Welcome

Project Nexus was conceived of in 2010.

Nexuslabs Foundation was incorporated in Q4 2012, based on the Project Nexus efforts.

Project Nexus is conceived of and led by Shamrock Ventures, B.V. Dan Harple, its founder, is an American entrepreneur and inventor who is versed in technology innovation, technology start-ups, and the international venture capitalist eco-system. He is a Sloan Fellow at MIT, living in Amsterdam. His emphasis as a Sloan Fellow is the development and rollout of Project Nexus.

The Project Nexus premise is that Amsterdam is rapidly becoming the "EU Nexus" for technology innovation, which compares to Silicon Valley in the late 80's/early 90's (peak years). Similarly, Amsterdam's acceleration in this regard can be compared to the phenomenon that made Berlin a world arts center. Project Nexus sees the innovative thinking and spirit of The Netherlands and Amsterdam as a major global competitive advantage. A confluence of innovators, infrastructure, strategic location in Europe, and the Dutch cultural predisposition toward innovation, has established Amsterdam as a new digital entrepreneurial center.

Project Nexus is a major initiative to bring together the influx in Amsterdam of great entrepreneurs and innovators, access to early stage venture capital funding, and a presence for leading Universities such as MIT, to collaborate with quality Dutch institutions.

Please click below for further elaboration on:

Amsterdam

The Netherlands

EU Venture Capital Funding

At the core of Project Nexus is the concept it has named the Pentahelix. The Pentahelix is a framework and method to measure and model the growth of innovation ecosystems and clusters. The Pentahelix focuses on the network graph connections between five key elements: Industry, Government, Academia/Research, Entrepreneurs, and Early Stage Capital. It derives its data from a platform built by Shamrock Ventures called the Cluster Rank Engine. The Cluster Rank Engine is a big data platform, using network graph technology, which can zoom in on any geographic cluster, assess its ranking, the Cluster Density Index (CDI), and provide comparative analyses. The Cluster Rank Engine and the CDI are technologies developed in the MIT thesis written by Mr. Harple, “Toward a Network Graph-based Innovation Cluster Density Index.”