(Spanish version at YellowBreak.com)
“Innovation is business” its leading the 5th edition of Spain Startup-South Summit, the platform for innovation and opportunities to be held at La Nave (Madrid, Spain), between 3 – October. And everything points that it will happen like that, as the collaboration between startups, corporations and investors will center the 1,000 plus meetings already arranged for those three days. About hundred startups have been selected out of the 3,200 projects. Fifty two percent of the projects come from international teams. The selected startups are already in their scaling up stage, Maria Benjumea, founder of Spain Startup-South Summit, explains. Mrs Benjumea pointed at the importance of the collaboration between startups and corporations: “This trend shows up that the model of open innovation is setting on the Spanish ecosystem, due to an increase in the demand of fast innovation from the corporations”.
The event is organized with the collaboration of IE University and their ecosystem partners are BBVA, Wayra, Sabadell y Google. One hundred and fifty international investment funds and venture capital will attend the event. The total investment will reach $55 billion from firms such as BlackFin Capital Partners, Thrive Capital, Target Global, Beringea, Athalic Bridge Partner, Samsung Ventures, Evonik Ventures, Axa Venture Partners, Rabo Frontiers Ventures, APX Axel Springers Porsche GmbH $ Co. KG e Inmotion Ventures.
There will be time to get illustrated with important disruptive talks to shake our interest. Among the more than 200 speakers attending, we will have the chance to hear the opinion and experiences of:
· Jeanette J. Epps, astronauta de la NASA,
· Nikolay Storonsky, fundador y CEO de Revolut, que transformó las transacciones internacionales,
· Oscar Pierre, fundador de Glovo, Zikkomo y LoveltLocal.es.
· Lukasz Gadowski, co-fundador de Delivery Hero,
· Niklas Zennström, fundador de Atomico,
· Maximilian Tayenthal, co-fundador de N26.
Spanish entrepreneurs: more women and lower failing rate, more employment and fewer unemployed
The Spanish Entrepreneurship Map 2018 introduced today at Madrid Municipality brings good news for the ecosystem: two thirds of the Spanish startups are alive after their first year and the majority of them have celebrated already 2,3 years. The study has measured innovation, scalability and global horizon in 1,252 projects.
The profile of the Spanish entrepreneur is a male of 35 y/o, with university degree in engineering or social sciences, and a solid professional track. Today only one out of ten entrepreneurs is unemployed, a much lower figure compared with the ones of the crisis period ten years ago. At least 46% of the entrepreneurs have already launched more than one startup, and some serial entrepreneurs are already in their fifth project. Women lead 22% of the Spanish startups, which means four points more than in 2017, and the failing rate (22%) is much lower than the men founders´ (51%).
Today around 17% of the Spanish startups yields a positive EBITDA and the number of employees has increased from six in 2017 to seven.
As usual, the success of a startup is the team: more than two thirds are founded by two or three entrepreneurs.
enlightED, the starting point to gather education and technology to reinvent us
Technology has caused a strong way in the evolution of industry and services but also education. Now learning is no longer an isolated point of our lives, instead we have to keep learning along the time: in order to survive in the job market, we must reinvest ourselves professionally at least seven times.
That´s the reason enlightED, organized by Fundación Telefónica, IE University y South Summit, promotes the debate on the education, technology and innovation. “We want enlightED to be a starting point, not the final point”, Mr José María Sanz Magallón, general director of Fundación Telefónica said, and he pointed that global problems such as demography, immigration, and climate change will not get solved in our generation, so we must enable the children today with right tools to face them and solve them successfully.
Henry Chesbrough will inaugurate the Open Innovation Forum
October 2 will be the warming up day for the next three, intense days of the Spain Startup-South Summit. Henry Chesbrough, “the father of the open innovation”, will talk about how to bring value to the corporations.
Marisol Menéndez, head of Open Innovation at BBVA, marks the importance of the real value and the talent of the Spanish startup: “They consolidate the open innovation model and strengthen the position of Spain as a global reference with a strategic position to Europe and Latin America”.
The Embassy of The United States of America, Chamberí Valley and Endeavor España will get together at the conference IN3 (In-Cubed) along with innovators, investors and institutions to generate business opportunities and synergies between both countries on projects regarding investment, creativity, design and blockchain.
Ah! If you are a UX/UI programmer and designer willing to participate at the Hackaton organised by Ferrovial, Amadeus y BBVA en Spain Startup-South Summit, with awards over € 10,000, you may register until September 28. You will have to develop an innovative project and present it to the jury at the end of the day. Wanna take the challenge? Go for it!!!!
StepConference: helping apps to become a more integrated resident
