The Startup Hunter Diary — A Month Long Trip Around Europe — Episode 17, 18, & 19
Barcelona
Back to the grindstone!
So I made it to Barcelona straight out of the Oktoberfest.
Stopping in Barcelona for a European start-up tour is mandatory. Though for us it is a little bit special. After all we already have a team there. Barcelona is where we have our product team.
So first stop obviously was to come by our BCN office to say hi and grab a teammate to tour the city.
There are few spots in Barcelona that you have to know if you are looking after startups: the Media-Tic, BarcelonActiva, and Pier01. Obviously there are much more than that, but those are the big ones.
We started our day at the Media-Tic building, to get a first flavor of the local ecosystem. This huge building hosts a bunch of start-ups, co-working spaces and accelerators. We got to meet with Itziar from Barcelona Activa, which works at connecting the Barcelona tech scene and empowering Barcelona as a major tech hub in Europe. She kindly introduced us to Richard from StartupBootcamp Barcelona, who took some time to talk to us although he was in a big rush for the preparation of the new batch of IoT and data start-ups — we’ll sure keep in touch with them!
We then headed to the main building of Barcelona Activa where we got to meet with the Seedrocket accelerator. Barcelona Activa is the main startup program supported by the city of Barcelona. So if you are an entrepreneur looking to deep dive in Barcelona, you should go talk to them.
It was a good first day but our highlight was at the Startup Grind event. I am a big fan of the Startup Grind community and good friends with the NYC branch. So I had no hesitation about checking out the Barcelona branch.
And we did good to go there.
First we got the opportunity to take the mic and introduce OneRagtime on stage. I am almost getting good at this public speaking thing…
Same as in NYC, we got to hear an amazing speaker, and Barcelona was no exception! Our speaker for the night was Kamran Elahian. This guy is just incredible! From being a successful founder starting at the age of 26 (and you have to remember that this was decades ago) to being an advisor for 500 start-ups, his background is just insane.
I am so pumped that we got to meet this guy. He was in Barcelona because he is leading a program for a new kind of university, the Harbor Space, but I’ll tell you more about it later once we’ve met them.
Well, connecting with the Startup Grind community was great.
Bye! See you tomorrow!
We got swag…
This morning (Thursday) we met with Diego from the Ogilvy Upcelerator. We loved talking with Diego. We share the same vision as he does about connecting people in the different European ecosystems to help start-ups scale better in Europe.
We talked for a little while about all the things we could do together and open gates to each others. He even invited 2 start-ups to present themselves to us; unfortunately they had last minute issues so we couldn’t meet them. But we look forward to doing so.
For the afternoon, we wanted to visit one of the tech hubs of Barcelona: Barcelona Tech City at Palau del Mar.
First the spot is just great, right on the harbor, and it’s the host of many great initiatives. We got to admit that our timing to go to Barcelona wasn’t the best one. Indeed a lot of people happen to be at the DLD Tel Aviv, but OneRagtime is there too.
So we were just able to meet with Conector. Conector is one the leading accelerator program in Barcelona. We got to meet with newly appointed CEO, Pere Torrents. Fun fact, Pere happened to be on the board on a start-up with Josep (our CTO for those who don’t know) a few years ago. Anyway, talking with Pere was great and we hope to be able to create synergies together.
We finished the day meeting with Muriel Moscardini. She is a serial entrepreneur and ambassador of French Tech Barcelona. That’s easy, if you want to know someone in Barcelona or elsewhere she probably already know him, she has the kind of energy only few people have. Top!
Enough work, we went to grab a beer with the OneRagteam on a cool rooftop.
Space Jam!
We were really excited on this Friday morning. We were going to meet with the Harbor Space University.
Their office is literally on the water, right in the middle of the Barcelona’s harbor. This university is an alternative education program. To apply, every student needs to present an entrepreneurial project and pass a mathematical test. They focus primarily on design and tech. They don’t have real teachers. Instead they have mentors coming from the best start-ups and companies from all over the world to teach a 2–3 weeks session about a topic.
We really appreciate these new models of education, like the Team Academy in Amsterdam. We can’t wait to see what kind of entrepreneurs and start-ups come out of these programmes. And we are already invited to their demo day.
Yesterday evening, Muriel connected us with Urs. Urs is from Switzerland and is behind the Founder Institute Barcelona. We knew about FI but we didn’t knew what their programs were made of. Now we do. It’s a cool initiative, and just talking with Urs was great.
Back with the team. For the last meeting in Barcelona we were going to go with the whole squad. We went back to one of the Barcelona Activa to get a tour of the building. Barcelona Activa has actually been helping start-ups for more than 30 years!! #mindblown 😮
And a lot of great companies came out of it.
Helene now left me again, and the team went back on the development of the coolest app soon to be around. 😉
I wanted to go back to the Barcelona Startup Week. It was their last day, and it was time for the final of their pitch competition. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear great pitches there, but I got to meet with the guy who organises it. Apparently he’s a big deal in Brazil, and I really like what he does. He basically organizes a Euro-trip with a pitch competition. We’ll try to talk more with this guy.
Now it’s time to relax and enjoy Barcelona. A friend introduced me to a French entrepreneur living in Barcelona, time for drinks and to discover what’s up with the Barcelona nightlife.
I’ve still got Saturday to enjoy and then Sunday I fly to Lisbon to keep going with the OneRagtime Start-up Hunt.
If you are in Lisbon, please drop us a line, we’d love to connect with you.
Hop on the train of the most exciting startup trip ever made, and travel with us! It shall be fun.
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