[ANSOL-geral] Europe needs more successful data mining startups

[André Esteves]

E como é que se faz dinheiro a fazer data-mining??

http://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/opinion/europe-needs-more-successful-data-mining-startups/

The European Commission’s proposed reform on copyright is preventing 
young companies from using text and data mining technology with full 
legal certainty, warns Michal Sadowski and Michał Brzezicki.

Michal Sadowski is founder and CEO of Brand24 and was awarded “Best 
Co-Founder” prize in the Next Web Startup Awards 2013. Michał Brzezicki 
is co-founder and vice-president of SentiOne.

We live in the age of the digital economy. Data is everywhere, and being 
produced by everything – devices, services, businesses, users. With data 
analytics becoming more valuable than ever, it has also become essential 
to ensure that everything can function smoothly: from local businesses, 
to universities, non-profits, and governments.

The Commission’s proposal on copyright reform could lead to a mass 
exodus of young, innovative businesses moving outside of the EU. 
Thousands of the most innovative companies in Europe will either 
relocate or face extinction. It will become much more difficult for the 
EU to produce future Skypes, Spotifys or Pipedrives, and be competitive, 
particularly vis-a-vis Silicon Valley companies.

We started our companies in Poland and we are proud to still be working 
from there alongside talented European teams. Despite all the benefits 
the Silicon Valley can offer us, we still prefer to run our business 
from Europe.

We leverage a huge talent pool based in this region. We promote a 
culture of openness and cooperation EU startups need so desperately to 
compete against well-funded Silicon Valley based companies.

Needless to say, it would be a drastic, unwanted and a last resort 
measure to move our business outside of the EU.

Moreover, it is not only startups that will suffer. The Commission’s 
proposed legislation can indirectly hit many other entities that 
leverage data mining to benefit public interest.

In the past five years, we have collaborated with many universities, 
non-profits, charities, etc. and we worked really hard to encourage 
companies from the US, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Mexico, China, the 
United Arab Emirates and many others to have trust in European technology.

What we find even more difficult to understand is why the EU would 
jeopardise its efforts to support innovative businesses, particularly as 
it spends a significant amount of money in grants and subsidies helping 
the startup environment grow: many tech startups in Poland have 
benefited from EU funding as part of the Innovative Economy Operational 
Programme (supported by the European Regional Development Fund and the 
Polish government).

This programme helped us develop data extraction and analysis of text 
data on websites, or finance our first business trips to the US where we 
met our first customers. With this Directive, the Commission is pulling 
the brakes on our business after it helped us accelerate.

We all need to inspire young companies to go global. We need to show 
them that relocation to Silicon Valley is not the only possible move if 
you want to build a meaningful business. We all need laws that will 
empower them to be part of a brave new World of Data.

To be able to go global while working from France, Poland, Germany, 
Romania or the Czech Republic. We need laws that empower progress. 
Progress that is impossible to achieve if we cannot seize the 
opportunities that data mining technologies can offer us.