Meet founders from all over Europe.
The third edition of the Startup Grind Tech conference will bring together over 1000 entrepreneurs, tech people and investors from all over Europe.
In previous editions of the conference, we have seen attendees finding their right co-founder, investors, new clients and - most importantly - hundreds of new friends. The cornerstone of our global community are monthly events featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share lessons learned on the road to building great companies.
Speakers
Carlota has more than 15 years in the Energy field in Spain, US and Germany, both in generation and commercialization of electricity and gas. She was Professor of Efficiency and Renewable Energy at University of Barcelona.
Education:
Javier Suarez is the CPO and Co-Founder of TravelPerk, named Europe’s fastest-growing tech startup by SaaS1000. TravelPerk is modernizing the business travel sector by offering companies of any size, a tool for booking and managing all their travel in one place. TravelPerk has raised $75m to date by some of the world’s leading investors including Spark Capital, famous for Twitter, Trello and Slack. Prior to founding TravelPerk, Javier worked in several strategic roles within Booking.com’s HQ. Mostly recently, leading the company's #1 priority as a founding member of the the global innovation team. Javier started writing business plans at 14 and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He’s lived in six countries and speaks Spanish, English and German, fluently.
Partner at Alta Life Sciences
Derek Andersen is the founder and CEO of Startup Grind, a community of over 500 Chapters in 135 countries designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. Startup Grind's values of giving, helping others, and making friends have spread across the world. Since 2012 Startup Grind has hosted thousands of events for more than 2,000,000 entrepreneurs. In 2009 Derek founded Vaporware Labs, incubating many products including Startup Grind and professional social network Commonred, which was acquired by Income.com in 2012. Now, he's spun off a separate company to manage online communities called Bevy.
Long Term assignments USA, Asia Pacific and Europe in Sales, Product Marketing and General management
SKILLS: Strong leadership, customer experience centric, business results oriented, innovative, Change driver, engaging, team & people development builder
SPECIALITIES FUNCTIONAL : General Manager, Strategic Marketing, Led Sales Management, Business Development , R&D management, Customer Support, P&L management, Business transformation, Marketing , Channel management, International Business Management
Markets: Enterprise business , Graphic Arts, SMB & Consumer
JF Gauthier is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Startup Genome. He advises more than 30 governments across 25 countries on how to accelerate the growth of their entrepreneurial ecosystems through evidence- based policymaking. He also is the co-founder of Exit Reality, a fast-growing VR startup, and active angel investor. Based on the voice of 10,000+ entrepreneurs, 300 local partner organizations and with more than 50 cities across 28 countries, Startup Genome has built the largest body of knowledge on what fuels the performance of startups and their ecosystems. Based in Silicon Valley for 20 years JF has founded and played pivotal roles in companies active in the Tech, Life Sciences and Cleantech sectors as well as led several exits and acquisitions on both sides of the table. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School.
CTO, Digital Nomad, Wanderlust and Scuba Diving instructor. Sergio has been taking CTO positions for over a decade, specializing in cross cultural management, startup ecosystem and in finding a common language between business and technology.
Christopher Pommerening started his professional career in Spain in 1998 co-founding AutoScout24 Spain as CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Christopher was appointed Managing Director of Scout24 Spain in 2001, Europe’s leading operator of virtual market places. While preparing the internationalisation of the Scout24 Group, he also set up B24 Networks, a Europe wide on-line market place for the yachting sector. In 2002 he decided to devote himself full time to entrepreneurship and venture capital through his already established venture catalyst company VCMORE by offering consulting services and investment to start-ups through a network of business angels. Alongside the latter, in 2002, he co-started the Spanish chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO) being one of the largest entrepreneur organisations in the world, and in the same year he co-founded Active Venture Partners, one of Europe’s first entrepreneurial driven VC companies. In 2006 He has been elected to be the Ambassador for EO Europe & Africa, growing the organisation in 12 countries. In 2007 Christopher co-founded Linqia, the first marketplace for online communities. In 2007 he created the terminology for Venturepreneurship and Venturepreneurs and created the Venturepreneurs’ Organisation. In 2008 he initiated the Global Entrepreneurs Week in Spain and created the vision for the Barcelona Entrepreneurship City Commission. Currently he is Managing Partner of Active Venture Partners, member of the Board of Directors of BuyVIP, Non Executive co-founder and Advisor of Foundum and Linqia, member of the Venture Committee of ASCRI, Advisor to Gild International and Chairman of the Venturepreneurs' Organisation & of the Barcelona Entrepreneurship City Commission. Specialties: Venture Capital, Early, Expansion & Development stage, Venturepreneurship, Venturepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurs.
An entrepreneur by heart, a designer and biologist by training, and a maker for life, Cecilia is known internationally as an innovation activist in empowering individuals and organizations by building exponential communities to innovate for impact with design and technologies.
She is a serial entrepreneur, founder of multiple companies such as MOB, Makers of Barcelona, a collaborative co-working community, FabCafe, a new concept that brings digital fabrication tools to the everyday environment of a coffee shop. Her latest venture FutureFunded.co is a community funding platform focus on training the next generation of women in technology. Cecilia is also the founder of MEAT, an agency that enables companies for corporate transformation to innovate with technology.
Cecilia was a fellow at the prestigious and highly selective Global Solution Programs at Singularity University 2017 focused on applying exponential technologies in finding impactful and meaningful solutions for global challenges at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View California.
