So, as featured in this week’s cover story, an expert sounding board for your next big idea must be pretty appealing.

Schemes like GrowthAccelerator are nothing new and rely heavily on the quality of the individual mentor that you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to be partnered with - but at least this time participants can select their coach.

Of course, as can tend to be the case with government-backed initiatives, there are a few unanswered questions, the key one being: what is the cap on the level of support?

According to Grant Thornton, there isn’t one, and allocation will depend on the recommendations of the mentor after the initial consultation and – presumably – the growth potential. However, if that’s really the case, you have to wonder how far £200m will stretch in terms of supporting a potential 26,000 firms – a quick bit of math suggests, after the £2k training grant, you’re probably looking at support just north of £5.5k.

But I guess when you consider the fact that some companies won’t require that much support, and that a substantial number might not apply in the first place, even though the application process sounds fairly straightforward, perhaps that figure could be a lot higher.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch, let alone free advice. For a negligible one-off fee, though, the bigger question is – what have you got to lose?