Selection Criteria and Tips for Startups Entering “Grants for Roadmaps”

4 min readJul 25, 2022

MilestoneBased is a platform designed to address the issues of a flawed legacy startup funding system. We are like a blockchain version of “Angel List” for the crypto sector or any emerging startup. Leveraging the power of DAO (distributed autonomous organization) and smart contracts, the platform harnesses governance, transparency, automation and crowdfunding benefits to streamline investor/startup collaboration on funding for specific milestones on a project’s roadmap.

To encourage startups to join the platform, we’ve launched the Grants for Roadmaps contest. Every quarter starting in July 2022, MilestoneBased will award up to three $20,000 grants to the best startups and roadmaps listed on the platform. A total of $250,000 USD will be available to 12 startups over the next four quarters. Our judges are looking for the top startups right now so we want to give some tips and their selection criteria to improve your chances of being a grant winner.

To start with, let’s explain who the judges are. The judging committee is made up of senior leaders from milestoneBased and partner companies Applicature, (Venture builder and accelerator), Mempool Ventures, (Crypto VC firm), and a couple of other select VCs from our community with significant-sized funds. They are looking for a great business idea, a quality roadmap and team, and the scalability potential to grow into a significant company.

1. Your Business Idea

Does your idea sound attractive just from an initial short description or elevator pitch? Some questions judges will be evaluating are:

Have you chosen a great idea that’s original and few have thought of it yet?
Do you serve a specific real market need or solve an existing user/business pain?
Is the need or pain potentially experienced by a huge number of people/organizations?
Would they be motivated to solve it through your solution/giving you their money?

2. Your Project Roadmap and Milestones

A roadmap is a visualization of your product development or company development goals/milestones, and important stages plus timelines to achieve them over a future period. The judges will be evaluating the roadmap and milestones you entered on the milestoneBased platform from the point of view of being practical, achievable and logical based on the nature of your business and your current stage of development.

Every project will be at a different, but here’s some sample key components of project roadmaps:

Key goals/milestones and tasks and planned implementation dates. Reflects the chronology of achieving short term and intermediate/longer term milestones and completing underlying tasks for a future period such as months, quarters or a couple of years.
Prototype/MVP availability. The roadmap for an early-stage project often contains the development of a first prototype or the minimum viable product (MVP).
Product Functions & Features development/availability. The roadmap should outline important new features/functions and timing of availability.
Product or User Launch and Beta/General availability. The roadmap often includes key dates and the order of product roll out for beta stage or general availability, or formal company/user roll out and timing.

3. Team.

The project team is one of the most important aspects and predictors of success. The judges will evaluate this based on you/your co-founder or team’s social media or website biography, and may want to understand more in a meeting if you are shortlisted.

Do you have previous experience or background in tech or crypto?
Have you started/founded a previous company or worked in a startup before?
Do you/does your team have a variety of skills required to achieve near-term milestones i.e. application development skills but can manage finances, project management or lead others?
Do you have a high level of passion and commitment to your idea/growing it into a significant crypto business?

4. Ability to scale and grow into a significant business

Scaling a startup is not for the weak of heart! If you are shortlisted, our judges will want to meet with you so they may evaluate your potential to scale your company; here’s what they will be looking for.

Are you a fast learner, open and keen to grow personally and professionally?
Are you strongly driven to succeed and driven to make your business succeed?
Are you willing to put in the work and time required to build a significant crypto business?
Are you able to convince investors, future team members and others to be part of your project’s vision?

In addition to the grant, the winners will receive many additional benefits such as one-on-one mentoring from crypto industry veterans, discounts on services such as security audits or token/company acceleration services, and assistance with follow-up funding from partner VC firms. Winners will become a part of our exclusive community of advisors and founders and have ample opportunity to leverage their help and potential future funding offers.

But regardless of your success in achieving a grant, you should still sign up as we offer access to funding right from our platform. All companies listed on the MilestoneBased platform receive a standard white-glove roadmap and milestone listing assistance, access to the platform’s investor community for funding opportunities, and features such as the Investor Memo best practice guide.

More information and to sign up go to https://milestonebased.com/grant

milestoneBased information:

Telegram group: https://t.me/milestoneBased

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MilestoneBased

$MILE token: www.pancakeswap.finance

DEXTools live $MILE pricing info: https://www.dextools.io/app/bnb/pair-explorer/0xc53539f1aacae3a570799b84211fbffa1872e47e

About milestoneBased:

milestoneBased is on a mission to fix a legacy system of VC capital inefficiency by revolutionizing collaboration on milestone management between crypto investors and startups. We are the first company to leverage a blockchain DAO and escrow smart contract capabilities, in an automated governance and milestone/roadmap achievement management platform. Early-stage investors achieve greater capital and process efficiency, improved security and transparency, and data-driven insights, for a faster path to liquidity and monetization of deployed funds. Startup teams get access to an investor community and become milestone focused and motivated for strengthened performance. www.milestonebased.com