Cecilia received her master as an architect at Harvard University and a degree in biology at Emory University. She is the recipient of the prestigious Wheelwright Travelling Fellowship as well as the Faculty Design Award by Harvard University. Currently, Cecilia is a senior adjunct faculty at Parsons New School Global Executive Master for Strategic Design and Management and visiting faculty for the Social Innovation Program at Toulouse Business School.
Cecilia was a product strategy expert at Google Developers Group and a certified Google Sprint Master. She has mentored at Google Launchpad, Startupbootcamp IoT & Data, Numa and Harvard Innovation Lab. She is currently on the executive board of advisors for Barcelona Global, SWAN (Womens Angels Network) as well as for the City Government of Barcelona. Cecilia was the Design Ambassador at Hotel W.
Cecilia is a 4-times TEDx speaker, and has given talks at World Mobile Congress, Smart City Expo, IAM Fest, Challengers, SHIFT, Open FAD and 4YFN. Cecilia was a regular contributor to the newspaper L'Econòmic. Cecilia has been awarded the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 by the Creative Net. Her publication “Hackable Cities” written together with her students at Parsons New School has won the Design for Well Being Award 2015. Cecilia has been mentioned in media such as CNBC, El Periodico, Skyword, Monocle, La Vanguardia, The Australian, and Expansion.
Co-founder of Panoramio.com, acquired by Google. Previously partner at Loquo.com, acquired by eBay. Currently at Mailtrack.io.
Shruthi Chindalur is Regional Managing Director across Europe, Middle East and Africa for Criteo, which is the world's leading advertising platform for the open internet. In her role Criteo’s technology provides the opportunity for smaller businesses to use big data and machine learning to deliver personalised and effective communications to their shoppers, and hence compete with huge online retailers. Shruthi has almost 20 years of experience primarily working with mid-sized business in EMEA complimented with large account experience across EMEA & LATAM, and a deep understanding of digital sales across a wide range of industries having previously held roles at LinkedIn and Oracle. Shruthi is an advocate of coaching, personal and leadership development, and diversity and inclusion. In her spare time she’s a Patron for the Hope Foundation.
Founder and CEO of SocialCar, the first platform in Spain for P2P car rental. Mar, is a benchmark in sharing economy, sustainable mobility and legality. Founding member of Sharing España and board member of ADigital. Mar supports Barcelona's tech ventures as a member of BCN Tech City's board of directors. She is also a promoter of innovation as part of the Creafutur advisory board. Graduated in Law and PDD by IESE, she began her professional career at Cuatrecasas Abogados and her social entrepreneurship interest began at Grameen Bank with Prof. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Innovation, New Business Development Director at eBay
Director with +15 years working for large e-commerce, classifieds and internet companies.
Analytical minded and strategic thinker, applying innovative and fresh perspectives.
Award-winning entrepreneur and strategist, with extensive experience driving companies to successfully achieve innovation, revenue and business growth. Named among the top 50 Most Admired CEOs (The Technology Headlines, USA, 2019), top 100 Leaders of the Future (Capital Magazine, Spain, 2009), and Entrepreneur of the Year (Entrepreneurs Magazine, Spain, 2006) among other recognitions. CEO at Strands (www.strands.com), empowering with Artificial Intelligence 650 banks worldwide, boosting international expansion and strengthening its position as global FinTech leader. Previously, founder of Polymita (acquired by Red Hat) pioneering the Business Process Management (BPM) software industry, recognized as a Visionary by Gartner (Magic Quadrant 2009 & 2010) and Major Player by IDC (MarketScape 2011). Co- founder of multiple companies within enterprise software, mobile and Internet businesses, including Intelligent Software Components - iSOCO (acquired by Santander) and Enzyme Advising Group (acquired by Nexe Group). Founder of Bcombinator (www.bcombinator.com), helping startups to scale up through incubation, acceleration, education, mentoring, advisory and fundraising. Raised €30M among all portfolio companies. Board Member and President of the Entrepreneurship Commission [email protected], Member of the CEO Collaborative Forum and Member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO). Academic Director and Professor at Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Lean Startups and Leadership.
Juan Margenat is a Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Marfeel. Margenat has a talent for spotting and investing in technology companies that are at the forefront of the industry and has served as a mentor, angel investor and advisor to numerous start-up companies around the globe. Margenat founded Barcelona Experience and Weekendesk Iberia that have both received international recognition for their encouragement of tourism and commerce in Spain. Margenat has also worked as a private investor for many years and is known for his strategic vision and planning. He served as the Founder and General Manager at PlanB!, which is now part of Barcelo Group, one of Spain's leading tourist companies and founded and served as the General Manager at Smartbox, which was later sold to Smart & Co. Margenat is often relied on for counsel and support in the technology community in Barcelona and is the power behind a lot of successful companies coming out of Barcelona.
Josh in an entrepreneur and digital strategist who just last month exited Rentify, the startup he co-founded in his kitchen in London 7 years ago. He's also spent 15 years working with some of the world's leading brands including HP, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, as well as for leading global politicians, foundations and the British government. Amongst other things, he is currently head of digital for 89up.org and is working for the British government as an advisor to its enquiry into Fake News and the future of social media legislation.
Former journalist turned investor. I started my career working as a journalist covering technology, I then went on to create my own publication (Novobrief.com) which I later sold. I now work at K Fund, looking to back the best and brightest Spanish startups.
Community Development Director
Past Speakers
Agenda
Get a sneak peak of last year’s agenda
Past Talks
Get a taste of the Startup Grind experience through some talks from last year
