A new European Commission-funded startup accelerator, Data Pitch, is being launched today with the aim of connecting established businesses and organizations with lots of data with startups that might be able to help them unlock the value of the info they hold and thereby tackle industrial and societal challenges.
The EC says it’s committing €7.1 million into “data driven innovation” over the next three years, with €4.8 million going directly to fund startups and SMEs via this “startup-corporate collaboration” Data Pitch program.
Data Pitch will provide up to 50 European startups and SMEs with up to €100,000 in equity-free funding, it said today, as well as mentoring, investment opportunities and access to data from established businesses and the public sector — with each program running for six months.
A spokeswoman told us that Data Pitch will operate across Europe, with the aim being to accelerate between two to three cohorts per year. Startups will be able to apply for a place from July 1, 2017, with successful teams selected in October and November, and the first cohort joining the program in December.
“The ambition is to create an innovation ecosystem for Europe, where larger organizations work closely with agile startups to innovate and learn from each other, using data as an enabler to solve problems,” the EC said in a statement.
The funding for the initiative is coming from the EU’s Horizon 2020 program. And the three-year data-focused accelerator project will be delivered by The University of Southampton, the Open Data Institute, Portuguese accelerator organization Beta-i and French data marketplace platform Dawex.
If you’re getting a sense of déjà vu that’s because the EC funded a similar project in 2014, called the Open Data Incubator Europe (Odine) — also providing the same level of funding to startups to do creative and innovative things with data. That three-year project led to 57 successful projects generating €16 million in sales and investment and creating 268 jobs, according to the EC.
In terms of particular areas of interest for the new data accelerator, the spokeswoman said the program has an “open brief” and will be led by “the datasets available from data providers,” although it does…