Barcelona's Weekly Tech Update

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Hello and happy Monday,

Catalonia exceeds 375,000 entrepreneurs – and growing 🌱

A recent report showed some interesting results about the entrepreneurship culture in Catalonia: 375,956 people are involved in early-stage companies (7.6% of the adult population) and 13% plan to start a business in the next 3 years. This is an increase from the year before and almost at the European average of 14% 💪

🧍 Apparently, the average entrepreneur in Catalonia is 37. (NB: the study was only for ages 18-64, though 64 is still young!). But it could show that most are leveraging their previous professional experience and/or innovating within their fields of expertise.

⛏️ 50% of entrepreneurial activity is in the first 3 months of a business's life, so significant energy and resources are going toward launching new projects.

⚖️ Of course, a gender gap: 8.4% of men compared to 6.9% of women are active in early-stage ventures. However, a similar number of the two genders surveyed aspire to start a company, so support to bridge the gap would encourage more women to go from intention to action.

Let’s see how the numbers look next year.

Have a great week!

Startup & Investment News

Barcelona investment news

• Biotech Integra Therapeutics receives up to €10.5M from European Commission for its FiCAT advanced therapies platform

• Edge computing startup Nearby Computing gets €6.5M from Walter Ventures, JME & Wayra

• Coffee company Café de Finca closes €2.5M from several important figures from the sport and music worlds

Barcelona startup news

• Mitiga Solutions recognized as one of Microsoft’s top 3 Independent Software Vendors of the Year

• Two Barcelona startups close, with the founders sharing their learnings: 

  • Citibeats: Social understanding tool leveraging ethical AI

  • Gretel: Learnings of not finding product market fit in a ’24 B2B SaaS startup

• Legal tech & startup firm Delvy launches Drag Along Ventures accelerator

• UAB spinoff Anew Medical makes the jump to the Nasdaq

Spanish investment news

• Mallorcan luxury travel service Essentialist gets $10M

• Valencian construtech Billdin raises €430K from Juan Roig’s Angels

VC, investment & crowdfunding news

• Barcelona Activa invests €1M for CRB Health Tech's fund for digital health startups

• Dutch investor LUMO Labs launches €100M fund to support impact-driven European startups

• B2B software microfund BOOOM to invest €17M in 30 European early-stage startups

Open calls, accelerator news & incubator stories

• Ignite your potential with Northern Data Group’s AI Accelerator, with access to NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs & mentorship; deadline 28 July

• i4KIDS by Barcelona Children's Hospital Sant Joan de Déu open call for innovative solutions solving unmet needs in paediatric hospitals; deadline 11 Aug

• ScaleUp Spain Network’s 5th edition selects its 13 high-growth startups, including BCN’s Weecover & Cafler

Barcelona startup & entrepreneur profiles & interviews

• Fit Planet: Sportswear made in Girona from 100% recycled plastic bottles

• Talky: Teaching emigrated kids German through gamification

Tech & Business News

Tech news in Barcelona

• Spain allocates €22.2M to Catalonia for digitalization of tourism SMEs

• NASA returns to Barcelona to celebrate the most important tech competition in the world (+ more here)

• Catalonia launches ELLIS Barcelona, a research network for excellence, interdisciplinarity, and an ethical approach to AI

• More space to be built for startups in 22@ (as well as 1900 affordable homes in other areas)

Tech & big company news in Spain

• Hola Livi: Spotify's AI DJ is launching in Spanish

• Revolut’s growth in Spain & plans to launch its own ATMs

• Telefónica lands government contract to ramp up cybersecurity services in Spain

Good Reads

• ICYMI: What happened during the huge Microsoft outage linked to Crowdstrike that took down computers around the world

• Kfund updated Who's who: a list of active business angels, Pre-seed, Seed, Series A and Series B VC firms in Spain (2024)

• EU five-year plans promises more money for startups - so where’s the investment going?

Good Videos & Podcasts

• Chat with Dominik Angerer, Co-Founder and CEO of StoryBlok, the CMS used by Adidas, Tesla, Oatly & more (EU-Startups, EN)

• This is how we revolutionized camping in Spain: Sevilla glamping startup Kampaoh (SeedRocket, ES)

Great Events

This week:

• Tue, 23 July @10:30: Startup/Investor Open Coffee. Let’s talk Startups, Growth and Investing!

• Thu, 25 Jul: CoWorking Days annual networking pool party

Upcoming:

• Tue, 30 July @18:30: Investor's guide to things that will kill a startup

• Tue, 13 Aug @18:30: Ask Me Anything - New Business Angels Information Session

• Tue, 20 Aug @18:30: Startup Pitch Deconstruction: Polish your pitch with angel investors

• Tue, 27 Aug @18:30: SIA: Should I be Investing Globally or Locally?

See the full event calendar here & add your event here.