Evaluating only OpenData.city’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. Documented cause: No market fit.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Carles Miró and Anna Ferrer co-founded OpenData.city in Barcelona to visualize Spanish municipal open data.
FUNDING
Raised €3.4M seed from Wayra and public innovation grants to build integrations with 22 city portals.
CEO CHANGE
Founding team split over pivot to B2B enterprise vs. staying public-sector focused, no replacement CEO named.
SHUTDOWN
Company ran out of runway in mid-2019 after failing to convert any municipality to paid contracts.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
OpenData.city, founded in Barcelona by Carles Miró and Anna Ferrer in 2015, raised €3.4M to build a data visualization and analytics platform for Spanish municipal open data sets. The platform launched with integrations for 22 Spanish city open data portals. Revenue never materialized as municipalities refused to pay for analytics on top of data they considered publicly owned. The founding team split over monetization strategy in 2018 and the company ran out of runway by mid-2019.
Lesson
“Never assume governments will pay for value-add on data they legally own and publish for free.”