Opinno produced the first European Scale Up event held in Spain

When a startup wants to consolidate itself as a company, it must scale up its processes and grow into a larger organization. To help with this challenge, the venture capital enterprises Venture Out NY and Skaled (both from the United States) organize Scale Up events where investors and business leaders advise young entrepreneurs on the creation of startups. These rendezvous had never taken place on foreign soil until recently, when the event organizers chose Spain as the first Scale Up location in Europe, and Opinno as the event producer.

Thus was born Scale Spain, which took place on June 18th on the Comillas Pontifical University – ICADE/ICAI´s campus in Madrid. More than 200 entrepreneurs, business leaders and investors from the United States and Spain joined for the occasion. The financial advisor from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, Anton Smith, was the first speaker of the day, and presented the agenda for this event focused on sales strategies, scalability and financing for startups.

Venture Out NY and Skaled entrusted the production of this event to Opinno due to the relationship this company maintains with the U.S. Embassy, which had previously contracted Opinno to produce the IN3 Spain event, celebrated last month in Madrid at the newly inaugurated Google Campus Madrid facilities. The project leader from the Business Development department at Opinno, Javier García-Calvo, also credits Opinno´s network of contacts, which make Opinno “the ideal partner to execute the event production”.

Opinno used its previous experience in the production of events such as the EmTech emerging technology conferences and the awards ceremonies for the Innovators Under 35 competitions. Scale Spain, similar to the aforementioned events, involved resources from several different departments at Opinno. In addition to the venue management performed by the Production department, the Communications department was responsible for promoting the event via social media and traditional media sources. The CRM and Alliances departments managed the relationship with several partners, as well as the ticket sales through the online ticketing platform developed by the Labs department at Opinno.

The event´s success, in conjunction with the increasingly prosperous startup ecosystem in Spain, has lead the organizing companies to express an interest in repeating this event in Spain. In this way, they aim to transform this event, which for now will continue its European tour in other countries within the region, into the leading reference for scalability and financing for startups.

Opinno, conscious of the opportunity that the collaboration between Spanish and American businesses presents, will continue to promote this type of event in order to support and consolidate this ecosystem. For Spain to become the point of reference for entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe is a goal that would benefit all aspects of our society.