[flosstop]

No just startups, there are established companies who take enough of their revenue from involvement in EU sponsored projects that it effectively become the sole purpose of their business. I've been involved in a few of these projects (for a fairly legitimate firm) but you encounter the same companies over and over again.

One of the goals of these projects is often to do an initial development phase and then bring in a new tranche of companies to trial/expand what you have developed. There are groups of companies that have developed a symbiotic relationship where one of them gets into a particular project and then pulls in their fellows in the subsequent round. It is also common to see them tendering to diverse projects in the hope that one of them gets accepted and they all then pile into it.

The formal review meetings that I have attended have been extremely uncomfortable because I know that the people are on stage flat out lying about what they have achieved. Generally all they have done is some token development so provide a few screenshots for a presentation and then talk about how it has revolutionised their business whilst pocketing the vast majority of the cash.