Side note: Tyk is an awesome company. I've used their API gateway for a few years. Awesome open source core/enterprise paid model.
Many, but realistically (by experience) £500 is waaay too low to make an impact.
IMHO the problem is in the 4 to 5 digits. 3 digits can be scraped together almost trivially - a credit card, a few months of savings - but they won't make a significant difference. People who need £500 to bootstrap are already finding them.
Now, people who need 5,000 - those are underserved in the UK imho. The bank will likely give you a bad deal (if it does at all), it's too little for real investors, and it's too little to risk giving away half the business anyway; but it could still make a substantial difference, because it would allow you to pay for actual manpower at local rates, without having to roll the dice with fiverr or offshores.
This said, it's a step forward, no doubt.
It removes almost all of the downside and keeps all the upside for developers. This kind of funding lowers the activation barrier considerably.
This is the first 'cohort' for the fund, and we are open to increasing the grant size in future. However, keeping it smaller means we're able to make a difference to more projects.
Tyk also started as a side project ourselves, with founders initially working around their day jobs, before bootstrapping for a few years. Because of our own experience we believe there are viable, exciting projects out there that could benefit from this type of small scale help. Applications received seem to suggest this too.
Once we've finished this round there will hopefully be a blog sharing some of the projects helped if you're interested to see. In the meantime, thanks again for the feedback which we'll take on board for next time.
Emma at Tyk