Prototype Fund

The Prototype Fund is Germany’s first public funding program for open source prototypes. The fund supports individuals and small teams (of freelance coders, hackers, UX designers and more) to work on digital social innovation and develop open source applications. The program promotes tools in the following areas: civic tech, data literacy, IT security or software infrastructure. Each of the 8 funding rounds has a topical focus. The following themes were part of the fund so far: Tools for an empowered civil society, Diversity: Open Source for all, Power to the User, Letting Machines learn–Technologies for our futures & Commit: update system.

I co-founded the program in 2016. The fund will hand out a total of approx. 8 million Euros till 2021 to 200 projects. The program is funded by the Federal German Ministry of Education and Research.