To mobilize and make visible the entrepreneurial and technological ecosystem: this is the objective of Tech Spirit Barcelona, which will celebrate its fourth edition on December 12 and 13 at La Llotja de Mar in the Catalan capital. Driven by Tech Barcelona, the event will feature 140 speakers in 60 conferences, and it will do so consolidated as a benchmark for the local and international community in the technological and entrepreneurial field.
The event will place special emphasis on the state of national and international investment in this area, as well as the role played by multinational hubs. The role of Artificial Intelligence will not be missing from the debate of the technological community, nor will the relationship between technology and health, digital culture, and sustainability.
Within the framework of the event, some 500 meetings will take place between Catalan startups and both local and international investors. These will be organized by the Generalitat agency Acció, with the aim that entrepreneurs find investors, partners, and visibility, as well as facilitate their opening to new international markets.
Precisely the best projects of Catalan startups will compete for the award for the emerging company of the year, within the framework of the Catalan Pitch Competition. Also organized by Acció, it will consist of an event in which the 27 finalist startups will present their projects. The initiatives are linked to diverse fields, such as health, new technologies, and deep tech.
More than 140 speakers
Among the speakers of this fourth edition are the Israeli entrepreneur Avi Meir, who has turned the corporate travel company TravelPerk into a unicorn; the co-founder and executive president of Holaluz, Carlota Pi; the co-founder of the returns app Rever Màrius Montmany, and the managing director of BME, Jesús González.
Representatives of investment funds are also included among the speakers, such as the co-founder of Encomenda Capital Ventures Carlos Blanco; the founder and president of Galdana Ventures, Marcel Rafart; the promoter of the Common Magic fund, Sarah Drinkwater, and the founding partner of Kibo Ventures Aquilino Peña. Also participating will be the digital talent mentor at Wayra Marta Antúnez; the general director of Mind The Bridge, Marco Marinucci; the director of Bayer in Spain and Portugal, Bernardo Kanahuati, and Ricardo Macierira, general director for Europe of Tools For Humanity, which promotes the eye-scanning technology of the Worldcoin project.
The Port de Barcelona, partner of Tech Spirit Barcelona 2023, will also participate in the conferences, with its Director of Innovation, Emma Cobos, and the General Director of the Fundació BCN Port Innovation, Catalina Grimalt. The port of Barcelona will also present at a stand the BlueTechPort space, the hub it promoted in July together with Tech Barcelona for startups dedicated to the blue economy.
A decade of Tech Barcelona
This fourth edition of the event will also commemorate the tenth anniversary of the creation of Tech Barcelona, which was born with the ambition of becoming a structuring and driving association for the digital and technological ecosystem of the Catalan capital.
Coinciding with this decade of activity, the association will present, together with the international consultancy Mind The Bridge, a study that analyzes the situation of the technological ecosystem. The report, under the name Open Innovation Report, also addresses some of the most representative cases of innovation driven from Barcelona, consolidated as one of the technological hubs of Southern Europe.