4YFN Builds on Success of Inaugural Event with Expanded Programme Targeting Europe’s Mobile Investors and Entrepreneurs

• Forecasts call for the 2015 edition to double last year’s participation figures
• Representatives from companies such as Twitter, VICE Media, and the investment fund Accel Partners join 4YFN
• The event will feature over 120 speakers and 175 startups from 14 different countries
• 4YFN expands its space with Innovation Market, an exhibition area where startups will present their projects
• Startupbootcamp IoT & Data Demo Day, Imagine Express, and the Global Mobile Challenge 2015 will also have their own spaces at the event

January 26, 2015

4Years From Now (4YFN), the international event for mobile startups presented by the Mobile World Capital Barcelona and GSMA, expects to double the number of entrepreneurs, startups, and investors who participated in the first edition.

With this goal in mind, the organization presents a lineup that will include the presence of Andrew Creighton, president of VICE Media; Mike Ng, director of Mobile Sales and Operations at Twitter; Mike Curtis, vice-president of Engineering at Airbnb; and Philippe Botteri, a partner at Accel Partners, the fund that invested when Facebook, Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Kayak were still getting off the ground.

The more than 120 speakers will also include David Kenny, president and CEO of The Weather Company; Weili Dai, president and co-founder of the Marvell Technology Group and winner of the Gold Stevie Award as woman of the year in the tech sector in 2013; and Ann Winblad, the co-founder of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and one of Silicon Valley’s 25 most powerful women, according to Business Week magazine.

Also on hand at 4YFN will be Dale Dougherty, founder of Make magazine, creator of the “Maker Fairs,” and CEO of Maker Media; Alexander Izosimov, a member of the Ericsson board; François Moreau, CEO of Viaccess-Orca, part of the France Telecom Orange Group; Mike Butcher, Editor-At-Large at TechCrunch; futurist, inventor, and hacker Pablos Holman; and Maelle Gavet, CEO of Ozon Holdings, an international venture capital group that has backed companies like Aegerion, asos, Dropbox, Etsy, Just Eat, King, MySQL, Skype and SoundCloud.

The Audi Theatre, 4YFN’s main conference venue, will also welcome, back from last year, Fon CEO Martin Varsavsky, along with the renowned Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, who joins in this year as the event’s honorary president.

4YFN 2015 attendees will have access to a program including 40 workshops and small-format work sessions. A Mobile Marketing session by Twitter, workshops on how to set up your company in the United Kingdom or Silicon Valley, a master class on how to make a video go viral with limited resources, and a session on how to negotiate during an investment round are the first workshops to be confirmed.

Innovation Market

4YFN 2015 is expanding the exhibition area for startups, companies and accelerators with respect to the last edition, and already has over 175 companies registered to show off their mobile products and innovations. At this time the volume of exhibitors has nearly filled the facility’s capacity.

Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the USA, Germany, Italy and Romania are, as of today, the most represented countries at the Innovation Market.

Founders & Investors

Founders & Investors is a networking activity to promote meetings between startups, investors, directors of innovation and venture capital funds. At this edition 100 selected startups will be placed in contact with 150 investors, such as Accel Partners, Acton Capital, BDMI Fund, Capnamic, Inveready, Kennet Partners, Northzone, Octopus Investments, Open Ocean Capital, Presidio Ventures, Relay Ventures and Tecnalia Ventures.

Entrepreneurs and investors will be grouped into four levels based on their fields of activity (applications, IoT, digital media, etc.), the capital injection their projects need, and the economic capacity of investors, funds, and directors of innovation.

Imagine Express, Startupbootcamp IoT & Data Demo Day, and The Global Mobile Challenge 2015, special 4YFN 2015 programs

For the second year 4YFN will be the last stop of the Imagine Express, a hackathon that will allow 36 dreamers to develop apps on a train that will travel a Barcelona-Paris-London-Barcelona route from 27 February to 1 March. On 2 March the groups will present their demos to 4YFN attendees on the FIWARE Terrace.

4YFN 2015 will also feature a demo day of the Startupbootcamp IoT & Data program, which will open the doors of Agora Banc Sabadell to the 10 startups participating in the initiative. The Global Mobile Challenge 2015 will also be held, sponsored by the Applied Innovation Institute, GSMA, and Mobile World Capital Barcelona, a challenge that will share innovative mobile solutions developed by young entrepreneurs from all around the world.