Barcelona has been repeatedly appearing on the lists of top startup ecosystems for some years now, and even though we are far away from topping any, the city keeps going up year after year.
Easy to Get to Barcelona
This year, a major happening is increasing the likelihood of Barcelona going up the ranks: the direct flight between Barcelona and San Francisco. Two airlines - LEVEL and Norwegian Airlines - started covering this route in June that is already enhancing the business relationships between the two cities.
In fact, this is the main topic of the forthcoming first Startup Grind conference in Barcelona: the connection between SF and BCN, not only bound by the airlines, but they are also Sister Cities since 2010. The conference will be called Startup Grind BCN - SF Summit and will see famous entrepreneurs & investors talking about the connection between both cities, and also entrepreneurship & tech.
The Summit will garner 800 entrepreneurs from all over Europe for two days of educational & inspirational content & quality networking between October 9th and 10th, as in every Startup Grind conference so far, and will be held at the UPC Campus Nord (Espai Vèrtex).
Entrepreneurs
High-class entrepreneurs like Casey Fenton (Founder of Couchsurfing), Jonathan Bruck (Co-founder of Pocket - sold to Mozilla earlier this year!), Scott Arpajian (CEO of Softonic, co-founder of Download.com) or Francesca Bria (the CTO/CIO for the city of Barcelona) and investors like Howard Love (author of the best-seller The Start-Up J Curve), Lee Jacobs (Partner at Angelist), Peter Read (Vitruvian) or Chris Schultz (Launchpad) will be discussing why Barcelona is a great place to do business and how important is the direct flight to the cradle of entrepreneurship.
Many more speakers to be confirmed, so stay tuned visiting the Startup Grind BCN - SF Summit website.
Like every other Startup Grind conference, ours will also have a Startup Program, whereby startups from all over the place can apply to be featured during the conference with high exposure - a couple of quick-fire pitching on stage, a booth in the conference, social media love and a session of back to back meetings with investors on the first day of the conference.
The conference is proudly organized by MarsBased and will be attended by industry leaders. 250 tickets have already been sold to employees of top-notch firms like Uber, Facebook, Ford, Airbnb, Nike and more.
Why Barcelona?
Well, you know it, we know it, everybody knows it: it's a favorite and favored city in the world. Famous for the sunny weather, good food and cheap prices, it's also a fantastic city to make business in. Also, the Barcelona chapter was recently selected as the best Startup Grind chapter of 2016 continuing on a run of over 40 events in only three years (that's more than once per month) with an average of 130 people per event and first-class speakers like Kamran Elajian (500 Startups), Luis Martin Cabiedes, Vicenç Martí (Billy, Vueling), Vincent Rosso (Blablacar), Carolina Brochado (Atomico) and many more.
If you want to mingle with like-minded entrepreneurs in the best city of the world and learn how to do business in Barcelona, Silicon Valley (or both) and absorb the knowledge from our amazing line-up of speakers, make sure to buy your tickets here, as they're selling out quickly! We're currently doing a 2x1 promotion until the end of the month, so don't miss it!
Looking forward to meeting you in Barcelona!