In July, Spanish and European entrepreneurs convened in the picturesque, southwestern city of Seville to spend a few days building and iterating their ideas for startups.
The 27th edition of Techstars Startup Weekend Seville, held at the Valentin Madariaga and Oya Foundation, hosted over 60 participants who spent around 54 hours working on prototyping, designing, market validation, business model creation and pitching their startup ideas.
Eight countries outside of Spain were represented in the founder-friendly, educational competition.
Spain’s Sportoship was crowned the winner after the three-day event. The startup, which is a play on words for “sports” and “sponsorship,” will offer a solution to athletes who want to be sponsored by sports brands looking for new profiles.
In its very initial phases, the project is led by Enrique Aguilar Gallardo, a student at the Universidad de Sevilla, along with young entrepreneurs Daniel Cira Gómez, Pablo Cobos Martínez, Yury Astrid Girón Terranova and Álvaro Repetto.
They’ve developed a rudimentary website so those who are interested can follow the company’s development process and keep updated on its availability once live.
While not currently aimed at helping future Lionel Messi’s secure multi-million-dollar-a-year deals with Adidas, to begin, the platform aims to make it easier for lesser-known athletes and fitness pros to secure different deals.
Other top winners at the Seville startup event included SecondSight, a mobile app that helps visually impaired people detect road hazards in real time, and Love is in the Air, a heart hunting application aimed at finding the ideal match for searching lovers.
The jury who made the selections was comprised of entrepreneurs, journalists and technology experts including Salvador Lora, CEO of Kampaoh, a platform for planning camping trips; Azahara Benito Carrillo, CMO of Galgus, a leading wireless communications provider for businesses; Sergio Ramos Montoya, editor of Social Geek and contributor to multiple technology publications; and Francisco Cousinou, head of entrepreneurship at Andalucía Emprende.
Outside of the judges’ selections, the audience prize went to ETUTU, a startup that offers temporary employment agencies a platform to optimize their productivity. In addition to this award, it received the INCIBE cybersecurity mention. The team was led by Gonzalo Astudillo Ortega, Elvyra Ivanovaite, Laura Martín González, Ana Saldaña Díaz and Nahuel Varela Blanco.
Seville’s Startup Weekend, part of the wider Techstars event series which takes place in cities around the globe, was organized by SevillaUP, a non-profit organization that promotes the startup ecosystem in the city.
According to a company statement, eight different countries were represented at the event, and for the first time, there was more female than male participation among the 60 founders.
“Local entrepreneurship is more active than ever. More diverse. More mature. More professional,” said Jaime Aranda, president of SevillaUP. “The future is already being built by the innovative talent that meets, recognizes and connects at Startup Weekend Seville, the reference event in the Andalusian entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Along their journey, the budding entrepreneurs were also guided by multiple talented mentors, including serial entrepreneur Francisco Pineda; Senior Project Manager at Parisian multinational Schneider Electric Francisco de la Torre; head of product at financial platform Candidly Javier Navero; marketing executive Jessica Hidalgo Gamero; co-founder of Resolana Digital Jonathan Taibo; CEO of digital marketing firm Glowden Agency Laura Robles; the CEO of La Barca Otro Teatro Patricia Davis; and legal counsel for Madrid-based Sentrium Ana de la Hera.
