes to your profile, to ClaimKit website. Rachel, again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for jamming with me. It's been a lot of fun.

Rachel Huang:

Thank you. It's been a lot of fun for me too. Love to come back.

Galen Low:

Definitely. We'll have you back.

Rachel Huang:

Talk about the memes, talk about the project management memes.

Galen Low:

Yeah, let's do it. All right folks, that's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies and playbooks, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.