Dear tetuanees, we are happy to inform you that La Red Innova is coming out with a great new edition this year and as they are one of the best tech conferences in Spain, we’re glad to join them once more as one of their supporting organizations. This year, La Red Innova is back to startup the community again, so make sure to book your tickets for: 14th – 15th June 2012 at the Circo Price. Check out for more info and get your discount codes here.
Hi there, tetuanees
Here you are the aftermath of our super session 4 of Tetuan Valley Startup School Spring 2012. On 28th March we had Katelyn giving a lecture on Finance 101, our dearest friend Justo Hidalgo (co-founder of 24 Symbols) giving precious insights on the Entrepreneur’s Way, and the recurring pitch slam of this edition’s teams.
Katelyn did a great kick-off talking about the time value of money (why an € today is worth more than an € next year), why Free Cash Flow is the most important statement (’cause is the only one that shows how much money is there in your startup’s pockets in a certain moment), and which are the characteristics of the different sorts of investors out there. Check out the slides of the session.
Once again, Justo Hidalgo (mentor of awesomeness) made a delightful Choose Your Own adventure presentation on “The Entrepreneurs Challenges”. And not just that, but he also a lot of experiences and ideas around the 24 Symbols‘ Way.
At last, but not least, our teams pitched their projects, and how they’re stepping forward day by day. On the whole, one of the most critical issues that teams had to face immediately for the next session was: “get real, get validation!”.
Here is the video of how it all went down:
Thanks to the great Maria Encinar, the previous weekend we were @ Startup Weekend Las Palmas. An it was amazing to see all those super talented and motivated people fighting not just to build a product in less than 48h, but to get validation for those products (as uber-entrepreneur Agustin Cuenca encouraged them to do). Motivational and Philosophical Speechs are swell, but they’re are just vaporware if you don’t go through the customer development cycle and look for: “validation, validation validation!”. Thus we start talking real, thus we walk the Way of the Startup.
If you want to keep posted on the Spanish startup ecosystem, you can also Follow us on Twitter @StartSpain, Like us on Facebook and/or Subscribe to our NewsLetter.
Later, alligator!
Howdy friends!
Nast Marrero, here! Last week we launched Startup Spain‘s first program: the Angel School. Our take is: it’s been a great beginning for Startup Spain. We had more than 60 attendees of which more than 2/3 were potential investors.
This is an unusually large display of interest in the Spanish investment arena, where most events see no more than 20 or some participants maximum. Mentoring Angel Investors to better navigate their deal analysis is a keystone in fostering ITC startups in Spain. The program was a real marathon: 10+ hours of training (don´t worry we let them stop for lunch 
. Thankfully, our first group of graduates proved to be up to the challenge, taking advantage of all the different elements of the day.
Missing from the program were the typical made-up miracle cures and formulas. We strived to keep the content practical, following the Tetuan Valley Way with hands-on exercises and significant mentors’ experiences
The event was hosted @ the awesome facilities of Madrid International Lab and kicked off by Iñaki Ortega, Director of Madrid Emprende, and one of the main forces behind Startup Spain. In his opening speech, Iñaki brought up the importance of joining private and public efforts to facilitate and develop entrepreneurial activity, and the key role those efforts will play in the long-run global competitiveness of Spain.
Two roundtables with rockstar speakers cherry-topped the program: one from Investors already Angel Investing and another from Entrepreneurs. Each of them gave invaluable insights on what it is they look for, value, and ask during an early stage investment.
The investors’ roundtable was moderated by our very own Alex Barrera (co-founder of Tetuan Valley & CEO of Press42), and formed by:
On the other corner, moderated by Ricardo Fernandez (director of Step One Spain), the entrepreneurs’ roundtable formed by:
Both roundtables aimed to give participants a overview of the ecosystem, showcasing startups from their seed stage through founders that have already made an exit, with similar ranges of experiences coming from the Angel investors, from managers that were just launching their first investment through those who have been in the game for a while.
Given the success and the of the program and the importance we place on such event to foster investment culture we’re already iterating on the feedback from the first event to run a LEGENDARY second edition of Startup Spain Angel School on March 22nd. Wanna get your tickets? Check here!
We had the pleasure of following all the twitter interactions of the event through Zoomry, now in it´s beta stage. The product is awesome and if you check #AngelSchool Social Media @ AngelSchool.Zoomry.com… You can see for yourself they’re up to something big!
You might want to check the slides of our presentations in our slideshare or check the pictures in our flickr group.
Thank you for reading… Bestest!
