A few months ago, after coming back from the FIWARE Roadshow organized by FINODEX, we asked Miguel García if it was really possible to create new opportunities for entrepreneurs –within and outside Europe– and doing so upon a free material, as the Open Data is.

The success of FINODEX acceleration process illustrates that it is indeed quite likely to build a business around Open Data. Starting by having a disruptive idea and a passionate and versatile team, plus the support and expertise of mentors and tutors and the appropriate tools at hand, Open Data can be not only arise as the free raw material to use, but also as the mark that will distinguish a good project from the great, unique one that investors are always in the search of.

For Manuel Fandiño (Isetic), by incorporating it to the solutions that Isetic was developing, they reached a turning point for their company: “That was something not so clear on our business plan” –Fandiño explains. Although they already knew they were needing to offer their clients a specific type of data, the advent of the Open Data turned out to be decisive– “we have found a lot of new possibilities to improve our service, thanks to the implementation of external Open Data in it”.

“Open Data is a resource that is free for entrepreneurs and for everyone on Earth”. Miguel García makes it clear: “It can provide an innovation source for many companies”.
A source of change for good and for the better then. An open and innovative focus has proved to be the key to succeed in the ICT sector, particularly for SMEs and startups: “The successful ones are contracting people, creating new jobs and fostering the economy… so yes: we are changing people’s lives” –asserts Garcia.

But the value added that this kind of data can provide is not always on the surface, as Hendrick Luuk clarifies: “You really have to be creative to extract value from Open Data”. His company, Xpressomics was one of the top three from the accelerator first open call. “We drill down to the bottom and extract all the meaningful information that we can” –continues Luuk– “the data certainly has value, but if its lying in these data silos in a raw form, nobody is able to extract value from it”.

Angel Martínez, from Fruitwatcher, expand on how the data can be used: “We get Open Data sources, we get that data and match it with ours and we create value added services for free, we might say” –he then shares his vision of the forthcoming impact of the Open Data– “in the future it will be even greater. And the more sources of data there will be, the multiplied more services that will exist”.

FINODEX has now reached the last phase of its acceleration process. But that is not stopping them or slowing down their activity, not even a bit. Recently they been promoting the startups from their second call and, within the Demo Day in Trento, the best three “pitches” were chosen and prized. By the end of the summer the winners of the second call will be made public ending the process of acceleration which started in June 2014.

The International Open Data conference will be the last milestone of this open data accelerator. The next 4th of October FINODEX and its top startups will guide a pre-conference event in which final results of the acceleration will be shown together with the success stories from the accelerated companies.

The support from FINODEX is continuous and has been going all the way, from the first business idea and the stages when each project starts working with Open Data, to the final moment when each solution and service is completed and ready to enter the market.

The moment is now: “Having a set of tools that are free to use and reuse… that gives a lot of value to the project” –Miguel García says. And such value is enriching not only the particular projects, but the complete community, the technologies and the trusted brand that FIWARE is becoming: “FIWARE is here to stay and Open Data is going to be an enabler to that” –concludes Garcia.

The complete #myFIWAREstory about Open Data and FINODEX is now ready to be shared.

This is our story, which is yours?