Startup Inside Stories

The technology industry in Barcelona has been growing rapidly for years. A big pool of young technological talent, a city that embraces most kind of innovation in forms of tech, and also the establishments of the Mobile World Congress and 4 Years From Now (4YFN), the annual startup summit, are all ingredients and drivers of a vibrant and diverse local tech industry. The question we’ll try to answer in the firts podcast of 2017, is what are in store for the local tech community, and what challenges are we facing in the global race to builde the best products, companies and hubs for technology. We invited two that has a finger on the startup pulse in Barcelona, Scott Mackin, editor of Barcinno.com and Aleix Valls CEO of the Mobile World Capital, and director of 4YFN. They both pointed to several things Barcelona needs to improve before being able to compete of the worlds attention. What kind of expectations should we have? Video: youtu.be/pbZLXjAAzGA

Barcelona has been notoriously known for opposing the sharing economy and collaborative economy platforms such as Airbnb and Uber, as well as BlaBlaCar, even though the population are using the platforms more than most European citizens. We talked with Albert Canigueral, a thought leader in terms of innovative regulations and head of the Ouishare movement in Spain. Lucia Fernandez, another pioneer in the sharing economy community in Europe, working with Barcelona Activia, Ouishare and the local government in Barcelona, and Jaume Suñol, country manager of P2P car rental service Drivy. They all shared valuable insights from the relatively new world of the crowd capitalism, and how to fix the conflict between the sharing economy and authorities. Video: youtu.be/wF1U1v4072k

In our November podcast we talked about how the increasing number of accelerators are making it harder and harder to produce winner programs. An emergence of venture builders, focusing on fewer projects with a deeper focus on each projects, is maybe what more and more accelerators will turn into. We invited Angel Garcia, director of Startupbootcamp IoT, Data and Cybersecurity, Patricio Hunt, Managing partner of Intelectium and Bernat Farrero, president of itnig. Video: youtu.be/U8KPak_Hedg

Do you want to become a CTO - we talked with three experienced CTO’s on how they moved from developer to Chief Technology Officer and what their biggest challenges are. Video: youtu.be/Gw2cb3uWnkQ

To discuss the topic we invited: Marc Alier (http://twitter.com/granludo), professor at UPC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), Marc Collado (http://twitter.com/Marccollado), director at Barcelona hacker school - Iron Hack, Alessandro Zanardi (http://twitter.com/pensierinmusica) CEO and co-founder of Codeworks and co-founder and instructor at Codeworks Arol Viñolas (http://twitter.com/arolet) - a new Barcelona hacker school. Video: youtu.be/nSAfB3Z3Luc