Organised by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona, My Start BCN is a competition aimed at promoting the international growth process of virtuous Italian companies wishing to expand their market in Spain. Now in its seventh year, the 2024 edition is once again organised in collaboration with I3P, the Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino.
The initiative is aimed at all founding partners of Italian citizenship of new companies with an innovative product/service without necessarily being registered in the register of innovative start-ups. From all the applications received, five start-ups will be selected and will have the opportunity to present their project and make a video pitch to be assessed by a jury of professionals, mentors and venture capitalists. At the end of the presentation, one of the young companies will be declared the overall winner.
The prizes
The young enterprise that is elected the winner of My Start BCN 2024 will receive as a prize:
- access to a free coworking space for 6 months;
- administrative and financial support;
- mentoring aimed at project acceleration;
- networking and contacts with the venture capitalist ecosystem;
- membership of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona for one year;
- participation in the 4YFN event, held from March 3rd to 6th, 2025 in Barcelona.
The evaluation process
The start-ups that are admitted to the competition will then be assessed by a jury composed of expert members from Italy and Spain. The evaluation criteria for the candidate projects will be:
- the level of innovation proposed to the market;
- the competitive advantage demonstrated by the start-up and its potential scalability;
- the attractiveness of the target market and consistency with the product/service offered;
- the quality of the entrepreneurial team;
- the results already achieved by the start-up.
The evaluation process will take place in two stages:
- Stage 1 - Italy: the application evaluation procedure will be coordinated by the Italian Chamber of Commerce - Barcelona in collaboration with I3P.
- Stage 2 - Spain: the evaluation procedure will be coordinated by the Italian Chamber of Commerce - Barcelona and a jury composed of innovation managers, professionals, mentors and venture capitalists.
How to apply
The competition's official webpage contains the initiative's presentation documents and the form that must be filled out and sent, together with the other required materials, to the dedicated email address of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona via WeTransfer, by the deadline of September 30th, 2024.
For further information and contact, you can write to the e-mail address comunicacion@camaraitaliana.com.
The previous edition
The final event of the sixth edition of the competition was held on November 7th, 2023 in Barcelona at the "Faro del Mediterraneo" award ceremony.
The winning start-up of My Start BCN 2023 was Biovitae, based in Salerno, for its design of a light bulb that illuminates and sanitises premises at the same time.
