As we round off the first half of 2022, we take a look at some of the key projects and milestones that have shaped our work at Allied for Startups for the last few months.
Growth
We’re expanding in every possible direction! We were born almost a decade ago and our Membership growth mirrors the increased need for startup representation at the policy table – exponential. Why? Startups are an economic force to be reckoned with and policy makers have noticed. Digital rules are proliferating across borders and so is the need for startup representation in the policy space. For that reason we just opened an office in Latin America!
Latin America was the fastest-growing region in the world for venture funding in 2021 and startups’ valuations multiplied by 32 times in the last decade. Latin America had 2 unicorns in 2017 and it now has 23. Since our opening in April, we have 4 new members from the LATAM region, and we’ve held advocacy meetings with the legislative, regulators and the Ministry of Economy in Mexico. More on growth coming soon!
Policy
Key data-related files, the Data Act and the Artificial Intelligence Act, are now the focal point of our outreach. These files were proposed by the European Commission in the last months and are now making their way through the EU institutions. Besides forming comprehensive positions with our members, we’ve shared these with policy makers and also in public formats.
The online platform economy in the EU has a new legal framework with the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. We’ve worked on shaping both in a way so that startups and scale-ups have a competitive landscape to launch and grow in. Our press release on the final agreement underlines how far we have come and that it was critical to get startup representation in the process.
Verticals
The DTx Network has grown into a community of over 50 digital health entrepreneurs, policy makers and healthcare stakeholders to enhance the policy environment and support innovation in the European healthcare ecosystem. Activities in the network have ranged from pitching the HealthTech Charter to policy makers and ecosystem builders, bringing leading entrepreneurs together for the launch of our first Fitness Check, to consulting on and participating in the European Commission’s development of the European Health Data Space. As the digitisation of healthcare is accelerating at an unprecedented speed, we continue to bring the voice of digital health startups to policy-making.
We’ve also kickstarted a new Global Data Flows Vertical! Startups increasingly rely on data to bring their disruptive innovations to market, however, too little is known about the direct impact that data legislation has on startups, which more often than not have significantly fewer resources than more established players to comply with legislation. For that reason, we have decided to expand our team with someone who can deep-dive into these issues and provide the startup-perspective to data-related policy.
Stay tuned for your post-summer update on our key projects moving forward. It’s been an exciting year advocating for startup-friendly legislative environments, we look forward to keeping this momentum going as we represent the global voice of startups in policy and government.