Gerard Melgar Barcelona
Barcelona
Updated Saturday, February 24, 2024-11:38
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If decades ago California mythologized garages as the fetish place for the birth of technology companies, in
Barcelona
the entrepreneurial dream seems to have found its habitat in a space whose name responds to a number and three letters:
4YFN
.
The
4 Years From Now
("within 4 years", in the Spanish translation) reaches its tenth anniversary this year, consolidated as the event for
startups
of the
Mobile World Congress
.
This digital business platform, which grew in parallel with the
MWC
and was fully integrated in 2021, when it made the leap from
Fira Montjuïc to the
Gran Via
fairgrounds
, celebrates the anniversary with its most ambitious numbers to date: it will be present, for the first time, in two
pavilions
(8.0 and 8.1), it will have more than 800 exhibitors and 350 speakers will participate in the edition that will begin this Monday.
Popularly known as the
little brother
of
Mobile
, the impact of
4YFN
on the innovative ecosystem during this decade presents figures that have been growing year after year: 4,500 exhibitors, 180,000 attendees and the interconnection of 9,200
entrepreneurs
with 5,400
investors
.
Among the names of this tenth edition,
Nigel Toon
, CEO and co-founder of
Graphcore (a British company that manufactures and markets
Artificial Intelligence
semiconductors
), and former basketball player
Pau Gasol
, who last year created
Gasol16 Ventures
to combine their projects, stand out. of investment, advice and business alliances to support the entrepreneurial fabric, or the founders of Spanish
unicorns
(companies that achieve a value of 1,000 million dollars without being listed on the stock market)
Jordi Romero
(CEO of
Factorial
, which has developed
software
to facilitate Human Resources tasks with digitalization) and
Avi Meir
, who holds the same position at
TravelPerk
, a company specialized in business travel management.
Talent Arena
The public-private foundation
Mobile World Capital
was the founder of
4YFN
and, in this edition of the
Mobile World Congress
, it promotes a new digital talent space, the
Talent Arena
.
This initiative will bring together around thirty technological experts who will offer presentations and workshops, such as
Carlos Villavieja
, software engineer at Google,
Xavier Amatrian
, vice president of engineering at
, or
David Cuartielles
, co-founder of
Arduino
.
The
Talent Arena
will also host a 48-hour
hackathon
(meeting of programmers to carry out collaborative developments) in which 48 professionals will defend their projects in a boxing ring.