One of the world leaders in cab-hailing mobile applications has just arrived in Madrid and Barcelona to challenge the local leaders myTaxi in the battle for taxi app market share. Founded in London in 2011, Hailo is the self-proclaimed “taxi magnet” smartphone application that has operations in 11 global cities and claims to pick up a new passenger every 4 seconds. In NYC and … [Read more...]
Spain Joins France In Legal Threat Against Google
The French National Commission on Computing and Freedom (CNIL) has given Google 3 months to add more transparency to the data they are collecting from European users or face privacy fines. Still reeling from recent backlash about handing over consumer data to the US government, Google now faces added pressure from European countries concerned about the exact nature of Google’s … [Read more...]
Now Is The Time To Invest In Spanish Entrepreneurs (video)
In an effort to promote the Spanish startup ecosystem, a somewhat anonymous video produced by New York City's IBL Studios has quietly been released on YouTube. Complete with a booming narrative and overly dramatic soundtrack, the 6 minute video reviews some of Spain's recent entrepreneurial success stories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvDQyDFRNtQ&w=640&h=360 … [Read more...]
7 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Spot Future Opportunities
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed" - William Gibson, Canadian-American science fiction writer It begins with a story. In 2001, the smartest strategic decision makers at Best Buy, one of the United States’ retail giants, decided to invest $685 million in the acquisition of the electronics chain Musicland. The next year, Best Buy wrote down a … [Read more...]
Sonar+D – A New Laboratory To Create The Future
Like SXSW and Burning Man before it, Sónar has added a new act to its annual throw-down in Barcelona. In it’s 20th year, Sónar becomes the next mega-festival to fuse innovation and technology to the beat of world-class musicians and DJs. Beginning today and running straight through the weekend, Sónar+D brings creativity, technology, mobility, innovation, and business to the … [Read more...]
Recap: Mini Seedcamp Barcelona 2013 At Mobile World Centre
In May 2007, a group of 30 European investors founded Seedcamp as a pan-European London-based accelerator to provide startups with seed money, mentorship, office space and support over a yearlong program. In 2013, they took to the road in their new mini Seedcamp model to find the most promising startups across Europe and grow their portfolio. Yesterday, Seedcamp came to … [Read more...]
Lanzadera, The Mercadona-backed Incubator, Announces The First 15 Projects
Back in January, Juan Roig Alfonso, owner of the Valencia retail giant Mercadona, announced his plans to launch a new incubator and investment fund for Spanish startups. Over the last 5 months, the program, titled “Lanzadera”, received more than 4,200 applications from entrepreneurs and innovators across the country. Applicants had to submit an innovative business project … [Read more...]
Barcelona Design Festival 2013 Kicks Off Tonight
For the next 30 days, the latest in Barcelona innovation and design will be on display during the Barcelona Design Festival 2013. Co-organized by Barcelona Centre de Disseny (BCD) and Fostering Arts and Design in Catalonia (FAD), the 3rd annual Barcelona Design Festival “aims to situate Barcelona as a world capital of design and innovation internationally.” The month long … [Read more...]
5 Red Flags That Scare Away Venture Capital
While it may be best to bootstrap our startups, some ideas are just too big for our bank accounts and we need big money to scale them globally as fast as possible. In the cases when a giant bankroll is the only thing stopping us from world domination, we turn to VCs to fund our ventures. On the flipside, VCs are approached daily, perhaps hourly, with the next … [Read more...]
Barcelona Among The Top 30 Most Active Startup Cities Worldwide
As the entrepreneurial wave continues to rise around the world, various groups are trying to organize relevant data to paint a clearer picture of which global cities host the most active startup ecosystems. The various methodologies include open-source methods like Startup Genome, wiki models such as CrunchBase, and tapping into the data from active entrepreneurial platforms … [Read more...]