Why such a crippling policy? Like you said, many successful entrepreneurs are university dropouts. For research grants, sure, go to PhDs. But if you want a tech industry, you need to cast a much wider net than that.

Although there's also NLNet that hands out open source subsidies from the EU. That might be more accessible, although I also get the impression that the money is a lot less. I don't have any experience with it, though.