Meet The Four Startups From The First Conector Accelerator Demo Day

Last week, Conector – Barcelona’s newest startup accelerator, held their first-ever Demo Day at EADA business school.  As accelerator programs of various shapes, sizes and business models are exploding across Europe’s tech landscape, there’s eager anticipation to see the results.  For accelerators, the results come in the form of a Demo Day  – an afternoon where the accelerator program’s greater network of investors, advisors, mentors and press come to hear presentations from the entrepreneurs that have been working tirelessly on their startups for the last 3-6 months.

Conector’s first Demo Day featured four Barcelona startups at various stages across different industries.  In attendance were some familiar private and professional investors including Xavier Verdaguer, Luis Martin Cabiedes, Gerard Olive, Miguel Vicente, and of course founding partner of Conector, Carlos Blanco.  Two of the four startups, Conductr and PopPlaces were also part of the Fest-UP Startup Expo on May 7th.  Here’s who presented last week from Conductor’s first class of startups:

Lynber – kicking off the event was Lynber, a new shopping experience where you can design your own fashion.  The mobile-first e-commerce platform is led by Adolfo Muguerza and is aimed at personalized fashion. The fashion e-commerce space is one of the most competitive markets to enter today. The ground is littered with fallen startups with what they thought was the next disruptive model.  What I like about Lynber is they focus on the long-tail of customized products, take advantage of the efficiencies of infinite online ‘shelf space’ and have chosen to skip the web version and go straight after the exploding mobile demographic.

Patchworks (Conductr) – The guys and gals at Patchworks have successfully built a beautiful iPad solution for the Ableton Live controller, specifically designed for live performance.  If you’re like me and have no idea what that means, check out their product demo here – it will impress even the most dedicated old school, vinyl spinning DJs. With the most musical presentation of the day, Oriol Rosell, Julià Carboneras i Albert Minguell of Conductr laid out out their roadmap to marketshare domination in the digital performance software space.

Adictik – Have you ever felt like a brand or company should compensate you for overtly sharing their amazing products or services? I’m still waiting on commissions for at least five friends I convinced to buy a Fitbit after Christmas. Well, Adtictik agrees with me and has built a platform that allows companies to actually sponsor their biggest fans. Co-founders Kilian Sevilla and Laura Santolaria described their meritocratic marketplace where “fans” can create content and share it online. The most influential content creators are then rewarded directly by the brands that they endorse.

PopPlaces – the crowd favorite of the Startup Expo, PopPlaces is surging straight out of the gate. Their launch came in early April and already they are revenue positive, secured €120k in seed funding and official 2014 Fest-UP Award Winners. Led by veteran entrepreneurs Karen Prats and David Pérez, PopPlaces is following a proven business model that has shown success in both the US and UK markets.  It’s the first Spanish online marketplace for renting commercial space on a daily basis. Basically, they created a platform to connect underutilized fixed assets with people looking for temporary space, say for an event or pop-up store. I’m a sucker for collaborative consumption startups.

While the accelerator model is new and time will tell which programs are worth their salt, the projects graduating from Conector’s first class demonstrated real traction and significant high-growth potential. We’ll track their progress on Barcinno and stay tuned for the next class of startups that will enter the Conector program to be announced later this week.