South Summit Madrid 2024, co-organized by IE University, held its 13th edition from June 5 to 7. The flagship event for the entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem brought together over 6,500 entrepreneurs at La Nave in Madrid, enabling high-value connections with 6,000 corporate representatives and 2,000 investors from around the world, with a combined investment portfolio exceeding $500 billion—$174 billion more than last year.
During the three-day event, #SouthSummit24 welcomed over 18,000 attendees from 133 different countries, eight more countries than the previous edition, highlighting the event’s deep international character.
South Summit Madrid 2024 attracted more than 300 media outlets from around the globe, as well as over 700 renowned international speakers who discussed the latest trends in entrepreneurship, innovation, and the need to place humans at the center of technological evolution, in line with this year’s theme: ‘Human by Design’. Notably, six out of ten speakers were from international backgrounds: after Spain, the United Kingdom contributed the most speakers with 12.7% of the total, followed by the United States (10%), Germany (6.7%), and France (4.5%).
Among these speakers, Steven Bartlett, an entrepreneur, writer, investor, and author of Europe’s most-listened-to podcast ‘The Diary of a CEO’, emphasized the importance of embracing failure as part of the learning process. Mateo Salvatto, CEO and founder of Asteroid Techs, also stood out; at just 18 years old, he founded a startup that assists over 400,000 people with disabilities.
#SouthSummit24 also featured founders of 26 international unicorns, such as Jeff Hoffman, co-founder of Booking and director of the Global Entrepreneurship Network; Uri Levine, founder and CEO of Waze and Moovit; and Vincent Rosso, co-founder of BlaBlaCar Spain and Consentio. These leaders shared their insights on technologies like artificial intelligence and offered advice on launching and scaling a project to achieve business success.
The winner of the ‘Startup Competition at the 13th edition of South Summit Madrid’ was the Madrid-based startup Invopop, which helps companies issue invoices in any country by registering sales, converting them into invoice formats, and communicating with the relevant tax authorities. Additionally, four other awards were given: the Barcelona-based startup Sycai was chosen as the ‘Most Disruptive’, Murcia-based Navilens as the ‘Most Sustainable’, and Madrid-based Shakers and Embat as the ‘Most Scalable’ and the startup with the ‘Best Team’, respectively.
#SouthSummit24 was supported by the Secretariat of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, the Community of Madrid, and the City Council of Madrid, as well as Mutua Madrileña, Google for Startups, BBVA Spark, Endesa, Wayra – Telefónica Innovation, and Banco Sabadell’s BStartup.
For Alicia Jiménez
