The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has presented Patio, the future campus of entrepreneurship and innovation that the region will have, which will be unique in Spain and Latin America. It is intended to become a global benchmark in the creation of new emerging companies, in line with the popular Station F in Paris.
This ambitious project was designed by a recently created entity of the same name, which includes seven prestigious international companies such as L’Oreal, BMW, Pascual, Merlin Properties, Iberia, Inditex, and Mahou San Miguel. The regional government is also a sponsoring partner.
“These companies, thanks to the leadership they have in their respective fields, will identify and accelerate new sustainable innovation projects in the fields of mobility, tourism, fashion, consumption, beauty, construction, or hospitality,” the president explained about this new initiative that will see the light at the end of 2023.
For Díaz Ayuso, the name chosen for this initiative “could not be more appropriate and, in a region like ours, popular and where we like mixing and plurality.” “I think it was a place we were missing in Madrid to physically unite the great potential and exceptional projects that exist today in the Community, and it will be a great attraction for everything that is to come,” she said.
Thanks to this collaboration between the public and private sectors, the Community of Madrid will invest a total of 2 million euros over three years, and more than 600 startups will be accelerated in five years. In addition, they will promote more than 100 innovation programs and organize more than 300 training events and activities, Díaz Ayuso explained.
It is, she added, a project in which “everyone wins”: on the one hand, startups because they will have the largest sustainable entrepreneurship and innovation campus in Spain and Latin America, with specific programs to accelerate their growth; and, on the other hand, companies, “because they will have innovation programs for their employees and the best possible space to develop their own projects.”
Investors will also benefit because they will be able to access “quality projects with great potential for growth”; universities, “because they will attract talent and develop training programs in innovation”; and, finally, the administration, because many of these “will allow us to improve our public services.”
Patio will integrate training and advice to entrepreneurs, an incubator of new ideas, and talent recruitment with the help of major companies in the same physical space. It will be located in the emblematic Ruiz Picasso building, 11, in the financial center of the city, and will be a meeting point for ideas, knowledge, and talent.
Madrid, the fifth European region in the number of startups
The Community of Madrid currently has more than 3,400 startups and scale-ups in operation, some with a valuation of more than 1 billion euros. Diverse sectors such as finance, health, marketing, business software, or transportation stand out. This has made Madrid the fifth region in Europe in the number of entities of this type. In fact, every year, since 2019, more than 240 financing rounds are registered.
In addition, it is the seventh in the number of unicorns and future unicorns (those companies that reach a valuation of 1 billion dollars without having a presence in the stock market) and is the fourth in the number of entities