4YFN announces first speakers for its second edition

• The event will feature participation by Weili Dai (Marvell Technology Group), Alexander Izosimov (Ericsson), Martin Varsavsky (Fon) and Yossi Vardi, Chairman of 4YFN
• Entrepreneurs and startups will meet with investors, accelerators and venture capital funds specialized in their activity sectors, with a per-project investment capacity from €10,000 to more than €3,000,000
• Gabby Czertok, from The Bridge Israel by Coca-Cola; Peer Bentzen, from Deutsche Post; and Vincent Meunier, from the ABSOLUT Company, will head the judging panel of the three startup awards

December 22, 2014

4 Years From Now (4YFN), the international mobile startup event promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCB) and the GSMA, to be held in Barcelona from 2-5 March, is expanding its program to offer entrepreneurs, startups and investors both more choices and greater specialization.  Part of the GSMA Mobile World Congress, 4YFN will be held at Fira Montjuic in Barcelona 2-5 March.

Now in its second year, 4YFN will boast participation by Weili Dai, President and cofounder of Marvell Technology Group and winner of the Gold Stevie Award as Woman of the Year in the technological sector in 2013. Also on hand will be Dale Dougherty, founder of Make magazine, creator of the Maker Faire, and CEO of Maker Media; Alexander Izosimov, a member of Ericsson‘s board of administration; François Moreau, CEO of Viaccess-Orca, part of France Telecom Orange Group; Pablos Holman, futurist, inventor and hacker; 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, among others. Participating in the speakers program will be Ann Winblad, cofounder of the company Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and one of the 25 most powerful women in Silicon Valley according to Business Week magazine.

Journalists Mike Butcher, editor at large at TechCrunch, and Jimmy Maymann, CEO of The Huffington Post, will also be part of the program.

For the second consecutive year, 4YFN will also feature participation by Fon CEO Martin Varsavsky, and by the renowned Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, as the event’s Chairman.

Mobile Startup Competitions: 4YFN Awards

A notable new feature at 4YFN 2015 is that it will be holding three mobile startup competitions focusing on the event’s three tracks: Disrupted by Mobile on Monday, 2 March; the IoT (Internet of Things) on Tuesday, 3 March; and Digital Media on Wednesday, 4 March.

The registration periods for each competition are open and available at 4yfn.com in collaboration with f6s, the network for Founders with the highest-ranked Startup. From amongst all the entries received the organization will select a total of 24, 8 for each thematic track. Those selected will present their projects at 4YFN before a panel headed by Gabby Czertok, General Manager at The Bridge Israel, the startup acceleration program backed by Coca-Cola; Vincent Meunier, Digital and Marketing Analytics Director at the ABSOLUT Company; and Peer Bentzen, Executive Vice-president of Deutsche Post.

With these specialized competitions, 4YFN expands the opportunities for participants and expects to beat the turnout at the Mobile Startup Competition held at 4YFN 2014, which drew nearly 200 startups from 50 different countries.

Founders & Investors

4YFN 2015 encourages networking between startups, investors, and venture capital funds. At this edition the entrepreneurs and investors who participate in Founders & Investors will be grouped based on their activity sectors (applications, IoT, digital media, etc.), the funds their projects need, and the economic capacity of accelerators, investors, and funds. 4YFN proposes the following classification: Business Angels, from 10K€ – 250K€, Seed stage, from 250K€ – 1M€, Early stage, from 1M€ – 3M€, and Growth stage for projects over 3M€.

Call4speakers

The call sent out to encourage participants to share content to take part of the program ended up with 160 projects. Half of the proposals received came from speakers with Spanish companies, while the rest of them came from another 14 countries, including the United States, England, Germany, France, and Israel.

New Chairman

4YFN has brought in Yossi Vardi as the Chairman of this edition. Vardi is a renowned Israeli investor with a long career in the entrepreneurial world. At the age of 26, he cofounded one of Israel’s first software companies and was the founding investor of ICQ, the first instant messaging application created on the Internet. He has invested in more than 50 companies in the Energy and Technological sectors and served as an adviser on Energy issues to the World Bank and the UN Development Programme.

Barcelona, entrepreneurship and innovation capital

4YFN reflects the prominence and importance that the Mobile World Capital Barcelona assigns to entrepreneurship and innovation. The event is an initiative of MWCB’s Program of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and one of the cornerstones of its activity.

With this edition, 4YFN plans to build upon its status as a business and networking platform for startups, investors, and multinational companies, revealing new entrepreneurial initiatives in the mobile sector.