Presenting the Startup Grind Tech Conference 2018

We're proud to present this year's edition of the Startup Grind annual conference in Barcelona, now extremely focused on tech.

Leaders of opinion and attendees from all over the world are flocking to Barcelona to attend the second annual conference of Startup Grind in the Catalan capital, organised by MarsBased.

Read more to find out all the details!

What is Startup Grind?

Startup Grind is the biggest community of entrepreneurs in the world. Currently, in 500 cities of over 150 different countries, Startup Grind hosts monthly events in all those locations to inspire, educate and connect entrepreneurs worldwide.

In Barcelona, we have been organising these events since April 2014, with an average attendance of 140 people. After 57 monthly editions, we can safely say Startup Grind Barcelona is the best startups event in town. Check all the editions on the Startup Grind Barcelona website.

Last year, we decided to launch an MVC (Minimum Viable Conference 😃), to see if we were able to do bigger things. Every year, we had had at least one or two events of over 300 people, and so we wanted to explore a bigger format: a conference.

In 2016, I was elected Startup Grind's Chapter Director of the Year for our impressive work running the Barcelona chapter - huge thanks to our amazing team, though! - and that was one of the reasons why Barcelona was granted the possibility to organise a Startup Grind regional conference. Only five or six cities in the world are entitled to do it.

Derek Andersen CEO @ Startup Grind

The mission of Startup Grind is to help every entrepreneur in the world.

Why a Tech Conference?

There are many reasons, but I'll try to list them very succinctly.

First of all, Barcelona is attracting a lot of tech companies and becoming a hub for big multinationals who open a development center here. Companies like Microsoft, Oracle, N26, Dow Jones and many more have opened an office for research and/or development recently while others keep coming week after week.

Second, Startup Grind caters to thousands of entrepreneurs worldwide mostly fireside chats about founder stories, like it's been doing since its inception in 2010 in Palo Alto, California.

We want to make our conference a bit different and chose tech to set us apart from all the other regional conferences in London, Melbourne, Toronto and Mexico DF. The monthly event will still be generic and open to all topics (social entrepreneurship, e-commerce, marketing, VC, AI, etc.) while this conference will focus more on the tech side of things: how to hire remote developers, hiring tech people, company culture in tech companies, SaaS, how do VCs evaluate tech products, and other trends in the industry.

Third, I am a developer and run a development agency. Also, our crowd is more tech than in other cities, I am sure. When we do tech events, we've got a higher attendance rate.

I am sure there are more reasons, but these stand out as the most plausible ones.

What's in the conference for me?

If you're into tech or want to get more into tech, if you want to learn about the tendencies of the industry and want to hear more from both consolidated companies and disruptive startups, this is your conference.

There's an opening night on November 13th at Antiga Fàbrica Estrella Damm, where we will have a panel about the future of education with three edtech companies (Ironhack, Codecademy, Harbour.Space) and then a comparison between the startup ecosystems of Barcelona and San Francisco with Miguel Valls, founder of Alta Life Sciences, followed by a session of networking, catering and beers in one of the most iconic venues in town.

On the 14th, there's a full day of sessions, mixing keynotes, fireside chats and panels. Check the agenda for the Startup Grind Tech Conference 2018 here.

Also, we will have a booth there! Feel free to drop by to say hi to the Martian crew and let us know how may we help you!