Startup Grind is the biggest community of entrepreneurs, powered by Google for Entrepreneurs. Our mission is to help every entrepreneur in the world. We do so by hosting a monthly recurring event and inspiring, educating and connecting entrepreneurs. The Barcelona chapter was granted the "Best Chapter of the Year" award in 2016, with an average assistance of +130 attendees per event, having held over 50 events since April 2014 and helping local entrepreneurs to take their projects to the next level.
This event will be divided as follows:
1. First, we have an open mic session where every attendee may come on stage to ask for help for his/her startup for a maximum of 30 seconds. Keep your pitch sharp!
2. We'll have a round of quickfire interviews with four Barcelona-based serial entrepreneurs entrepreneurs to learn as much as we can from them in... 5 minutes each! They will be Cecilia Tham (MOB, FutureFunded), Vincent Rosso (Consentio), David Tomàs (Cyberclick), Helena Torras (B-wom, Pao Capital).
3. We will then move into an experts panel with Pere Vallés (Scytl), Ingrid Verschuren (Dow Jones), Mar Alarcón (SocialCar) and Marc Vicente (ex-Rakuten), hosted by our Chapter Director Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit, preceded by a keynote of a summary of four years at Startup Grind Barcelona.
4. A networking session where attendees talk to each other freely over delicious beers and catering. There's no Startup Grind event where you won't leave with new friends and really interesting connections.
Follow #SGBCN, the official Startup Grind Barcelona hashtag. See you there and happy grinding!
An entrepreneur by heart, a designer and biologist by training, and a maker for life, Cecilia is known internationally as an innovation activist in empowering individuals and organizations by building exponential communities to innovate for impact with design and technologies.
She is a serial entrepreneur, founder of multiple companies such as MOB, Makers of Barcelona, a collaborative co-working community, FabCafe, a new concept that brings digital fabrication tools to the everyday environment of a coffee shop. Her latest venture FutureFunded.co is a community funding platform focus on training the next generation of women in technology. Cecilia is also the founder of MEAT, an agency that enables companies for corporate transformation to innovate with technology.
Cecilia was a fellow at the prestigious and highly selective Global Solution Programs at Singularity University 2017 focused on applying exponential technologies in finding impactful and meaningful solutions for global challenges at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View California.
Cecilia received her master as an architect at Harvard University and a degree in biology at Emory University. She is the recipient of the prestigious Wheelwright Travelling Fellowship as well as the Faculty Design Award by Harvard University. Currently, Cecilia is a senior adjunct faculty at Parsons New School Global Executive Master for Strategic Design and Management and visiting faculty for the Social Innovation Program at Toulouse Business School.
Cecilia was a product strategy expert at Google Developers Group and a certified Google Sprint Master. She has mentored at Google Launchpad, Startupbootcamp IoT & Data, Numa and Harvard Innovation Lab. She is currently on the executive board of advisors for Barcelona Global, SWAN (Womens Angels Network) as well as for the City Government of Barcelona. Cecilia was the Design Ambassador at Hotel W.
Cecilia is a 4-times TEDx speaker, and has given talks at World Mobile Congress, Smart City Expo, IAM Fest, Challengers, SHIFT, Open FAD and 4YFN. Cecilia was a regular contributor to the newspaper L'Econòmic. Cecilia has been awarded the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 by the Creative Net. Her publication “Hackable Cities” written together with her students at Parsons New School has won the Design for Well Being Award 2015. Cecilia has been mentioned in media such as CNBC, El Periodico, Skyword, Monocle, La Vanguardia, The Australian, and Expansion.
Vincent Rosso, an Industrial Engineer from the ESME. - Paris, with an MS grade in SJSU (Silicon Valley) in 1994. Co-Founder & Country Manager-Spain of BlaBlaCar. With over 15 years of experience in the field of IT, he launched his first startup in 2006 after being selected by the NETI Program of the IE Business School. In 2009, two years later he launched BlaBlaCar in Spain. The (objectives) vision of this startup is to promote a more efficient use of the private car, and at the same time, fill a need for more economic and sustainable mobility. Business Angles and Advisor of multiples Startups of the Sharing Economy since 2015
Ingrid Verschuren is Deputy Head of Professional Information Business and Senior Vice President, Data Strategy at Dow Jones. She is based in Barcelona.
Ms. Verschuren is responsible for continuously developing and growing the Professional Information Business (PIB), while also overseeing all of Dow Jones’ licensed content and proprietary data collections. There are currently four core PIB product sets – Factiva, Newswires, Private Equity and Venture Capital, and Risk and Compliance.
Previously, Ms. Verschuren was the Managing Editor of Dow Jones Risk and Compliance, where she was instrumental in evolving the Risk & Compliance data sets as well as leading the expansion of the global research team. She has also held numerous roles within Factiva, where she focused on global content strategy and operations.
She started her career in the information industry when she joined Reuters as a news indexer in 1998. Ms. Verschuren holds an M.A. in Latin American Languages and Cultures from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
CMO & co-founder at MarsBased, and Regional Director at Startup Grind for Southern EU.
MarsBased is a full-remote development consultancy from Barcelona specialised in web and mobile applications developed with Ruby on Rails, AngularJS and Ionic. Àlex runs the sales/marketing area and is in charge of communications & growth of the company.
In barely 2 years, he's done:
- 5-digit contracts within weeks of having launched the company.
- 6-digit contracts eight months after the creation of the company.
- Grown the company (LLC) to 10 full-time employees & 5 freelancers.
- International clients from three different continents, hailing from USA, Germany, Spain, Abu Dhabi, France, UK, Singapore and Finland.
- Providers for development of the core product for some of their clients.
- Featured in press for some of their outstanding projects like the Barcelona Startup Map, among others.
In 2015, Àlex became responsible for the expansion of the Startup Grind brand in Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Switzerland)
His background in consulting & development (ex-Deloitte, ex-VASS) and his international profile helps him with the technical and the business perspective.
Founder and CEO of SocialCar, the first platform in Spain for P2P car rental. Mar, is a benchmark in sharing economy, sustainable mobility and legality. Founding member of Sharing España and board member of ADigital. Mar supports Barcelona's tech ventures as a member of BCN Tech City's board of directors. She is also a promoter of innovation as part of the Creafutur advisory board. Graduated in Law and PDD by IESE, she began her professional career at Cuatrecasas Abogados and her social entrepreneurship interest began at Grameen Bank with Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
