The president of the Community of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso has announced the launch of Patio, a unique campus for entrepreneurship and innovation that will become a global benchmark for new startups.
The ambitious project has been designed by an entity of the same name, which includes seven international companies such as L’Oreal, BMW, Pascual, Merlin Properties, Iberia, Inditex, and Mahou San Miguel, along with the regional government as a sponsoring partner.
The initiative aims to identify and accelerate new sustainable innovation projects in various fields such as mobility, tourism, fashion, consumer goods, beauty, construction, and hospitality.
600 startups to accelerate in 5 years
The campus will open by the end of 2023 and will physically unite the exceptional projects and potential in the region, which will attract new startups, investors, and talent.
The Community of Madrid will invest a total of 2 million euros in three years and accelerate over 600 startups in five years, promoting more than 100 innovation projects and organizing more than 300 events and training activities.
The campus will integrate training and advice for entrepreneurs, an incubator for new ideas, and talent recruitment by major firms.
It will be located in the heart of the city’s financial center, in the emblematic Ruiz Picasso building.
From Madrid with love
The Community of Madrid currently has over 3,400 startups and scale-ups in operation, making it the fifth region in Europe in terms of the number of entities of these characteristics.
In addition, it is the seventh in the number of unicorns and future unicorns and is the fourth in the number of entities supporting innovative entrepreneurship.
The president emphasized that the initiative is a project where everyone wins, including startups, investors, universities, and the administration.
The campus will provide startups with the largest campus for entrepreneurship and sustainable innovation in Spain and Latin America, with specific programs to accelerate their growth.
Investors will be able to access high-quality projects with great growth potential, while universities will attract talent and develop training programs in innovation.
“We work so that each person, each company, each family, each business can move forward based on their merits, based on ingenuity, desire, and effort,” said Díaz Ayuso.