Pavilion 8 of the Gran Via fairgrounds has the air of legend. Referring to him has been for many years like doing Cochinchina. Many attendees spent four days in the Mobile and never made it to the space furthest from the main entrance. The installation of 4 Years From Now (4YFN) at this location has ended the joke. Now, the rare one is the one who has not been here.
By mid-morning there is not even a pin. Thousands of entrepreneurs, managers and investors crowd the corridors in search of opportunities and inspiration. They make long lines to enter the stages where others like them tell their war stories in a more relaxed tone than that of the managers in suits who go to the more traditional Mobile.
The success of the call, evident at first glance -there are even startups that have had to locate their stands in the exterior corridors of the pavilion-, has led the GSMA, the entity that organizes the congress, to decide to increase the size of the 4FYN in the next edition. “In 2024 we will gain space and we will also settle in hall 8.0, which is located just on the lower floor. We will dedicate it to two growing sectors: environmental sustainability and digital health”, announced Pere Durán, director of the show.
The trajectory of the event, which is celebrating its ninth anniversary, has been meteoric. They started in a small space on Montjuïc when the Mobile moved to l'Hospitalet, they grew and with the pandemic they moved to their older brother's house, where they have hatched, becoming a benchmark in the European entrepreneurial sector. "It happens very rarely that startups, universities, investors and managers of large corporations meet under the same roof," admits Miguel Arias, a partner of the Kfund fund, who has traveled from Madrid to Barcelona with a full agenda of meetings while searching without success an empty room in the Investors Lounge where to meet with entrepreneurs.
With more than 780 companies and a thousand investors, the success of this edition is also explained by the recovery of international visitors after the pandemic. Half, assures Durán, already comes from thirty foreign countries. “We have come here from Seoul to win new customers and attract investment,” says Min Gyu Kim, a manager at QNT, a startup that develops software for industries. South Korea is one of the countries that have landed with more force in this edition, representing a hundred startups. Also noteworthy is the presence for the first time of its own stands from India, Africa and the European Union, in addition to the usual presence of Japan, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, among others.
They coexist with companies from Barcelona, many of them grouped under the local development agency Barcelona Activa, located in the middle of the pavilion. For the local Barcelona ecosystem, "4YFN is an excellent opportunity to open up to the international market and learn from other projects," says Miquel Martí, general director of the Tech Barcelona association, who admits that many of the meetings held at the 4FYN do not end up fructifying in new businesses, but only serve for a first contact. “We are here trying to attract customers from an audiovisual material rental platform”, explains Manuel Clavijo, a young entrepreneur who founded the startup Filmo thanks to an entrepreneurship program at the UB, which has its space, like the UPC, the UAB , UPF, Esade or IQS.
The thematic diversity is infinite, with innovation and technology applied to very different fields. This also facilitates the coexistence of young people with ideas together with large companies such as Vueling. “We came here to show that we innovate despite being large corporations and to establish synergies with startups”, explains Javier Álvarez, Vueling's director of technologies. The airline is collaborating with startups like Lighthouse to improve the predictions of its algorithm that controls the demand for flights. He also invests in more futuristic scenarios by developing air travel from the sofa at home through virtual reality technology in the metaverse.
