Dominic Hallas, Executive Director at Coadec, on advocating for Covid-19 grant schemes for startups

This week Carlos is joined, remotely, by Dominic Hallas, Executive Director at The Coalition for a Digital Economy (Coadec), to discuss his work liaising between policymakers and the tech community, and the role Codec is playing in helping startups navigate these uncertain times. After entering local politics at a young age in Leeds, and running a project in Delhi for the Bloomberg Foundation, Dom took the helm at Coadec in 2018, an initiative founded exactly ten years ago by pillars of the tech ecosystem Jeff Lynn, founder of Seedrs and Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch. Right now the government has issued a series of different grant schemes to help businesses overcome Covid-19 related challenges, none of which apply to startups. In this session, Carlos and Dominic discuss the barriers preventing public administration from understanding the needs of the tech ecosystem, both in these specific challenging times and more broadly, and how Coadec’s new project ‘Save Our Startups’, is advocating for new grant schemes tailored to the needs of venture-backed businesses that do not fit the criteria for COVID-19 relief schemes currently provided by the government. Tune in to hear how you can support Coadec right now in advocating for coherent liquidity packages for tech startups and how founders voices can contribute to help Coadec bring specific issues facing the startup ecosystem to the government’s attention. Dominic Hallas - twitter.com/Dom_Hallas Coadec - www.coadec.com; https://twitter.com/Coadec Save Our Startups - www.saveourstartups.co.uk; https://twitter.com/saveourstartups Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - https://seedcamp.com