SOUTH SUMMARY
“The largest meeting point for startups, investors and corporations,” as it is officially described by the organizers, was held at La N@ve convention center in Villaverde from October 3 -5.
For three action-packed days that saw many attendees, South Summit was one of the main discussion topics within Madrid’s entrepreneurial and professional ecosystem. With more than six conference halls, twenty sponsors, and 150 startups, it was the biggest event of its type Madrid will see this year.
South Summit featured representatives from BBVA, Google, Sabadell, IBM, Bankia, and Glovo, among many others, with most of them giving talks or engaging in debates about relevant yet diverse topics that are in the sights of the educational, manufacturing and service industry alike.
The repertoire of most-recurrent themes of conversation included Fintech and open banking, branding, social media, consumer engagement, efficient recruitment, corporate investment and alternative sources of funding, sustainability, and the sharing economy. However, five main technological trends were embedded in the majority of discussions: AI, Blockchain, IoT, machine learning and smartphones.
Although the conferences and speeches had greatly differing aims, approaches, areas and subjects of analysis, they mostly converged into a single message: delivering a purpose-driven consumer-centric experience while reducing time and resources to a minimum and promoting interaction as much as possible.
As an ever-increasing number of physical businesses develop high-performing digital complements, the world undergoes a swift transition to intangible and innovative business models, threatening to render the traditional concept and implementation of economic activity obsolete. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that 80% of the startups that participated in the “Marketplace” area were completely digital, and dealt with no stock.
Among the common components or strategies that were present in most of the younger projects were integration, aggregation, convergence and synergy. Once again, social media confirmed its dominance as the preferred channel for both marketing and consumer engagement for brands, with Instagram being particularly strong in Spain, and stories delivering some of the best results.
All this is showcased flawlessly within the concept of Digitally Native Vertical Brands (DNVB) that reinvent the traditional entrepreneurial process by first building a brand name and reputation through tailor-made and consistent content and then using that consumer base to sell, mostly on-demand, while quickly integrating the whole value chain to achieve higher margins.
Besides the talks and the networking (which was facilitated in an innovative way through methods such as “Speed Networking” and “Coffee Time”), another event that stole much of the spotlight was the 100 Startup Competition, where pre-selected finalists comprising ten different categories faced each other at several pitching rounds throughout the event.
The challenge consisted in condensing and communicating novel ventures and models in an attractive and persuasive way within only three minutes. The presentations were very different in terms of both props, style and occasionally quality, and even though there was no one clear pattern among the winners, they all managed to outshine the competition either as a result of solid and holistic performances, or original and catchy deliveries.
The all-around winning project was Amadix, the front runner of the Healthcare & Biotech group, that deals with the detection of colorectal cancer. Other awarded startups include names as Lovys, an app for monthly insurance coverage, Valerann, a cloud-based traffic management system, and BYHOURS, a service for “Microstays” in hotels. You can access the full list of winners here.
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