Closing ceremony of the first edition of BMP Accelerator run by La Salle-URL and the Free Trade Zone Consortium, a programme to accelerate start-ups in the real estate sector

La Salle Campus Barcelona-URL, through the La Salle Technova Barcelona innovation park, and the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium (CZFB) today brought the BMP Accelerator, a programme to accelerate start-ups in the real estate sector, to a close.

The goal of this programme lasting 22 weeks is to provide start-ups with the tools to carry out innovative business initiatives and projects, as well as to develop market opportunities, obtain investment, prepare them to work together with corporations and encourage networking with potential partners.

A total of 11 emerging companies from all around the world were selected as part of the Proptech area at the Barcelona Meeting Point 2018: 1001 portals, Alfred Smart Systems, Brichblock, Datare, Mayordomo, Nested, PropCrowd, Realo, Urbitdata, Viewtek and Zillios. All of them have taken part in one-on-one sessions to establish their needs, theoretical and practical sessions on marketing and sales techniques, and have received advice on achieving success in investment rounds. Finally, meetings were organised with key companies in the real estate sector in order to inform the start-ups about the current needs of the sector and how they can help solve these needs and challenges. The companies taking part included Anticipa, APCE, Autonomy Capital, Colonial, Neinor, Shibsted Spain, Tinsa and JLL Real Estate.

The closing ceremony took place during La Salle Technova’s TechDemoDay. Josep Miquel Piqué, Executive President of La Salle Technova Barcelona, commented that La Salle-URL and the Free Trade Zone Consortium “have created a reference accelerator in the PropTech sector that is sure to serve as a source of innovation for corporations in the real estate sector”. Piqué also highlighted the potential of the selected start-ups that “were chosen after scouting from 1,000 start-ups from all over the world, identifying technological trends and new business models impacted by digitalisation”.

Pere Navarro, Special State Delegate for the Free Trade Consortium, highlighted that this first edition of the BMP Proptech Accelerator has been very positive and will be continued and expanded in future editions of the Barcelona Meeting Point. Navarro announced that ahead of Barcelona Meeting Point 2019, “we’re already working on the BMP Start-up Connection Hub, a platform that will concentrate the digital transformation of the real estate sector. As the fair is held, we will offer a series of activities aimed at start-ups and talent recruitment and development”. Pere Navarro explained that the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium “is a great tool for economic transformation and we want it to be socially transformative as well. We want to be a factory of opportunities, this is our challenge. And that’s why we're committed to projects such as this one that we began this year, alongside La Salle Technova Barcelona, with the first trade show acceleration programme in our country, aimed at logistics and real estate start-ups, through our SIL, eDelivery Barcelona and Barcelona Meeting Point fairs”.

All participating companies have rated the programme very positively, highlighting in particular the networking opportunities and new contacts in important players in the sector. According to César Gusano, co-founder of VIEWTEK, “we’ve had very interesting mentoring sessions with highly experienced people from the sector, and that's put us in contact with relevant players from the real estate sector, which is a great opportunity to grow the company. We hope to emerge even stronger from the programme and be able to apply all the knowledge we’ve learnt here”. Carlos Salas, data manager and co-founder of Datare, highlighted the fact that the accelerator “has helped us to pivot our solution from what we initially proposed, thanks to the mentoring and the other sessions, which have given us a more specific vision of our end solution”.