User:Elberg06/South Summit

South Summit is the open innovation platform and entrepreneurship gathering that connects startups, investors and corporations with a focus on business opportunities and disruptive trends. By organizing large scale events, it gathers together the entrepreneurial ecosystem by connecting corporates, startups, and investors from all around the globe. The focus of the event is innovation and entrepreneurship. Its main purpose is to connect the main players of the ecosystem in search for innovation. The main activities at the event are a speaking program, a startup competition, as well as various networking tools such as speed networking, evening cocktails, scheduled 1:1 meetings, and a marketplace. In 2018, South Summit gathered over 16’000 attendees with more than 500 media representatives, 6800 corporates, 4300 entrepreneurs, and 750 investors.

It's one of the annual events of Southern Europe about entrepreneurs and investors, in which the most innovative ideas and thousands of startups meet up with investors interested in supporting uniquely innovative projects.

History
South Summit was created in 2012 by María Benjumea under the name of Spain Startup & Investor Summit (SSIS). The name of the event was changed in 2014 to the current one, South Summit, to promote its intentions to deploy its services to the European and Latin American market, while the company organizing it remained Spain Startup. Together with IE Business School, Spain Startup saw an opportunity for entrepreneurs in a time of financial crisis in Spain. They believed entrepreneurs could be the driving force to revive the economy. Spain Startup is a leading company in the identification, organization, and promotion of all types of initiatives who seek to support entrepreneurship, business opportunities, and the synergy between talent and innovation.

The first South Summit took place in Las Ventas in 2014. After that, in 2016, it relocated to its current home, La Nave.

In 2017, South Summit went abroad for the first time by organizing events in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bogota, Colombia, followed up by another event in 2018 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Spain Startup now organizes all the South Summit events and is still led by María Benjumea to this day (2019).

Program
During the event, South Summit organizes an extensive speaking program. In 2018, over 500 speakers covered more than 30 topics at the event over 3 days and 7 different stages. Some of the past speakers include:


 * Steve Wozniak (Apple)
 * Sir Ken Robinson (Expert in Education)
 * Eric Schmidt (Google)
 * Dr. Werner Vogels (Amazon)
 * Allen Blue (Linkedin)
 * Dhiraj Mukherjee (Shazam)
 * Niklas Zennström (Atomico/Skype)
 * Jeanette J. Epps (NASA)
 * Gwynn Shotwell (SpaceX)
 * Michal Braverman-Blumenstyk (Microsoft)
 * Gisela Pulido (Kitesurf World Champion)
 * Francisco González (BBVA)
 * José María Álvarez-Pallete López (Telefónica)



Startup Competition
On top of its speaking program, South Summit hosts a startup competition, in which founders of startups compete in front of the audience and a professional jury for the title of best startup of the year, which provides a solid reputation to attract Angel Investors and Venture Capitals.

The competition process goes as follows:


 * The competition opens on February of every year, where startups are asked to submit their decks to Spain Startup. The decks are reviewed internally, and a preselection of the 400 best startups is established.
 * The 400 best decks are presented to a professional jury made up of investors, professors, advisors, and key players of the ecosystem, and the best 100 startups are invited to the final of the startup competition at South Summit Madrid.
 * The 100 finalists are given advice and trained via an online masterclass to prepare for the event. The class includes advice about presenting a pitch onstage, how to convince a Venture Capital, as well as understanding key metrics about a business.
 * The finalists are given a book containing all the information related to corporations and investment funds who will be attending South Summit. This allows them to prepare and carefully choose which they wish to meet at the event via the 1:1 meeting tool.
 * The day before the event, the 100 finalists are invited to an exclusive bootcamp where they are further prepared for the final. When the bootcamp ends, a networking cocktail is organized where both finalists and investors of South Summit are invited.
 * The 100 finalists are given the option to have a stand in the center of the South Summit marketplace to give visibility to their brand.
 * At the event, each startup finalist has 3 minutes to pitch his deck to a professional jury. The best 10 of the 100 finalists advance to the final phase, where they are requested to pitch again, but on the main stage of the event in front of a tougher jury who will be asking questions.
 * After the final phase, the winners are determined. There are four prizes: “Best Team”, “Most Scalable”, “Most Disruptive”, and “Best Startup of the Year”. The latter is deemed to be the winner of the South Summit competition.
 * In 2017 and 2018, the winner was granted an invitation to the Startup World Cup Competition, organized by Fenox Venture Capital, whose winner receives 1’000’000 US$ in funding.

Partners
The partners of South Summit are companies that directly support entrepreneurship and innovation. These include: