South Summit 2021 gets underway for its event this year, just after the one held in the middle of 2020 in a hybrid way on the occasion of the coronavirus pandemic. The event of entrepreneurs, startups and investors that marks the annual calendar of the ecosystem marks its starting point at an interesting moment for the startup community.
Dated between October 5 and 7, South Summit 2021 is planned this year with a perspective similar to that of 2020. Maintaining its hybrid format, although also inviting in-person attendance to the meeting, the event wants to have a sustainable perspective of here to a future.
In the midst of the still unfinished pandemic, with the Spain Entrepreneurial Nation plan courtesy of European funds after COVID-19 and a new Startups Law looming through the door, it is precisely these issues that have marked the starting point of South Summit 2021. It is also these concepts on which the speeches have been based, not without a certain political dart, that have marked the starting point of the South Summit 2021.
An event that aims to be the most political of all with most of the parties of the moment trying to capitalize on the interest of an ecosystem with more power and business capacity every day.
The Law of Startups, the center of everything
Presented by draft law just a few days ago, the anthological Startups Law promised by the different political candidates in recent years and signed by the new one by Pedro Sánchez has occupied the center of the discourse. At least for the members of the Socialist Party. With hardly any mention by the different opposition parties.
As expected, Francisco Polo, High Commissioner for Spain Entrepreneurial Nation and main architect of the next Startups Law has brought up one of the star laws of the Pedro Sánchez Government. “ We are going to place Spain at the top of European entrepreneurship , for which we trust our role,” said Polo. All through the still unfinished plan of Spain Entrepreneurial Nation and the new Law that does not end up liking those affected by it and most certainly those attending the South Summit 2021.
A bill that is will see faces at South Summit 2021 The Spanish Association of Startups valued the project, still pending review and approval, as a good step that, however, fell short of its ambition . “The measures incorporated have a wide margin for improvement, some important measures are missing, and those that are there are not as ambitious as the ecosystem demands,” they pointed out. A positioning shared by most of the ecosystem that, in general terms, has defined the text as improvised and without coherence in some senses.
Well positioned in the eternal debate of stock options, times of creation of the company or relations with foreign investors, the reality is that the part of tax matters has been conservative. Also lax when defining what a startup is or incomprehensible to manage second chances. Some realities that Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence has defended: “It is a law that affects 14 laws and 13 ministries, we know that it is not perfect so we want your help to improve it.”
The flag of freedom and employment to collation
The meetings that unite under the same roof, or garden in this case, politicians of all colors usually end up facing the plot lines of their different insignia. The presentation of the South Summit 2021 has been no different.
The scientific speech of Rosa María Menéndez López as President of the CSIC focused on innovation inaugurated the moment. “It is not just having talent, you have to have a strategy, he explained, it is not clear when, how and what will be done from public proposals with innovation,” he added. A discourse that the scientific community has been maintaining for years, but that does not end up penetrating politics. It has been instead the concept of freedom that marked the baton of the popular bench.
South Summit 2021, with the influence of Ayuso “Innovation implies a framework of freedom”, added Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, Minister of Economy of the Community of Madrid, “to give channel to business freedom, imaginative solutions, create without asking permission … What this super regulation does is that there are fewer companies “. A point on which the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida agrees, betting on the fact that Madrid wants to create an environment of freedom – in reference to the repeated phrase of Isabel Díaz Ayuso – so that companies can establish themselves.
All this with a message between the lines of the so-called Startups Law still to be released and another of the star measures of the Central Government regarding the innovation environment: the Rider Law. One of those that has most struck a chord with the delivery sector in Spain and that, with a few weeks to go into effect officially, still faces a long list of debates and complaints from those involved.
