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Digita is a Brussels start-up founded in September 2018 by Tom Haegemans, Wouter Janssens and Lauro Vanderborght. The founders of Digita are advised by several industry veterans such as Pieter De Leenheer, Ingrid Gonnissen, Regis Verschueren, Ruben Verborgh and Dirk De Bot.

Our vision is a Solid-based world wide personal data web in which each person has a virtual data vault to manage his or her personal data and privacy. To achieve this goal, Digita believes it is paramount to have the support of large organisations. As such, Digita develops software that allows organisations to set up their own personal data intra web, connect to the world wide personal data web and easily build applications for a personal data web.

The world wide personal data web is currently in its early stages, but when it is mature, we expect it to be as ground-breaking as the world wide web. The personal data web will also be, in many ways, comparable to the normal web in the sense that both give rise to open ecosystems with many actors (e.g. hosting providers like GoDaddy, trusted authorities like itsme, website builders such as Wijs, and many more).

The technology on which a personal data web is based, is called “social linked data” (Solid) and was originally invented at MIT by researchers such as Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of the world wide web) and Ruben Verborgh (a Belgian professor working at UGent/imec/MIT). Solid is an open specification that will become a W3C standard.

Digita is not the only start-up that uses the Solid specification. For example, Inrupt, a US start-up, founded by Tim Berners-Lee and John Bruce, also uses Solid. Because the Solid specification leads to an ecosystem just like the world wide web did, the start-ups working with Solid should be regarded as complementary rather than as competitors.

Please find additional information on our resources page, our LinkedIn page, or articles about Solid and the personal data web in Wired, Financial Times, Quartz and De Tijd.