I think what is interesting is how they recognised a real issue in the potential for corruption/nepotism and designed this issue out of the selection process.<p>I also think it was quite interesting how they had a preference for existing businesses from a commitment point of view (and probably to prevent corruption) and how they now think this was wrong.<p>Will be interesting to see the results form Phases 2-4.
Pity the Priceonomics article didn't speculate on the effect of the size of the grant. According to the article the average grant size was in the region of $50k paid in tranches contingent on low-end performance targets, which is serious funding for many types of business in a country with (non PPP) per capita GDP of around $3k.<p>Whilst it's heartening to see that these top businesses apparently didn't waste the cash, it's not especially surprising to see that enough free cash to pay 3 workers' entire salaries for 3 years significantly boosted the chances of the business surviving over that period.