Last year La Vanguardia headlined: “The 4YFN is too small and asks to grow; the startup pavilion is confirmed as one of the most dynamic at Mobile”. And indeed, coinciding with its tenth anniversary, the event of choice for startups has grown. A decade ago, only a few people in Barcelona knew what a startup was. However, the success of this year’s 4YFN, with two jam-packed halls, shows that the ecosystem is firmly recognised as a fundamental part of the economic system. Entrepreneurs are still coming, but no longer just to proclaim their ideas for changing the world. They are now presenting tech solutions, and their audiences are large corporations, innovative SMEs and public administrations looking for inspiration and solutions.

For our part, we can only celebrate with pride that we have accompanied 16 startups at our stand (and more than 80 members and partners throughout the MWC), organised more than 25 content sessions (many of them sponsored by important partners such as the Port of Barcelona), received hundreds of visits (from well-known faces and others to meet again) and participated in some of the most powerful panels of the event.

And although, in theory, this fourth day was supposed to be ‘quiet’, it didn’t go off without a bang either, leaving us with some outstanding moments:

Visit of the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities Diana Morant

We welcomed Minister Diana Morant to Tech Barcelona’s stand to present some of the most disruptive projects in Barcelona, when she even joked about her particular resemblance to Aima’s artificial intelligence. Thanks for the visit!

Visit by the Consul General of Portugal in Barcelona, Ana Coelho

We also spoke with Ana Coelho about the potential of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem and the opportunity to create shared spaces for technological collaboration between Catalan and Portuguese companies and organisations.

Hey, we’re on TV!

The cameras of TV3 and the Catalan News Agency (ACN) have got up early in the morning to reflect the success of the 4YFN. And our spokespersons were delighted to participate! The smile on Mar Galtés’ face, director of corporate development at Tech Barcelona, reveals that she still has the journalism bug inside her.

Connecting innovation: Exploring Barcelona’s tech ecosystem

Enisa has been an excellent host in a conversation between Juan Baselga (Tech Barcelona) and the brand new winner of the EmprendeXXI award and CEO of Keybotic Irene Gómez. Together we will always go further.

We sneak off to MWC

Our curious minds couldn’t resist and we took it in turns to see first-hand if what was hiding behind the walls of Hall 8.1 and 8.0 was as impressive as reported in the news. And indeed, the Huawei space continues to impress yet another year; the intelligent humanoid robot Ameca arouses a mixture of awe and fear; the Talent Arena boxing ring is a brilliant idea for future editions; and artificial intelligence and chips continue to compete to become the new gold rush.

Local study, global impact

Call Of Duty has become a legendary videogame saga on a global scale. But did you know that a Barcelona studio is in charge of developing the mobile game for it? Some members of the Tech Barcelona team enjoyed, as fans and casual gamers, the talk by Xavier Carrillo-Costa, CEO and founder of Digital Legends, a company acquired by Activision and a benchmark in the video game sector in Barcelona.

Team lunch
We’re up to our ears in pulpo a feira. Nothing else to say.

On behalf of the entire Tech Barcelona team, thank you for joining us during these four days. Let the rhythm keep going!