Business Lounge

An opportunity for app makers, investors and open data experts to come together and turn open data into sustainable businesses. Apps for Europe brings an investor network to already existing competitions or hackathons across Europe. The objective? To increase the number of projects moving from an app concept or prototype phase into a business start-up.

 

Your app will be exposed to companies, government agencies and individuals who can provide invaluable expertise, support and tutoring to help you turn your ideas into a business. On top of this, you may be picked from your local Business Lounge to pitch your app to a network of European investors at FutureEverything in February 2015.  

 

It's a great opportunity to connect to the open data entrepreneurial community. Whether you're an investor, an accelerator or in some other ways interested in applications emerging from open data the Business Lounge gives you an chance not only meet interesting startups, but also each other. 

 

Neelie Kroes herself has been promoting the economic potential of open data for many years, estimating the economic value to be billions of euros. Open data is an invaluable resource for the European economy. This summer the European Commission passed legislation mandating governments throughout Europe to open up their data.

 

Starting as an activist movement - attracting 'hackers' to work with the limited data that was available - open data has become a subject of policy for many cities in Europe. Not only has the amount of data that is available grown tremendously, the quality of the data is increasing even more. Projects like CitySDK are creating easy accessible output of data through API's, making information from different cities in Europe accessible in a uniform way. 

 

This development makes it possible for developers, startups and entrepreneurs to create not only apps, but sustainable services that can easily be scaled to reach citizens in across European cities.

 

 Who are the entrepreneurs currently working with open data?

 Want to join a Business Lounge? Contact us for more information.

 

Apps for Europe tries to connect to as many local app competitions and hackathon events across Europe as possible. Is your local competition connected?  If not, inform the organisers about our network and we might be able to make it happen. For a list of upcoming open data events check our events page.