This Tuesday the inaugural session of the fourteenth edition of the "Startup Program", of the Junior Achievement Foundation Spain, an initiative developed with the support of the PwC Foundation as the main partner, the subsidy from the Madrid City Council through Madrid Emprende, and the support of Tikehau Capital and naturgy as partners, among others.
This interuniversity entrepreneurship programme, the largest in Europe, aims to promote the entrepreneurial spirit in the university environment creating a community of young entrepreneurs. More than 250 students from more than 20 Spanish universities will participate in this 2021-2022 academic year.
This launch event took place at the PwC headquarters in Madrid and was welcomed by the General Director of the PwC Foundation, Marta Colomina, and the General Director of the Junior Achievement Spain Foundation, Lucía de Zavala. In addition, the testimony of other young entrepreneurs such as Pablo González, Founder of trivu, or Lino Monteagudo, Juan and Víctor de Haro, winners of the XIII Startup Program and creators of ghop.
In his speech, Fernando Herrero, General Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Madrid City Council, which subsidizes this program with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship in the city, pointed out that from Madrid "we are interested in initiatives aimed at attracting talent", with the challenge of being able to retain this talent, which will generate a lot of value for the city. In addition, he highlighted that Madrid is one of the cities with the most university campuses.
Christian Rouquerol, executive director of Tikehau Capital, Alejandro Sánchez, Open Innovation director of Naturgy and Ángela Alférez, director of Studies and VC at the Association of Capital, Growth and Investment (ASCRI) also spoke.
Until May 2022, the participants of the Startup Program will have different training sessions in which they will acquire the necessary knowledge to design their own business plan and launch their entrepreneurial idea.
In parallel, they will receive support from professional volunteers from different companies such as PwC, Madrid City Council, Tikehau Capital and Naturgy, who will become their mentors throughout the program.
On April 25, the projects classified to participate in the National Competition that will be held on May 24 and 25 will be published, and the winning project that will represent Spain in the Junior Achievement Europe Enterprise Challenge European Competition that will take place on May 28 will be announced. and June 29 and will be attended by university students from 18 European countries.
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