“Welcome to the future. Please leave your preconceptions at the door." This forceful message could be read on the sign located at one of the entrances to 4YFN (Four Years From Now), the congress of entrepreneurs organized by the Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Undoubtedly, a slogan endorsed by the start-ups that met there for four days to record their power when it comes to transforming the economy and improving the efficiency of companies and the quality of life of people. The activity in the ninth edition of this event, in which its unstoppable growth was evident, was “frantic, a hive of optimism and new contacts. Our balance is very positive, and the nearly 20 activities that we organized were sold out”, points out Yolanda Pérez, director of BStartup, Banco Sabadell's specialized banking service for start-ups and scale-ups and main sponsor of the event. According to Pérez, "artificial intelligence (AI) has been the most repeated concept, together with machine learning, and there have been many cases of use of this technology applied to different sectors and solutions, which allow more precise, faster results and focused on the sustainability".
Fifteen of the young companies in which BStartup has recently invested in its seed phase -many of which are based on AI- presented their proposals at the entity's stand. This is the case of Dcycle, based in Madrid, which has developed software to allow SMEs to measure, manage and reduce their carbon footprint by reading their invoices with artificial intelligence.
Its Partnership Manager, Pablo Rivadulla, underlines that participating in 4YFN "is a great opportunity for visibility", while Alba Ortiz, the company's Brand Manager, is struck by the fact that "many people have approached us simply to seek synergies . People were as open to telling their project as they were to listening to yours”.
Another emerging company belonging to BStartup's Green vertical that showed a more 'tangible' project was MOA Foodtech, which combines biotechnology and AI to convert waste and by-products from the agri-food industry into a nutritional product with high added value. A proposal that has captured the interest of multinationals such as Barilla and Nestlé. They were already in the previous edition of 4YFN and according to one of its founders and CEO, Bosco Emparanza, "it is an event that is going further, there was a much greater flow of people and we did not stop talking with investors and potential partners".
Yolanda Pérez also highlights the growing presence of the field of digital health, "well above previous years, which gives an idea of the strength of a sector in which we have been focusing on a vertical for six years."
The Barcelona start-up Time is Brain exemplifies this trend: it has created a medical device that, for the first time, monitors the electrical activity of the brain in real time in people who suffer an acute ischemic stroke, from the onset of symptoms and during the entire care process. Its CEO, Alicia Martínez, points out that her presence at the event has meant "a unique opportunity for networking, interaction with players in our value chain and access to a broad profile of investors".
During its participation in 4YFB, BStartup continued to strengthen ties with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, making the stage of its stand available to hubs from different sectors and territories to share their initiatives.
Likewise, the entity organized three panels of great interest, such as the one that brought together the CEOs of Wallapop, Kapita, We are knitters and Factorial to show the success of the 'Product Led Growth' methodology (product-led growth). In another of the sessions, the new growth paradigm for scale-ups was discussed, with the participation of the CEOs of Exoticca, Trendier and Qida.
And it is that, as Yolanda Pérez assures, “start-ups are asked to grow and scale, but when they reach a certain size, profitability is also required”. Likewise, the director of BStartup emphasized that “they are companies that were born global and with a lot of ambition for growth. Therefore, internationalization is inherent to them”.
