PRESS KIT Connecting Startups Press Kit
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 Years From Now, Connecting Startups 4YFN Barcelona - Innovation Market - "Speed dating" between entrepreneurs, investors and the media - A landmark space for innovation - Speakers 4YFN Shanghai 4YFN Tel Aviv 4YFN Smart City Expo World Congress 4YFN Awards: startup competitions 4YFN Challenges & Discoveries 4YFN Investors Club Entrepreneurship, the cornerstone of Mobile World Capital Barcelona Esteban Redolfi, Executive Manager of 4YFN and Yossi Vardi, Chairman of 4YFN
4 Y E A RS F R O M N O W, C O N N E C T I N G S TA R T U P S 4 Years From Now (4YFN), supported by Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCB), is the meeting point for the growing community of global technology startups. This business platform connects startups, investors and large companies, with a view to bolstering the entrepreneurial ecosystem and positioning Barcelona as a leader in digital entrepreneurship. Over the course of the year, 4YFN organises a range of activities to constantly promote the entrepreneurial sector and forge ties at local and international levels. Meriting special note is its presence at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the DLD Innovation Festival Tel Aviv, and the Smart City Expo World Congress. The programme culminates with the celebration, in Barcelona, of 4YFN, the event for entrepreneurs promoted alongside GSMA as part of the GSMA Mobile World Congress. This constant activity throughout the year makes 4YFN a landmark programme for entrepreneurs, startups, investors and large international corporations in the digital sphere.
4YFN BARCELONA After 3 editions 4YFN has established itself as the premier meeting for digital entrepreneurs, startups, investors and large corporations at the GSMA Mobile World Congress. In 2016 4YFN drew 12,500 attendees, 50 % more than the previous year, at an 18,000-m2 space at the facilities of Fira de Barcelona-Montjuic. In three days, from 22 to 24 February 2016, 4YFN generated more than 5,200 meetings between investors and entrepreneurs, and trained over 2,500 people through its programme of workshops. It also featured more than 230 speakers and 160 hours of talks focusing on the event's three main topics: Disrupted by Mobile, IoT (Internet of Things) and Digital Media. 4YFN places a special emphasis on the creation of pitching spaces for entrepreneurs and startups. Specifically, 4YFN 2016 featured more than 30 hours of programming, centring on maximising interaction with players key to the development and consolidation of their projects. 4YFN 2016
Innovation Market In 2016 the Innovation Market, the exhibition area for startups, large companies and accelerators, hosted more than 500 exhibitors. Spain, Belgium, France, the UK, Germany, Colombia, Brazil, the USA, South Korea and Taiwan are among the countries represented at the Innovation Market. The exhibition area also welcomed institutions such as ICEX, ACCIO, La French Tech, BCN Activa, European Investment Fund, UKTI (the UK's trade office) and Advantage Austria, as well as companies such as Telefónica, IBM, Banc Sabadell, Adobe, Twitter and Zurich.
Speed dating" between entrepreneurs, investors and the media Each year 4YFN Barcelona expands its activities fostering interaction between attendees. The 2016 edition boasted Founders & Investors sessions, with a detailed schedule tailored to the different startups' areas of activity and the levels of funds they required. In this way it facilitated successful meetings of entrepreneurs and startups with investors and large specialised corporations. Along this line, the event also featured Pitch the Press sessions, a dynamic specifically created to encourage interaction between entrepreneurs, startups and journalists. Mike Butcher (TechCrunch), Jennifer Hicks (Forbes) and Robin Wauters (Tech.eu) were some of the journalists who participated in the initiative.
A landmark space for innovation 4YFN's activity also included Demo Days and presentations of projects with a highly innovative component. Among others, 4YFN 2016 hosted the Global Mobile Innovators Tournament Finals, the first international competition for startups, supported by IBM and 4YFN; the semi-finals of the EU Mobile Challenge, promoted by the Instituto de Empresa, Applied Innovation Institute and MWCapital; and Imagine Express, a hackathon designed to develop an app prototype on a train covering a Barcelona-ParisLondon-Barcelona route. Acceleration programmes, with participation by mventuresbcn, the MWCapital initiative, also play a particularly important role at 4YFN. Specifically, 4YFN 2016 hosted the Demo Day of Startupbootcamp IoT & Data, which presented the advances made by the 11 startups making up its acceleration programme in Barcelona, which will once again show the potential of its startups at 4YFN 2017. The fourth 4YFN will also host the demo day for NUMA Barcelona, the acceleration programme for startups in the growth phase supported by NUMA, the French innovation network, and MWCapital.
