TheStartup.eu

SeedRocket has finally announced the finalists for the third edition of its Entrepreneurship Campus that will take place in Barcelona, July 7th-15th.

During the campus, the entrepreneurs will attend different workshops hosted by some of the most famous and successful spanish entrepreneurs. The classes are divided per day with the following subjects: marketing and communication, business development, finance, community, internet, business administration. They’ll also have the opportunity to get tips from the mentors regarding their business plan. Eventually, on July 15th the teams will pitch their projects to an audience of mentors, SeedRocket team and, of course, investors. The winning projects will be awarded a €20,000 funding and a 6-months stay in their incubator.

TheStartup is an official media partner for the event.

You can find the program (in spanish) embedded at the end of the post.

The are still too many “social networks” in my opinion, but I think there are a few very interesting and innovative products in the list. Here they are:

• and.roid.es, an android-focused developers community with its proprietary framework.

• Arpamet is using the power of videoconference for customer support, consulting, education, etc.

• BioWallet, a very cool android biometric authentication system.

• Blinkast, a green digital platform, e.consumer social network.

• bluewalks, an online trip planner.
• ElMejorPrecio, real life price comparison.

• Laralia, social network for home decorators with nifty app.

• Shoppeer, group e-commerce.

• Transket, freelance translators network.

The mentors for this edition will be some of the biggest names in the spanish scene:

• Vicente Arias, cofounder of SeedRocket.
• Jesús Monleón, cofounder SeedRocket.
• François Derbaix, founder of toprural.com
• Jaume Gomà, general manager at Segundamano.es
• Eneko Knörr, founder Hostalia.
• Mario Brüggemann, founder of OcioJoven Networks and AsesorSeguros.com
• Nacho González-Barros, founder of InfoJobs.net and Salir.com
• Carlos Domingo, manager at Telefónica I+D.
• Yago Arbeloa, founder of sync.es.
• Román Martín, founder of Interbel.
• Josep Mª Tribó, COO of MediaContacts.

Seed Rocket Program

Adara Ventures and Neotec have invested an undisclosed sum into software company AlienVault, the creator of OSSIM (Open Source Security Information Management).

AlienVault was founded by Julio Casal and Dominique Karg, the creators of OSSIM, to improve the business utility and offering of the widest adopted Opensource SIEM solution.

eRepublik is a massive online social strategy game (as they like to call it) that started popping in 2007 when it received a seed funding of €200.000. The game is set in a mirror version of the real world in which players (citizens), join in local and national politics, set economic policy, start businesses and wage wars with other countries.

Techcrunch reports of a €2 Millions Series A round from french fund of funds and venture capital AGF private Equity. While AGF wins hands down the Worst Website of the Century award it certainly is a very interesting venture capital fund, with €2.5 billions under management and investments in some of the best european startups, such as Meetic, Dailymotion, Viadeo, Yoono and others.

The spanish company will also use the funds to finish the development of the game and launch the spanish version, while also launching new games based on the eRepublik platform.

“We sometimes invest as early as the seed stage in exceptionally exciting companies and eRepublik was one of them last year. We are happy to confirm our first judgement with this new round: eRepublik creates dense and long-lasting games on a low-cost basis, while leveraging fully the strong engagement of its players – something the gaming industry would be very glad to industrialize,” comments Guillaume Lautour of AGF Private Equity.

“The existing game represents 25% of what the final product will be,” states Alexis Bonte, Co-founder and CEO of eRepublik. “With the help of AGF Private Equity and Guillaume Lautour, whom I am delighted to welcome to our board, we will have the means to make our ideas, along with those gathered from our enthusiastic community, come true,” ends Bonte.

Spanish company Abengoa announced it has finished its tests on a 20-Megawatt Solar-Power Tower in Sevilla, and started the commercial operations today.

The PS-20, located in the Solúcar platform, can serve more than 10.000 homes with its 20-megawatt power, and save us almost 12.000 tonnes of CO2.

With a height of 160 meters and 1,255 mirrored heliostats the PS20 is an impressive technology plant. Each heliostat, with its 120 square meters reflect the solar radiaction coming from the tower producing them vapor that will then generate electricity. The whole platform is developed by Abengoa Solar.

Spain is now a  3,000 megawatts ”solar country”, aiming very fast to become the largest in the world: Germany has 4,000. Abengoa already has a 10 megawatts solar power tower in service and plans another 20 megawatt plant as part of the Solúcar platform, which is expected to produce 300 megawatts by 2013 covering the needs of more than half a million people.

Abedonga is based in Barcelona Spain, with an office in San Francisco, and has a market capitalization of €1100,11 millon.

In July 2009, 10 teams will have the chance to attend the third edition of  SeedRocket in Barcelona.

Inscriptions are officially open. The 10 selected teams will fly to Barcelona from the 8th of July to the 15th to be mentored and helped with the launch of their company or product. They will attend workshops and get to talk with some of the most important spanish startup gurus including folks from Telefonics, Infojobs.net, Trovit.com, BuyVip.com, eyeOS and Hostalia.
The workshops include topics about Facebook application development, MySQL, Flex and Cloud Computing.

The best projects will obtain €20.000 in funding with the possibility of a €100.000 grant.
The application in open to both european and non-ue entrepreneurs with a working prototype of their product.

We hope to see some great startups at the event!

Erasmusu is a social network focused on Erasmus and international exchange students. The website is heavily influenced by facebook, with a very similar design and the same functions.
But I have to say they found a good niche and implemented some nice extra features such as:

• getting information about any city or university: the weather, photos, forum, people in the city, maps, reviews and other user experiences, Our intention is to provide a useful platform full of content to the students so they can:
• connecting with international exchange students that were\are\will be your exchange-mates.
• view rankings of the best cities and universities, ordered by party, people, art, health, prices and more.

If you have been\ are \ will be an exchange student, or would simply like to connect with international students coming in your city, I highly recommend to use their service.

The service is in private beta but we have got 10 invites to share with you, the first ten people to comment will get them!