Data Market Services: accelerating the European Data start-up ecosystem offering the best emerging companies free support

The best European SMEs and start-ups working with data will access to free support services with the Data Market Services new initiative. This European project, supported by the Horizon2020 Research and Innovation Programme, will count with 3M€ to support the most promising companies in the EU Member States. The project is led by ZABALA Innovation Consulting (international company headquarered in Spain and Brussels). The kick-off meeting of the project has been recently held in Brussels.

The main goal of the project is transforming the European start-up ecosystem to overcome the barriers of data-centric SMEs and start-ups in data skills and entrepreneurial opportunities. In order to support the participant entities, the Data Market Services bring together twelve free support services in five categories (fundraising, acceleration, standards & legal, promotion and data skills). To achieve this, 150-data-based companies’ portfolio in 3 different cohorts from 2019 to 2021 will be built.

The project emerges as an excellent initiative to change the context in Europe, nurture the entrepreneurship and launch the emerging companies onto the international markets. The Data Market offers incredible opportunities to help Europe boost the adoption of new technologies, overcome the data skills gaps among the high qualified workers of the tech companies, and guarantee the standardization in this field. The reliable legal framework and consequently the privacy and data protection with the fulfillment of the GDPR will also guarantee the success of the companies.

How does the process work?

Firstly, The Data Market Services will scout and engage with SMEs and start-ups from all parts of EU being in the data market (2,000 potential candidates to offer the services to 150 that will be selected through three different cohorts, 1 per year). Incubators like the European Data Incubator, Data Pitch,  or the companies listed at the Innovation Radar managed by the European Commission will feed the initial portfolio of companies.

Secondly, the initiative will provide the 12 free services. They will be the core element of the project. At the same time, the consortium will monitor the outcomes and analyse the status of the data-market SMEs and start-ups in Europe. And last but not least, they will leverage the reinforcement of the community thanks to the engagement with other existing initiatives like the FIWARE community or the Big Data Value PPP, and events like Pixel Camps in Portugal and The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam.

The expected impacts of Data Market Services are to demonstrate success stories among our portfolio as a result of the services offered by the initiative and at least 50 clients (e.g. start‐ups, SMEs) served annually in partner finding, matchmaking, venture capital raising, training, coaching etc. and to improve standardisation and interoperability especially in the context of cross-sector applications and technology convergence.

ZABALA will ensure a successful management and execution of the Data Market Services project. ZABALA will be in charge of the planning and execution a set of defined services oriented to data SMEs and start‐ups with the collaboration of different partners:.:

• Accelerator and incubators: Bright Pixel (Portugal), Spherik (Romania), Spinlab (Germany), The Next Web (the Netherlands).
• Communication Agency expert in the field: Ogilvy (Spain).
• University of Southampton (UK): Southampton Data Science Academy and European Data Science Academy (EDSA).
• Intellectual property and standardisation: IPTECTOR (Denmark), W3C (through ERCIM in France).