Speakers 4YFN has a panel of speakers of international renown in the world of entrepreneurship, innovation and technology. Some of the most prominent figures who have participated in 4YFN Barcelona since its first edition in 2014 are: Yossi Vardi 4YFN Chairman Rich Miner Android, Inc. / Google Ventures co-founder / Investor-Partner Jan Korum WhatsApp CEO and co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk Airbnb co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Dirk Ahlborn Hyperloop CEO Werner Vogels Amazon CTO, Vice-president Jimmy Wales Wikipedia / TPO Chairman Mark Shuttleworth Canonical / Ubuntu founder / co-founder David Sable Young & Rubicam Global CEO Bracken Darrell Logitech CEO Andrew Creighton VICE Media LLC President Weili Dai Marvell Technology Group President and co-founder Slava Rubin Indiegogo CEO and co-founder Rich Riley Shazam CEO Nicola Mendelsohn Facebook Vice-president, EMEA Mike Butcher TechCrunch Editor-at-large
4YFN SHANGHAI 4YFN debuted in Asia at the GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2016, drawing more than 100 digital startups and major companies to its exhibition area, 60 members of the international investment community, and more than 60 speakers. 4YFN Shanghai also generated more than 40 hours of its own content and 12 hours of training through an extensive line-up of workshops on entrepreneurship in the digital sphere. For the second straight year GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai also featured a business delegation supported by MWCapital, along with the Secretariat of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society, through RED.es, the Regional Government of Catalonia, represented by ACCIÓ, and the City Hall of Barcelona, through the City Promotion Bureau. The expedition made up of 16 Spanish companies developed a specific programme to promote interaction with players in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.
4YFN TEL AVIV For the second consecutive year 4YFN is headed to the DLD Tel Aviv Innovation Festival, Israel's most important international event in the fields of innovation and technology. For three days from 26 to 28 September 2016 4YFN Tel Aviv took a delegation of technology startups boasting the greatest international potential to discover Israel's high tech ecosystem, along with investors and top-level accelerators. The group participated at the 4YFN Tel Aviv Innovation Ecosystem Tour, a visit that allowed its members to meet the key players in Israel's entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as the audiovisual sector startup Applicaster; and Mazeh9, a meeting space dedicated to promoting creativity amongst the country's youth; and SOSA (South of Salame), an entrepreneurial community that fosters innovation through constant social interaction.
4YFN SMART CITY EXPO WORLD CONGRESS 4YFN rewarded entrepreneurial talent in the field of smart cities with an unprecedented competition at the Smart City Expo World Congress (17-19 November, 2015 in Barcelona). The contest reflects 4YFN's commitment, as a business platform, to exposing digital startups to their business spheres and creating opportunities for the development of their projects at leading industry events. The Swedish startup Mapillary, which develops an application to capture, share and explore street level photos to make the world more accessible to everyone, was the winner of the startup competition, and able to be present at 4YFN Barcelona 2016. 4YFN's activity at the congress also included an exhibition area, the 4YFN Village, which saw participation by 28 startups from Spain, Italy, the USA, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Bulgaria and France. 4YFN will again be present at the 2016 edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress with its own exhibition space, content within the event's official programme, and startup competitions to reward the best mobility solution related to sustainability, energy, technology and the governability of smart cities.
4YFN AWARDS: STARTUP COMPETITIONS 4YFN seeks to create spaces to boost the visibility of innovative digital projects, to this end designing different startup competitions throughout the year. First, the platform organises the 4YFN Awards held at 4YFN Barcelona, which rewards the 3 most innovative digital projects of the year. At its 2016 edition the awards attracted nearly 600 entries from around the world. The Thing Thing App virtual keyboard; Caravelo, a Spanish project aimed at travel agencies and companies; London's Hanhaa, with an innovative app in the field of messaging; and a learning platform designed by Catalonia's Infantium have been some of the winning projects at the competition's 3 editions. In addition, 4YFN supports startup competitions at industry conferences, such as the Smart City Expo World Congress and BizBarcelona. The platform also develops longerterm projects in collaboration with large corporations, such as the Global Mobile Innovators Tournament, sponsored by IBM. In this case, for 50 days the entrepreneurs competed to make it past 15 virtual demo days and 5 regional demo days in Bangalore, Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Amsterdam, with the aim of qualifying for the event's final, held at 4YFN Barcelona 2016.
