With my University Year Abroad postponed during the pandemic, I became inspired during long lockdowns by Guardian reporting on Cambridge Analytica, prominent documentaries on Netflix and the eccentric written work of Jaron Lanier about Data Unions.

It became clear to me that our turbulent times could be eased by new forms of representation online. I founded the Data Union Café as a promise to myself to contribute to this nascent industry when I eventually graduated.

After project managing £600k of private Covid testing operations for a UK MedTech startup and interning in a Barcelona Digital Marketing Agency, I took advantage of the last of my unplanned gap year to go backpacking.

As a Digital Nomad I began converting my skills to IT system design, researching Marketing Technology and cold calling Data Brokers to build my business plan for the Café.

I carried my passion from Canada to Brazil where I eventually completed my Year Abroad Program at the Universidade de Santa Catarina to end 10 months of adventure, trilingual and ready to mingle.

Returning to the University of Nottingham to complete my undergrad in Modern Languages with Business I had the opportunity to review the academic literature on Data Unions such as Posner, Weyl and Lanier's influential papers on 'Data as Labor'and the economic history of information networks.

The Data Union Café was accepted into our university's incubator, the Ingenuity Lab, and the project attracted the attention of the department for MBA post-grad research for its contemporary nature.

Together, we have spent our summer investigating the evolving role of loyalty programs in the Information Age, the disruptive potential of Data Unions in this space and why their marriage could answer one of the most important question of the Information Age; what is our data actually worth?

Lubham has written her thesis on the experience and together we will be releasing an Industry Report via LinkedIn to summarise our findings. The true value of this work however will be available in the code of the Data Union Café digital product, coming soon.


Be careful, the Data Union bug is contagious!The Data Union Café achieves its first stakeholder and myself the honour of meeting Lubham Mehrishi as she is stationed in the company to answer an important research proposal for the UoN MBA program.

I am pleased to announce Alex Mills as a pre-seed investor and advisor to our business. With his blessing, I invested his funding in a full-stack mobile app development bootcamp.

With our product now in testing, I am pleased to announce a soft-launch date for the end of September in all major mobile app stores.

We look forward to using the remaining weeks to build interest, begin talks for an SEIS seed round, and network in the industry.