10Funding the Programme
10.1 Introduction
At risk of stating the obvious, money is required in substantial quantity to fund all stages of technology and product development activities. And the rate of spend increases as the technology advances in maturity along the technology readiness level (TRL) scale, usually by several orders of magnitude. In the early stages of a project, there might be just a handful of people involved in the development work, but even this will cost tens of thousands of pounds or dollars per year, if properly and fully costed. In the later stages, the potential rate of spend could be up to a million per year, even for a very modest programme and, of course, tens or hundreds of millions a year for a large undertaking, such as a new automotive or aerospace programme.
There are multiple potential sources of funding for company growth. Each source has its own characteristics, and there is overlap in terms of what each category might cover, depending on the approach taken by individual funding organisations. Most engineering companies use a combination of those listed in Figure 10.1.
| Early‐stage company or start‐up | Growing company | Established company | |
| INTERNAL | Own resources | ✓ | |
| Own cash flow | ✓ | ✓ | |
| EXTERNAL – PRIVATE | Friends and family | ✓ | |
| Angel investors | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Venture capital | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Private equity | ✓ | ||
| EXTERNAL – PUBLIC | Crowd funding | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bank lending | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Initial public offering (IPO) | ✓ | ||
| Government and other public sources | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |