The Law Grants the Perk. General Santos Founders Book a Manila Flight to Claim It.
The Innovative Startup Act promised tax breaks and grant windows nationwide, but the offices that release the money and vet the applicants sit in Metro Manila.
A founder in Cagayan de Oro can read the Innovative Startup Act line by line and still not touch a peso of what it promises. The law offers registration perks, grant windows, and tax relief for early-stage companies. What it does not do is put the people who approve those benefits anywhere near the founders who need them.
The disbursing desks and the eligibility review sit in Metro Manila. So does most of the working memory of how the process actually runs, which forms clear the panel, which endorsements carry weight, which reviewer prefers what phrasing. For a startup in General Santos, that knowledge lives more than a thousand kilometers away, behind a plane ticket and a hotel night.
The upload is national. The judgment is not.
Digital filing was supposed to flatten this. You submit online, and geography stops mattering. Except the file is only the start. Somebody has to read it, question it, ask for a missing document, and sign. That somebody works out of an NCR office, keeps NCR hours, and clears the queue in an order no applicant in Mindanao gets to see.
Founders in secondary cities learn fast that the winning move is to show up. A face in the room moves a file that an email leaves buried. That built-in advantage rewards whoever can afford the fare and the days away, which quietly favors Manila-based teams and the well-funded few who can send someone north on demand.
The cost lands before the grant does
Run the math a young founder actually runs. General Santos sits roughly 1,045 kilometers from Manila by air, a two-hour flight, or close to 1,600 kilometers by road. Add two or three nights of lodging, meals, and a week pulled off the actual work of building the company. That is real money spent chasing money that may not clear, and it stacks on top of the runway problem every early startup already carries.
Compare that to a founder in Makati or BGC who walks over, drops off a document, and follows up in person the same afternoon. Same law, same forms, wildly different cost of compliance. A policy meant to seed companies across the country ends up subsidizing the ones already sitting next to the desk.
What a real fix looks like
Regional startup ecosystems in Davao, Cebu, Iloilo, and CDO have staff, incubators, and university partners who could host accredited review points and disbursement liaisons. Government agencies already run field offices in these cities for other programs. Routing eligibility checks and cash release through them is an administrative decision, not a new law.
Until that happens, the Innovative Startup Act reads better on a slide deck than it works on the ground. Regional accelerators pitch it as a reason to stay and build locally, then watch their founders spend scarce cash on airfare to reach a benefit the law swears is theirs.
The receipt is simple. A GenSan founder holds a company the law calls eligible, a grant application the portal accepted, and a boarding pass to Manila to make either one count.
