The New Barcelona Post starts 2023 with a new session of the cycle The New Barcelona – Moments Estel·lars, which next Monday, January 16, returns to Casa Seat with the aim of consolidating itself as a key event in Barcelona's monthly agenda. This time we will not look for a stellar moment of Barcelona rooted in the last century, but rather we will address one of the recent successes that has best contributed to positioning the city in the last two decades: the development and consolidation of a powerful entrepreneurial ecosystem, a benchmark in Southern Europe, which acts as the main engine for attracting talent.
To analyze the factors that have led to the emergence and configuration of Barcelona's technological ecosystem, we will have Miquel Martí, CEO of Tech Barcelona, the private association that works to reinforce the role of the Catalan capital in the international digital and technological landscape, and professor Paco Solé Parellada, one of the precursors of this phenomenon, since in 1998 he promoted the UPC's Innova program, a pioneer in the field of technology transfer and in promoting entrepreneurial and innovation culture. Journalist and UPF-BSM professor Toni Aira, host of this series of dialogues with great figures of the city, will converse with them.
In collaboration with Must Media Group, CASA SEAT and Tech Barcelona, the session will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, January 16, in the Casa Seat auditorium. To attend as an audience and also be able to ask questions to the speakers, it is necessary to reserve a place in advance. To get your ticket, click here.
According to the Startup Heatmap Europe ranking, Barcelona is the third best European city to set up a startup, after London and Berlin. In the Barcelona area, there are about 1,900 startups and it is estimated that in 2021 they jointly generated about 2,000 million euros in business, with the creation of more than 300 jobs each month.
We are facing a success that has been forged in just 20 years thanks to precursors such as Barcelona Activa, Intercom, Eudald Domènech, Pep Vallès, Dídac Lee, Carlos Blanco and companies such as Cluster, eDreams and Fractus, which gave the first wake-up calls and indicated that something new was happening. Then came the dot-com boom and the bust and hangover of that bubble that was created at the beginning of the 21st century, giving rise to a second wave of much more solid and still current projects such as Atrápalo, Scytl, Advance Medical, Privalia, Filmin, Deporvillage and Tradeinn. As of 2013, we began to be aware that an ecosystem had been created, Miguel Vicente created Barcelona Tech City and we witnessed an explosion of new projects such as Holaluz, Kantox, Ulabox, Wallapop, Promofarma, Signaturit, Red Points, Glovo, Typeform or Travelperk, among many other successful companies that have raised millionaire rounds, attracted global investors and placed Barcelona on the world map.
Consolidation has allowed the arrival of large international funds and also the birth of the first local unicorns. After closing a 124 million round, the latest company to achieve this status has been Factorial, which joins Glovo, Travelperk, Wallbox and eDreams, which paved the way.
In parallel to this process of constitution and development of startups, Barcelona stands out as the chosen city for the establishment of international technology hubs of large companies, which are attracted by the existing digital talent in the city. Nestlé, Pepsico, Ocado, Sanofi, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft or Apple are among the most emblematic cases.
Under the motto, The foundations of the tech ecosystem, this new session of the The New Barcelona – Moments Estel·lars cycle will emphasize pending issues, such as greater knowledge transfer and the need to convert startups into scale-ups, that is, into larger companies that are capable of scaling and internationalizing their business model.
Paco Solé Parellada studied Industrial Engineering and Economics and is a professor of Economics and Business Organization at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), where he was vice-rector during the period of Jaume Pagès, who asked him to design a program to support the creation of technology-based companies. "My specialty has always been to study how an ecosystem prospers: first you think it's because of location and industrial policy. But then you realize that many other things are involved [...]. A territory where there is no meritocratic culture, trained human capital, and entrepreneurship is very difficult to prosper," Solé Parellada explained to Mar Galtés in the book Barcelona Startup.
The launch of the pioneering Innova Program in the late 90s represented a significant qualitative leap in the mentality of universities. "Transfer was done, but the cycle of knowledge valorization was not completed. [...] A cultural change was needed, and we learned as we went along," the professor noted in the book, referring to the need to value internal knowledge and promote the creation of patents and spin-offs.
Solé, who is currently vice-president of the CYD Foundation (Knowledge and Development Foundation), chaired by banker Ana Botín, has combined this academic facet with that of a gastronomic entrepreneur, as he is the owner of the iconic 7 Portes restaurant.
Miquel Martí, who is also an Industrial Engineer from the UPC, has been at the helm of Tech Barcelona day-to-day since 2013 and, previously, had developed his career at the R&D&I Accreditation Agency (AIDIT) and Biocat. Tech Barcelona is the independent, non-profit association that works to consolidate Barcelona as an international technological and digital hub.
Created in 2013, it represents more than 1,200 companies and has more than 70 partner organizations. The association's objectives are to foster talent, support entrepreneurship, attract investment, and improve the competitiveness of companies. Currently, its efforts are focused on the Urban Tech Campus project: a network of unique connected buildings so that innovation and technology integrate into the city, involve, and coexist with its citizens.
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