4YFN CHALLENGES & DISCOVERIES 4YFN has two specialized programs for Corporations and Public Institutions: the Challenge Programme and the Discovery Programme. The Challenge Programme is a 5 month coding competition for startups, developers and entrepreneurs with the aim of creating disruptive business models for major corporations. The programme allows corporations to leverage their assets (including data, infrastructure and resources) to set real experiments within an ecosystem of international startups. After a selection process, the finalists teams will pitch onstage their proposals to an audience of industry experts at 4YFN events. This challenge allows the global startup community to present their solution to corporations and so create an open up potential partnership and future collaborations. And the Discovery Programme helps corporations and public institutions to detect the most relevant and disruptive startups that could reveal new trends, business models and new ways of thinking about their company. A group of investors and ambassadors of the 4YFN global network, will identify the most pioneering projects to join each programme. After a filtering process, a group of experts will select the final short list of startups that will work hand-by-hand with the corporation. The project offers entrepreneurs, developers and startup access to technology resources, go-to-market capabilities and general business know-how.
4YFN INVESTORS CLUB 4YFN includes an exclusive community of investors seeking business opportunities within the digital industry: the 4YFN Investors Club. This platform works to place investors in contact with players in the entrepreneurial community through different activities over the course of the year. In addition to having its own programme and networking activities at 4YFN Barcelona, the 4YFN Investors Club also organises tours of global digital innovation epicentres where 4YFN is present, such as Shanghai and Tel Aviv. These initiatives have allowed 4YFN's investment community to meet with Chinaccelerator, Asia's leading acceleration programme; Xinchejian, China's first hackerspace; The Library, a space dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation, located in the public library of the Shalom Tower; and SOSA (South of Salame), an entrepreneurial community that fosters innovation through constant social interaction.
E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P A N D I N N O V AT I O N MWCapital promotes entrepreneurship as a catalyst of digital innovation and a key component for the digital transformation of the economy and business community. In the pursuit of this objective it works with startups, investors and large companies to build and promote connections between Barcelona's technological ecosystem and international technology hubs. It also contributes knowledge and bolsters the development of digital startups in the city to favour the creation of new ways of envisioning and doing business. 4YFN stands as an initiative dedicated to facilitating and supporting international digital talent. Since late 2015 the business platform has also featured a new initiative in this sphere, supported by MWCapital in order to accelerate the growth of digital projects from Barcelona and foment technology transfer: mventuresbcn.
Esteban Redolfi Executive Director of 4YFN Yossi Vardi Chairman of 4YFN Esteban Redolfi holds a degree in Communications from Blas Pascal University, an Executive Master's in Communications Management from EAE Business School, and an Executive Master's in Marketing and Sales from ESADE Business School. Yossi Vardi (Tel Aviv, 1942) is a renowned Israeli investor with an extensive career in the world of entrepreneurship At the age of 26 he co-founded Tekem, one of Israel's first software companies, and was the founding investor of ICQ, the first instant messaging application created on the Internet. To date he has invested in over 60 companies in the energy and technology sectors. Redolfi's career has been in the field of Strategic Consulting, as a specialist in corporate communications, branding, building brand awareness, and inbound marketing strategies. Redolfi possesses extensive experience in the implementation of knowledge management systems, process optimisation, and organisational change management, as well as in event creation, production and coordination. Redolfi worked as a Director of Strategy and Development at Interprofit, a task he combined with deputy management of the consultancy firm in Madrid between 2009 and 2014. He previously oversaw the corporate division of Equipo Singular (2008-2009) and was responsible for design and communications at Lempert, the Argentinian consultancy firm specialising in e-business. He is currently the Executive Manager of 4 Years From Now (4YFN). For further information: https://es.linkedin.com/in/estebanredolfi After occupying several top positions in Israel - he was the General Director of the Ministry of Development, headed up Israel Chemicals, and was a member of Israel Electric Corporation's board, among others Vardi moved to the US to work as the Director of the Investment Authority. During this time he was the Consul of Economic Affairs for the State of Israel in New York, and participated in the creation of the Binational Israel-US Research and Industrial Development Foundation (BIRD - F). Vardi has also served as an advisor to the Israeli diplomatic mission at the UN. After his return to Israel he was appointed General Director of the Energy Ministry. Vardi also directed the Israel National Oil Company and served on the board of directors of Oil Refineries Ltd., among others. Vardi has also been an advisor on energy-related issues for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. For further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/yossi_vardi
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